14. Review Your Nonprofit’s Portfolio of Alliances

Review Your Nonprofit’s Portfolio of Alliances

Many effective nonprofit organizations revisit their missions and long-range plans every three to five years. These organizational self-assessment and strategic planning processes provide an opportunity to review the portfolio of alliances with businesses and determine how alliances should be employed in the nonprofit’s long-range plan.

Nonprofit organizations that engage in alliances with businesses are sometimes involved in several simultaneously. Steps to review an alliance portfolio include listing current alliances with businesses, mapping these alliances on the Collaboration Continuum, and noting how these alliances have helped the nonprofit serve its customers, reach goals, and achieve desired results. These planning processes also provide an opportunity to scan current trends in the ways nonprofits and businesses succeed through strategic alliances.

A portfolio review allows you to acknowledge what your nonprofit organization is learning about meeting the collaboration challenge with businesses, examine whether you should strengthen organizational capacity to develop and manage alliances, and recommend alliance-related goals and objectives for your nonprofit’s long-range plan.

To review your nonprofit’s portfolio of alliances, use the following chart to list each alliance partner and the alliance’s contribution to yournonprofit’s strategies.

	Alliance Partner	Alliance’s Contribution to Nonprofit’s Strategy
Business A
Business B
Business C
Business D
Business E
Business F

Then, using the most recent alliance appraisal (as reported on Worksheet 13), indicate each alliance’s current position on the Collaboration Continuum below with the appropriate lower case letter (for example, mark an "a" for Business A) and each alliance’s desired position in the next three to five years with a capital letter (for example, mark an "A" for Business A).Then address the questions that follow.

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