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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share how to make sure your pilot project leads to sustainable funding.
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So stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I'm Kath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are.
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To have them seeking you out as an equal partner.
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And to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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Pilots can be a great strategy for setting the stage for sustainable funding.
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Many nonprofits have successfully leveraged a pilot project to unlock millions of dollars in funding and to achieve key policy changes that ensure those services are always available going forward.
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But too many pilot projects end with no discernible impact on funding or policy.
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And that's a shame because it doesn't have to be that way.
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The truth is if a nonprofit makes one or more key mistakes when setting up the pilot, it'll probably fail to generate meaningful change.
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But with proper strategic design, you can dramatically increase your chances of turning a pilot project into longterm funding and policy gains.
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But it only works if we set it up to successfully prove the case for investment.
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The basic purpose of a pilot project, whether it's large or small, is to demonstrate and prove value to a set of decision makers.
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You've got something you already know works.
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You're trying to get the decision makers on board.
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And engage them, and help them to understand the true value so that they're interested in investing in it.
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Whether those decision makers are at a government agency, if they're elected officials or a prospective contracting partner.
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The basic concept remains the same.
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There's two different ways they can then make good on that investment.
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They can commit long-term funding.
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And/or they can institute a policy change that makes the thing that you're piloting become an institutionalized part of a set of services that is always funded and is always part of the system.
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Funding comes from all of those sources.
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The policy change tends to happen, obviously on the government side, whether it's elected or agency officials.
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But the bottom line in all of these scenarios is that if the decision makers were already convinced that your thing, whatever you're looking to pilot to prove its value.
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If they were already convinced that your thing was the best ever, and was a brilliant return on investment and produced the kinds of outcomes they cared about.
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And it made total sense.
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Then they'd already be funding it and those policy changes would already have happened.
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So if you're finding yourself wanting to do a pilot to help engage those decision makers, to move them to that.
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By definition that means that they're not there yet.
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There's one or more things in the way.
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Very often, it boils down to one basic concept.
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They're reluctant to make the investment, whether it's funding, policy change or both.
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Until they're sure that your thing is gonna produce the returns that you say it will.
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And that it's going to work for them.
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And this is key because you can have lots of data that shows that it worked other places.
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Or that it worked in this setting or that setting.
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But each decision maker is looking at it from their little world.
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And they want to know that if they make the investment they're going to get those same returns or better.
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And so the great thing about a pilot is it allows them to make a small investment, relatively speaking, to find out if it's really gonna work for them.
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So it's a great strategy.
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But here's the thing.
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There are four major mistakes that frequently get made when setting up pilot projects.
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That wind up not proving the point to that decision maker, and not getting them to understand that it's really going to work for them.
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And those four big mistakes are number one, failing to define success.
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Failing to get adequate data that actually proves your concept and satisfies the investor slash decision-makers needs.
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Failing to get partner engagement and cooperation to do their part.
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And the last one is failing to cover your costs.
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So let's get into these because if you get these four things right, the chances of your pilot project succeeding beyond your wildest dreams go way up.
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So the first thing is to define success.
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And when you're doing that, what often happens is that success will get defined for the client.
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This is the outcome that the client will experience, et cetera.
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We're pretty good at defining success for the clients.
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But you want to define success for three different entities, three different parties.
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For the client.
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For the decision maker and their organization or business.
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And for you and your organization.
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Okay.
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So obviously with defining client success, that's going to be all about the final outcomes, but also any key incremental milestones that are important and relevant and should be measured.
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Because particularly if you provide a service that it takes a while to get to the final big outcome, it's going to be very important to create milestones that show progress.
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And for any milestone that is a big win on its own, and that changes the client's life for the better, then that should really be labeled an outcome.
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So if there's a completion of a process.
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If you're in workforce development, it might be that they're incrementally achieving gains in training or education or apprenticeship.
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Whatever the method of improving their skillset and capacity.
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It might be around improving capacity in soft skills arena, which are totally critical to success in the workplace, no matter what line of work you're in.
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It could be a set of strategies and services that fully address childcare needs of clients so that they can successfully participate in and complete their training.
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In those scenarios in workforce development, there are a lot of incremental milestones on a career pathway.
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And you want to be able to very clearly define outcomes attached to each incremental piece of progress.
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In healthcare, you might be looking to show incremental progress on someone's journey toward wellness, toward their best health, whatever is going to be possible for them.
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And that will depend a lot on what they're dealing with.
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But you want to show each key milestone of progress.
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And characterize each of those as an outcome.
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And then ultimately of course, is your big outcome that you're looking to get at the end.
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You know your services and the incremental milestones that your clients go through on their way to the big outcome that's the big payoff at the end.
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But the truth is that in almost every scenario, no matter what arena you're operating in, those incremental milestones are critically important.
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And valuable in their own right.
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And so you want to make sure that when you're defining success, you're calling those milestones out as part of the success picture for the client.
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That's just part one of your three part success definition.
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The next thing you do is you identify what constitutes success from the perspective of your organization.
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So obviously there are going to be some key things, right?
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You have your final outcome goal here of you want X level of funding investment to happen.
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You want it to happen on a recurring basis.
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You may want the service or program to become institutionalized in a larger system, so that it becomes standard practice.
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And that would probably be a policy change of some kind.
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Or you may want both.
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So get really clear on exactly what that would look like as your end goal of success for this pilot.
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Then there is from the perspective of your organization specifically, what is the success for the organization?
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And that's about what level of not only overall funding do you get out of this.
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But at what percentage of your cost?
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We're going to get into that more when we talk about making sure you cover your costs.
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But that is definitely one of the factors that go into this.
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It is not a win if you pilot a service or a program at a funding level that is money losing for your organization.
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And your goal is to scale that.
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What you ultimately would be doing is scaling your loss.
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That is not a good goal.
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We want to make sure that you're getting adequately compensated for the provision of the service or program.
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So that's one of your successes is that at a minimum the costs are covered.
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And then there are going to be other things.
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Perhaps it's that you will be able to grow your team or grow your team's capacity.
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There'll be other outcomes for the organization as a functioning entity that will be relevant.
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Another one may be that your organization emerges as a leader, or as an even stronger leader, in this field.
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That enhances your reputation for expertise, for skill, for success, for showing up as a quality partner.
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Whatever reputational enhancements you want out of this, define those as well.
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One of the big ones is going to be that you will have more data, and better data, when you are done that prove your case, that prove that the return on investment is what you say it is.
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Or that reveal for the first time what the return on investment is, if you don't already have that data for this thing.
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So your categories are data, costs, capacity building, whether it's of your team skill set or your total team numbers.
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Or physical plant capacity it's depending on what it is that you do.
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But it's not a success for your organization if you don't prove your case.
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And if the organization doesn't come out of this better off at the end of it than when you went in.
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By any number of measures.
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And you obviously will decide what those are, but these are the major categories that you want to be looking at.
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Because if those aren't built in from the beginning., How would you ever expect them to be your results?
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None of these results will happen automatically.
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They happen because you've designed it into the pilot that you're going to get those results.
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And you will have built a strategy for each one of your desired results.
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Then we take a look at what constitutes success for the decision-maker and their organization.
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And obviously the decision maker is going to have to be involved in that conversation.
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But one of the little secrets of successful pilot projects is that the best way to get really good success measures for the decision-maker, is for you to engage them thoroughly.
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And really lead that conversation.
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At a minimum, of course you would ask them to tell you what their definition of success for the pilot project would be.
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But that's not going to really get you what you need.
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You're really going to have to lead them through the conversation.
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And it's very important.
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Do not have this conversation with the decision maker until you have already decided what all the success milestones and outcomes for the client will look like.
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And you've identified what success looks like for you.
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Then you go to the decision maker.
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And you say, okay, let's talk about what your definition of success would be.
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And success meaning, this would be a set of results that would make you say yes, this service, program, whatever it is, needs to be institutionalized.
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Needs to be made standard practice.
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Needs to be funded longterm.
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Whatever your goal is around this.
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What would you need to see in the way of results for you to say, yes, that means that we should do that.
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And then don't be surprised if when you ask that question, they don't really have an answer.
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So what you then do is take them through a series of questions to elicit from them in detail, what would be the thresholds for them?
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When you've already identified what for you constitutes all the different successes for our client and all the different successes for you and your organization.
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Then you are well positioned to take the decision maker through basically those things, and say, you know, this is what we see as indicators of success.
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Do those resonate for you?
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What would you add?
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What would you change?
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But give them something to react to.
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It's better to do that than to just say, so what would constitute success for you?
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Because you don't know what they'll say.
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And they probably will not have thought it through all that well.
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So your best bet is to lead them through the conversation in that way.
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And if they still can't answer that after you've taken them through that set of questions, then you already have a problem.
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Because if they don't know what ABC and D things are going to have to result from this in order for them to say yes, this will be worth a long-term investment.
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Or a long-term policy change or both.
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Then those longterm uh, funding and changes will never happen.
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Because there is no threshold at which it becomes a yes for the decision maker.
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So that has to be defined upfront.
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And it doesn't have to be super precise necessarily in terms of numbers.
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You need to get them to get clear, if not completely precise.
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So.
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For example in workforce development.
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Usually they're pretty focused on wage outcomes.
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And for good reason.
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That's important.
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But there are a lot of different ways to talk about that.
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It could be a percentage increase in earnings power.
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It could be the securing of a specific credential that leads to specific earning power.
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It could be any number of things.
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But it wouldn't necessarily be something like everybody will make X dollars an hour when this is done or the project hasn't succeeded.
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That's too blunt a measurement instrument.
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That's why you want to get to all the incremental pieces of what success looks like.
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So you've done all that.
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You've defined success for all three major entities involved in this process.
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Right on the heels of that.
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Data.
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Data and more data.
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There are two pieces to this.
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One is figuring out what data you want to have when you're done.
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And the second piece is figuring out how you're going to get that data.
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Because it's not automatic.
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So the first part, what data you want when you're done.
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Is fairly simple, if not easy.
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It's tied directly to all the things you said were measures of success.
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Particularly for the clients.
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And for the decision maker.
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And any of the pieces that are data-relevant that you've included in your own success definition.
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You know the incremental milestones and outcomes that you want for the clients that will constitute success.
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You know what the final outcomes are that will constitute major success.
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You've engaged the decision maker to react to that and your other definitions.
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And they have now shared their either tweaks to what you had already laid out, or their special take on it.
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Or added layers of nuance to it.
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They've given you that nuance in the success conversation.
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And then.
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This by the way could be the same conversation.
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I'm breaking these out to illuminate what it is you need to make sure you get and do in this process in order to have a really resoundingly successful pilot.
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But you might very well have the success conversation and the data conversation with the decision makers all in one go.
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You just do the success part first.
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And then you say, okay, so how will we measure this?
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Basically.
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And then you'll get into.
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Okay, so what kind of data would we need to have?
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What would it need to show?
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What would it need to prove?
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And you get that all listed out.
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And the easiest way to do it is under each success element.
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You can say what data are attached to that.
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And then are there any overarching data that would be important that we want to make sure we have when we're done?
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And obviously what are the data we're going to need in order to be able to calculate return on investment.
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So.
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That's great.
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You get that clear.
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And then the conversation you must have with the decision maker is.
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So how shall we work together to make sure that we get this data when we're done?
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This is critical.
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This is the most common mistake that I see over and over again with pilot projects.
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Is even when the success is fairly well-defined, and the desired data is fairly well-defined.
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The mistake that commonly gets made is that either everybody involved assumes that the Nonprofit will take care of getting all that data.
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Or the decision-maker assumes that, while the Nonprofit is busy assuming that the decision maker's going to help with this data gathering, and analysis by the way.
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Raw data is one thing, but then it's got to be analyzed.
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And so you want to be able to work closely with your partners to make sure that that data answers the questions you both need it to answer in a way that is helpful and compelling for both of you.
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And the only way that's really going to work is if you do that work together.
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Also, it's very common for whoever the partner is to have more resources at their disposal than you do in terms of data collection and analysis.
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So you want the workload to be proportionate.
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And you also want to leverage any special skills or expertise or capacity that they may have on any of those fronts.
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So make zero assumptions.
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Be crystal clear.
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And get it in writing, ultimately.
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When you're first discussing it, you're just identifying what you both want in this process.
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What data you're going to need.
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For them, it's what data is going to show the ROI that we need and the impactful outcomes that we need.
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At a threshold that will make us say yes, this is worth the longterm investment and/or policy changes to institutionalize this service or program.
00:20:13.433 --> 00:20:18.844
So you define it first, and then you have the conversation about how do we make this data actually happen?
00:20:19.233 --> 00:20:20.943
What's that going to look like?
00:20:21.213 --> 00:20:25.471
Who is going to be responsible for which pieces of data collection?
00:20:25.951 --> 00:20:30.181
How will we share data with one another on an ongoing basis?
00:20:30.260 --> 00:20:33.020
And how will we work together to analyze that data?
00:20:33.513 --> 00:20:44.941
So that when we are done, we have clarity about whether or not we have met our success thresholds, and whether or not we have met the threshold for, yes, this is a worthwhile investment long-term.
00:20:45.840 --> 00:20:54.421
And you don't quit until you've gotten the decision makers and/or their team to make well-defined commitments to do their part.
00:20:54.901 --> 00:20:57.931
Because some of this will be the decision maker says yes, yes.
00:20:57.931 --> 00:20:59.911
My team will work with you on that.
00:21:00.586 --> 00:21:01.816
Well, okay, great.
00:21:01.816 --> 00:21:02.625
In theory.
00:21:03.316 --> 00:21:07.521
But there's often a big gap between what the decision maker said their team would do.
00:21:07.521 --> 00:21:12.375
And then what memo the team does or doesn't get about what they really have to do here.
00:21:12.855 --> 00:21:17.569
So ultimately you're going to want those details spelled out in writing.
00:21:18.049 --> 00:21:25.430
In a letter of agreement, in a memo of understanding, in a contract, whatever format you're going to be working with.
00:21:25.970 --> 00:21:35.759
But there should be a formal agreement between you and the decision-maker entity about exactly what this is going to do, and how you're defining success.
00:21:35.759 --> 00:21:41.605
And what you're measuring and how those measures are going to be achieved, shared and analyzed.
00:21:42.115 --> 00:21:44.393
And those roles should be spelled out in detail.
00:21:45.242 --> 00:21:47.900
Now you work that all out first.
00:21:48.311 --> 00:21:48.821
You're smart.
00:21:48.852 --> 00:21:57.251
You know, that you don't just come in with your list of demands, but you also don't come in assuming that you're going to have to carry the entire workload because you can't.
00:21:57.894 --> 00:22:02.098
There are things that only the decision maker and their organization can do.
00:22:02.525 --> 00:22:05.595
Particularly in the healthcare space.
00:22:05.944 --> 00:22:19.078
Where there are HIPAA issues and all sorts of data controls that are very thorny to deal with and require a lot of planning and negotiation and cooperation to make sure that that actually happens..
00:22:19.929 --> 00:22:21.519
Ultimately, you're going to get that all in writing.
00:22:22.201 --> 00:22:27.214
Which leads us to the third piece, which is partner engagement and cooperation.
00:22:27.934 --> 00:22:31.057
So obviously, data is a huge piece of that.
00:22:31.757 --> 00:22:40.304
The other reality here is that of course you have a primary partner in this pilot, which is the decision maker and their organization.
00:22:40.747 --> 00:22:46.470
Whether it's an agency or a business, or a set of elected officials, whoever it is.
00:22:47.116 --> 00:22:55.369
They're committing their organization and their teams, their resources to working with you to make this thing happen.
00:22:55.896 --> 00:22:58.336
Based on whatever you've agreed to together.
00:22:58.787 --> 00:23:01.186
But there may be additional partners involved.
00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:03.730
There may be referral partners.
00:23:04.470 --> 00:23:11.069
If you don't have a direct line to the clients who are going to be coming into this pilot to be served.
00:23:11.640 --> 00:23:13.740
Then how are they going to get there?
00:23:13.950 --> 00:23:16.109
Is somebody going to have to refer them in?
00:23:16.544 --> 00:23:21.763
What is the responsibility of the referral partners and what do they have to do in this process?
00:23:22.003 --> 00:23:25.874
Will they have data collection and reporting obligations?
00:23:26.346 --> 00:23:32.616
If they're doing a piece of the process that's going to generate data, you need a way to be able to collect that.
00:23:33.537 --> 00:23:37.130
That's going to require your engaging those partners as well.
00:23:37.160 --> 00:23:43.170
And sitting down with them and having those same conversations with them about what will success look like for you?
00:23:43.789 --> 00:23:53.960
They have to be invested in the success of this pilot, or they will not play at the level you need them to, in order to yield the results that you want.
00:23:54.440 --> 00:23:58.250
So every single partner who may be involved, whoever they are.
00:23:58.250 --> 00:24:02.160
Maybe it's other nonprofits, maybe it's another arm of an agency.
00:24:02.430 --> 00:24:05.430
Maybe it's independent entities, whoever it is.
00:24:06.029 --> 00:24:10.259
Anybody who's going to be involved in the system here who are going to have a role.
00:24:10.799 --> 00:24:16.727
You need to engage them and take them through the same process of defining success.
00:24:16.757 --> 00:24:18.946
Identifying data that's going to be collected.
00:24:19.396 --> 00:24:24.767
Getting their agreement to actually do that, getting their commitment to get their teams to do that.
00:24:25.126 --> 00:24:30.463
Cause again, what the decision maker commits to and what the team actually executes on can be very different things.
00:24:31.344 --> 00:24:39.626
And then you need clear, agreed upon lines of communication for how you're going to communicate through out the pilot.
00:24:40.047 --> 00:24:49.693
So that the first moment that anything pops up that was unforeseen, or that becomes an issue or a problem from either direction.
00:24:50.176 --> 00:24:53.836
You know, maybe your referral partner is having a problem they didn't expect to have.
00:24:54.136 --> 00:24:56.146
They need a way to let you know about that.
00:24:56.686 --> 00:25:03.477
Similarly, if you're experiencing that one of the referral partners is not seeming to produce any referrals.
00:25:03.626 --> 00:25:04.797
Something's wrong there.
00:25:04.946 --> 00:25:09.777
You need have agreed upon ahead of time, who it is you call when that happens.
00:25:10.259 --> 00:25:19.029
Who is going to promise to answer the email or pick up the phone when you reach out, and work with you to untangle whatever it is and get it working right.
00:25:19.636 --> 00:25:23.284
But all of that needs to be laid out and agreed on.
00:25:23.769 --> 00:25:25.839
And you can't assume anything.
00:25:26.596 --> 00:25:28.876
I know this sounds like a lot of work and it is.
00:25:28.876 --> 00:25:38.557
But if you don't do this work upfront, then when you need to call somebody, when you need to engage a partner and you say, Hey, this isn't working the way we said.
00:25:39.304 --> 00:25:42.993
As soon as you're trying to raise a problem, suddenly nobody's in charge.
00:25:43.683 --> 00:25:46.473
So you want to know ahead of time, who is it that you call.
00:25:46.473 --> 00:25:48.903
And they need to know who to call in your shop.
00:25:49.359 --> 00:25:53.079
And you have to have that super clearly lined out in your own organization, too.
00:25:53.410 --> 00:25:56.890
That communication obligation definitely goes both ways.
00:25:57.906 --> 00:26:07.017
It should go without saying, but so much of the success of any project, and pilot projects are included in this, is the relationship building work that you do.
00:26:07.727 --> 00:26:17.743
Better, stronger, deeper relationships you build with all of the key players, with all of the partners in this process, the better things are going to go.
00:26:18.614 --> 00:26:28.499
And, communication is always vital, but communication goes so much better and more smoothly when you have a good solid relationship there to begin with.
00:26:28.898 --> 00:26:32.749
When you have a relationship, people are quicker to respond to you.
00:26:33.169 --> 00:26:36.588
And they're likely to respond to you in a more favorable way.
00:26:36.628 --> 00:26:42.108
They're more likely to want to extend themselves a little bit to do the thing that you're asking them to do.
00:26:42.674 --> 00:26:49.071
It's critical in every aspect of advocacy work and pilot projects are by extension, another form of advocacy work.
00:26:49.092 --> 00:26:51.672
They are certainly about strategic relationship building.
00:26:52.214 --> 00:27:01.538
So always build that into your project planning and your work process for the lead up to the pilot and the duration of the pilot.
00:27:02.525 --> 00:27:06.028
And the last thing is you gotta cover your costs.
00:27:06.598 --> 00:27:08.659
This can be tricky for a couple of reasons.
00:27:09.095 --> 00:27:20.099
One, if you don't know going in what your full cost to deliver the service is, you need to do that before you do anything else.
00:27:20.824 --> 00:27:21.493
And here's why.
00:27:22.064 --> 00:27:34.497
The whole point of a pilot project is to ultimately set up a scenario in which the resources available to support those services are expanded substantially.
00:27:35.223 --> 00:27:45.047
And so, presumably that means that your organization is going to be at least one of the organizations providing those expanded services.
00:27:45.713 --> 00:27:48.539
So, functionally, it's a growth model for you, right?
00:27:49.029 --> 00:27:59.693
Part of the reason you put all the work into building a successful pilot setup is that you expect to get a big return for your organization and your clients long term.
00:28:00.294 --> 00:28:08.279
And for the organization, that return is greater reach, greater impact, ability to serve more people, and more money coming in the door.
00:28:08.826 --> 00:28:19.480
But if you set up in the pilot, a situation where you are providing services for less s than your actual cost, you are setting a very dangerous precedent.
00:28:20.096 --> 00:28:27.559
First of all, you are training the decision maker partner here to expect to be able to get your stuff at a discount.
00:28:28.119 --> 00:28:31.640
Now, they may not even realize they're getting it at a discount.
00:28:32.059 --> 00:28:34.854
Maybe you don't realize they're getting it at a discount.
00:28:35.144 --> 00:28:42.094
So first and foremost, you must know your actual true cost, your full cost of providing a service.
00:28:42.473 --> 00:28:44.124
That means everything.
00:28:44.644 --> 00:28:56.670
That's all of the goods and materials that may be involved, it's all of the staff time that may be involved, it's the admin, it's the rent, it's the so called overhead and indirect, and all of those things.
00:28:56.910 --> 00:28:58.200
Those are part of your costs.
00:28:59.084 --> 00:29:20.019
And if you don't currently have a model for breaking out all those costs into a full cost of service, that is something you're going to want to do sooner than later, because if you're planning to grow this line of business, this line of service, you don't want to grow something that is money losing.
00:29:20.384 --> 00:29:26.914
if you set it up that way, then the danger is you're going to continue losing money just at a faster pace on a bigger scale.
00:29:27.724 --> 00:29:35.557
So there's a lot to be said, and it's really a whole other episode about how to do full cost calculations.
00:29:36.005 --> 00:29:38.723
And there are some good resources out there for that.
00:29:39.203 --> 00:29:41.364
But the short version is it's very important.
00:29:41.740 --> 00:29:47.094
It's particularly important with a pilot where your long term goal is to grow this thing and expand it.
00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:53.920
The other danger here is if you're getting paid below cost, you're compromising the ROI calculation.
00:29:54.467 --> 00:30:02.646
The decision-maker is participating in this pilot because they're looking to see, is this going to be a good investment, long-term, at scale.
00:30:03.230 --> 00:30:10.109
If you're not giving them the full cost from the beginning, then they can't really make an informed decision about the ROI.
00:30:10.489 --> 00:30:15.828
Because in the pilot, they're investing at a lower rate than it actually will cost them long term.
00:30:16.439 --> 00:30:22.499
So you want to, from the very beginning, be very clear about what the full cost of providing the service is.
00:30:23.628 --> 00:30:28.541
It's possible, even probable, that a decision maker might balk at that cost.
00:30:29.346 --> 00:30:32.856
Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but you should be ready for the possibility.
00:30:33.376 --> 00:30:38.467
But what you don't want to do is negotiate with yourself ahead of time out of fear that they won't like the price.
00:30:39.467 --> 00:30:46.300
If you say to yourself, oh gosh, we just calculated our full cost and that's too high, as defined by what?
00:30:46.540 --> 00:30:47.121
I don't know.
00:30:47.201 --> 00:30:50.951
But you tell yourself that's too high, so ooh, we can't give them that price.
00:30:50.951 --> 00:30:52.760
We better give them something lower than that.
00:30:53.317 --> 00:30:54.946
Where is that other money coming from?
00:30:55.538 --> 00:31:10.435
You don't want to create an expansion model in which you are operating functionally at a loss and are in the position of then having to raise additional dollars, for the purpose of subsidizing a service that should be paid for at its full value.
00:31:11.701 --> 00:31:20.547
So, part of what you're engaging those decision makers about from the very beginning is helping them understand the full cost and why the cost is what it is.
00:31:21.044 --> 00:31:23.663
And why it's still going to be a great investment.
00:31:24.171 --> 00:31:33.861
Almost always, any high quality service that really makes a big impact and change in clients lives, produces an outsized return on investment.
00:31:33.891 --> 00:31:35.540
It more than pays for itself.
00:31:36.124 --> 00:31:40.988
So the question is basically, how do you articulate that?
00:31:41.511 --> 00:31:46.067
How do you message around that so that the decision maker understands that?
00:31:46.593 --> 00:31:50.567
And if you want some help in dialing in that messaging, check out episode nine.
00:31:50.866 --> 00:31:55.487
Where we shared how to get decision makers to pay top dollar for your services.
00:31:56.176 --> 00:31:59.116
And that goes into a lot of messaging around this very question.
00:31:59.987 --> 00:32:01.707
So those are the four ingredients.
00:32:02.237 --> 00:32:14.019
The four most important things to make sure you do before you start your pilot project is define success for your clients, for you and for the decision makers organization.
00:32:14.762 --> 00:32:22.423
Get super clear about exactly what data you're going to need in order to demonstrate that that success actually happened.
00:32:22.826 --> 00:32:27.240
And to build the case for expanding the service or program beyond that.
00:32:28.109 --> 00:32:34.220
Make sure that you have a clear and agreed upon plan with your decision maker partners and other partners.
00:32:34.525 --> 00:32:38.942
about how that data are going to be collected, shared, and analyzed.
00:32:40.152 --> 00:32:54.567
Make sure that you have a plan for engaging the full cooperation of all of the partners for all of the things that they are responsible for or have a shared responsibility for in terms of getting to the ultimate success points.
00:32:55.667 --> 00:33:02.113
And lastly, Be 100 percent clear about what your true full cost is to provide these services.
00:33:02.613 --> 00:33:07.339
And make sure that you negotiate with the decision makers.
00:33:07.522 --> 00:33:15.432
to ensure that your organization will be compensated at full cost for the provision of the services during the pilot.
00:33:15.633 --> 00:33:19.153
And that there is an understanding that that will be the cost going forward.
00:33:20.299 --> 00:33:22.710
Build relationships all over the place.
00:33:23.146 --> 00:33:25.436
And the stronger and deeper the better.
00:33:25.883 --> 00:33:31.893
Communication is critical and communication goes vastly better when you have strong relationships in place.
00:33:33.002 --> 00:33:37.059
When you've got all that together, the other thing is get it in writing.
00:33:37.490 --> 00:33:48.200
Make sure there is a contract or a MOU or letter of agreement or whatever you're going to have with each of the partners who share some responsibility in the success of this project.
00:33:48.640 --> 00:34:01.002
Make sure that there are written agreements about who's responsible for what, what the lines of communication will be, and particularly what the process for solving problems jointly will look like.
00:34:01.913 --> 00:34:06.063
And then with that in place you are ready to proceed with your pilot project.
00:34:06.682 --> 00:34:21.027
And if you have all that in place and you stay on top of it, because the communication, the data collection, the data sharing, the checking in when there are little hiccups or problems, questions, things people need.
00:34:21.494 --> 00:34:26.724
Making sure that all of that runs smoothly will be largely on you.
00:34:27.125 --> 00:34:30.885
So you need to have an internal plan for how you're going to staff that.
00:34:31.351 --> 00:34:32.711
Who's going to be responsible?
00:34:33.195 --> 00:34:35.025
It will probably be more than one person.
00:34:35.677 --> 00:34:50.467
You'll probably have a point person and then you'll have other people who are responsible for different pieces, but you want to have that clearly laid out in your own organization so that your team understands what each of their roles are in the context of helping this pilot project to succeed.
00:34:51.239 --> 00:34:58.079
When you do that, you are in position to have a wildly successful pilot project that does what you wanted it to do.
00:34:58.300 --> 00:35:15.824
Which is end the project with clear proof to all the parties involved, but especially the decision makers, that the return on investment for this is so rock solid, that expansion of it, making it standard practice, adopting it into policy.
00:35:16.242 --> 00:35:19.101
Any or all of the above, whatever your goals were from the beginning.
00:35:19.362 --> 00:35:21.842
That doing that is an absolute no brainer.
00:35:21.871 --> 00:35:25.362
And the sooner we do it, the better, because everybody's going to be better off.
00:35:25.612 --> 00:35:30.382
The clients are going to be better off, and the decision makers organization is going to be better off.
00:35:30.452 --> 00:35:37.922
And by extension, so will your organization, because you'll be expanding your impact, and you'll be increasing your sustainable funding.
00:35:38.577 --> 00:35:41.467
And that, no pun intended, is the bottom line.
00:35:42.248 --> 00:35:47.197
Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
