Steering a nonprofit toward organizational change takes thoughtfulness and foresight. Often, it also requires some help from the outside to understand and address the real issues driving the need for change, and the external environment in which the organization is working.

It's crucial to think through why exactly you're making a change, how it fits in with your strategic plan and mission, and what the short- and long-term impacts are, both operationally and financially.

When undertaking organizational development in a nonprofit setting, there are many stakeholders to consider – constituents, board members, staff, and other potential stakeholders. Any organizational change has a ripple effect that winds up affecting every part of the organization. It's important to be not only very strategic about where and how exactly you make changes, but cognizant of the many ways they can have an impact on your staff, budget, and constituents.

The payback can be enormous: By bringing change to a nonprofit organization, a leader can ensure that it keeps up with the many things that can affect the organization's work, whether that's demographic changes among the target population, shifting priorities with funders, or changes in the nonprofit's sector, constituent needs or other trends. Change can also attract new supporters to an organization.

This is increasingly important in today's economic times because funding for nonprofits has shifted dramatically. The government has fewer grant programs for nonprofits and less money to distribute, and economic and societal changes have altered how many funders are prioritizing their programs.

Keeping all of this in mind, and following a series of Best Practices, is very important to the success of bringing organizational change to a nonprofit entity.