Here's how you can create a project plan as a project manager in a non-profit organization.

Your first step is to clearly define the project's goals. In a non-profit context, goals should align with the organization's mission and specific outcomes you aim to achieve. Discuss with stakeholders what success looks like and ensure these goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This clarity will guide your planning process and help you communicate the project's purpose to your team and supporters, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working towards a common objective.

Strategy is a strong concept and can have varied interpretations but I tend to develop this in context of the project or mission in question. For a non profit organisation definition of scope definition goes hand in hand with resource prediction and availability. Given that a ring fenced scope has reasonable chance of success this is where discussion and workshops to tease this out is valid use of the limited resources available. Ask the obvious: does scope address the client ask as a minimum and secondly schedule out good to haves against core deliverables. Additionally it’s standard practice to allocate risk profile to each deliverable and in most cases sub categorise risks into strategic such as legal or corporate and reputational.

Key to allocating tasks is in creating a bespoke tasks list that should be treated as a live starter for ten and hence flexible. Secondly allocating people resource to tasks again need not be rigid or based on ‘previous’ projects rather be on current resource availability and in fact should address part time resource etc. Additionally a tracker tool would help transparency and volunteering for tasks making it more collaborative approach and spread the ‘load’. Above all regular review of tasks and ticking off task is advisable to feature in team diary.

In a non-profit organization, a project plan should ideally be based on a Theory of Change or results model. Hence, simple put, it starts from the point of the impact and outcomes you want to achieve and works itself back to what is needed to get to them. To connect the needed input and activities to outcomes, you will likely build on assumptions and results hypothesis, since you can only forecast or aim to predict what you plan to happen. Therefore, it is important to monitor, evaluate and reflect what you planned to do, what actually happened and why. Build a clear results framework and indicators for what you aim to achieve involving key stakeholders. Build in formal and informal evaluation methods, such as surveys and learning sessions.

One way I have found helpful to facilitate monitoring of a project’s progress in a nonprofit organization is by having a logical framework along with a theory of change. This combination helps to assess progress, understand impact pathways, and adjust strategies as needed based on new data and insights. By using both tools, the project team can understand not only whether the project is on track, but also why or why not.

Evaluation of a project’s output is often ‘follows standard format’ based on textbook approach. However one needs to formulate the evaluation matrix tailored to the project whilst containing the core evaluation criteria. Also a visual yet numerical achievements graphic is more appropriate to enable sponsors and funders to gauge progress such as % of tasks completed, resource usage and time spent against planned time. At all times a regular validation of data is a must carry out activity to avoid subjective evaluation of progress.