So welcome back to part four, implementing a SWOT analysis, both on a  personal level, if you can kind of translate what we're talking about from a  nonprofit or a profit making venture into a personal level, one of the last  elements here is the whole issue of threats that are out there waiting to kind of  bite you at the very worst possible time. And one of the things I talk about with  one of my favorite people quite often, is this whole issue of spiritual warfare. And spiritual warfare kind of gets into this through the presence of different threats  that maybe you haven't been paying attention to, but you can be assured that  there's a high level of consciousness about threats to your altruistic mission or  nonprofit venture here. So we're going to talk about threats as part of the SWOT analysis. Again, the threats obviously stand for the T the strength, weakness,  opportunity and threats. So we're going to talk about implementing SWOT  analysis. We're going to talk about identifying threats in part four. So here's how  we're going to go through the process of identifying your company or your  nonprofits threats. And again, this is kind of a process that is almost identical to  the other three factors that we've already talked about. A threat to your  company, a threat to your nonprofit, is really an external factor. Sometimes it  could be internal. In other words, well, we can cover this in the kind of the  Human Resources part of it. But if you've got somebody in your organization,  you've got a little bit larger nonprofit that maybe you were brought in to run or to  control or whatever, and you have somebody that is internal, that is creating a  toxic environment, that would be an exception here, but generally, by and large,  a threat to your nonprofit is largely an external factor, something that you don't  necessarily have a lot of control over, but it could have a hugely negative impact on your particular venture. So why are we really going to spend time today  defining your company's threats. And you might be thinking, you know, if threats  are really outside of my control, why should I even spend any time identifying  them? And the answer is pretty simple. By knowing your threats, you might be  able to find a strategy to work around them, to minimize them, or at the very  least, you can come up with some sort of a plan, a what if type scenario, to  handle them in a way that doesn't shut down your nonprofit identifying threats is  all about being prepared and taking proactive steps to minimize the hurts.  Defining threats. Coming up with a list of threats can be difficult, but maybe in  some cases, it might even be somewhat obvious, these issues don't always  spring to mind. They don't always just pop up high level of awareness as easily  as some of your strengths do, but there are certain categories that most external threats fall into, and you can use a lot of these categories to brainstorm possible threats to your business economic trends, obviously, is one. Take a look at the  economic conditions that impact your nonprofit. If money starts getting tight,  well, the first thing that's going to happen is that donations are going to dry up. I  mean, it's kind of like a standard, sort of like gravity. If you drop something, that's going to go straight down towards the floor. If money gets tight, the economy 

starts to struggle a little bit. The first thing that happens is donations dry up.  Market trends, what sort of market trends are taking place in your area? Stuff is  happening in your area, and for whatever reason, the community is less friendly, less accepting of people who are living in poverty or homeless or whatever, or  people who maybe have some sort of a mental disability that they don't want  group homes in their neighborhood, they could pose a very real threat towards  getting legislation or some sort of political ordinances or local laws in place to  change The ability for you to deliver your services within a certain neighborhood, within a certain area. So you need to be aware about those kinds of trends  funding changes. I mentioned a bit ago that as the economy goes downhill,  donations go downhill equally as fast or even quicker, and those shifting  revenue streams are not necessarily within your control. What is within your  control is your response to that? What happens when your donations drop by  30% in the fourth quarter of 2017 How are you going to respond to that? Do you  have enough money set aside for a rainy day situation, or do you have to start  cutting your expenses by 30% or whatever percent to survive all issues that you  need to think about political support. If political support is shifting, you need to  know what sort of impact that's going to have on you. And I talked a moment  ago about local townships or villages or cities enacting zoning laws or changes  to zoning laws, or ordinances of some sort about where people can meet, where people you know, you might have be allowed to have a group home, where you  would be able to have the ability to feed the homeless, And the fact that it's  attracting these people into that particular neighborhood that may not be  received very well. So you need to be aware of the threats that this can pose to  the services that you want to offer in a particular area. Government regulations  kind of in the same ballpark think of any of the regulations. That are changing  that might hurt your hurt your business. And again, in food service, for example,  they may have some sort of a outbreak of food borne illness of some sort, and  they may come back and say, well, we need you to provide additional  refrigeration capabilities at your facility. You know, those kinds of things that you  need to be thinking about. What happens if things like that were to get enacted  and all of a sudden you got a large expenditure that you need to cover that you  hadn't budgeted for. So be aware of government regulations and how that could  affect your nonprofit agency. Another threat is changing relationships. What  happens if you have another church or another community organization, for  example, that has been kind of supporting you, and because they haven't had  their own bandwidth to be able to deliver services to the extent or to the  capability that you are but all of a sudden, it's changing. Somebody comes along to that organization and they write them a big check to say, you know, we think  you're best suited to help solve these problems directly, instead of teaming up  with you or with your ministry. So be aware of working with people or third  parties or another organization, and the shifting priorities, the shifting mission 

statements that they may have. Target Audience shifts. Again, people are going  to be moving into your community. They're going to be moving out of their  community. At the very least, your community is getting older. I mean, we all do.  I mean, happens to the best of us, aging, health related problems. If you're  feeding these people, you had again, I kind of keep picking on this particular  topic of feeding, having a food program, a meal program of some sort, and  people are coming to your facility, your church kitchen, or whatever. And you  know, it's year after year just scanning dwindling downhill. Well, maybe these  people have gotten to a point where, because of their age, because of their  health problems, it's harder for them to get out. So maybe you need to think  about delivering meals instead of just setting a meal out on a table, things like  that. You need to just be aware of how these macro level issues are affecting the ministry application that you're working with here, questions that you need to  ask, to find out, to flush out some of these threats. First of all, these come from  many different directions. As you saw, there's economic issues. There's issues  with the target market. There's just all sorts of things going on. So here's some  of the questions that you need to think about in order to identify all the different  possible threats. And some of these categories really should get your wheels  turning by thinking through each of these categories, it may trigger outside  threats that all of a sudden, yeah, you know what? I heard something about that, and we should maybe think about that a little bit more. Going forward to plan for  that, we've also kind of created a list of questions here that coincide with a  number of the categories that we were just talking about, that are going to help  you think critically about a lot of the threats that really could be lurking out there  that could really come back to bite you. So as I'm assuming that you're kind of  the head CEO, the head director, or whatever you want to call yourself, you  really need to be in tune with this stuff on the SWOT analysis each year, every  year, you need to be updating the SWAT analysis and looking for these threats.  And you need to be aware of how you're going to diffuse these threats.  Economic Trends. Is the economy in your area and a recession? Is it growing?  Is it healthy? What is it how? What is the economy in your area? Is the economy negatively impacting your customers ability to seek services from not  necessarily purchase, but to seek services from you? You know different  examples I can think of is if they don't have a car, if they don't have if they have  to rely on public transportation to get to you, to get a meal, or public  transportation to reach you at your shelter, for over for an overnight stay, kind of  a thing. These are things that you need to think about. How does, how does the  economy going to impact their ability to connect with you, or do you need to go  out and connect with them? Economic shifts? Are they happening in a way that  how are they have I guess I really should ask, how are they happening? How  are they taking place that impacts your target audience? You need to know that  how that's taking place, market trends. How is your market changing? What new

trends out there could hurt your hurt your nonprofit? Are there more? Is there  more competition in your market that's pushing you out? And I'm thinking  specifically of maybe competitive and again, picking on food programs or  homeless shelter programs. Maybe there's people out there from other church  organizations or other community organizations that might be getting more  funding to be able to expand their particular offering to that target market that  you were chasing at some point. So you need to know if there's more  competition in your particular neighborhood or your particular town or your  village or your particular region that's pushing you out and making you kind of  irrelevant. Be careful of that. Funding changes. Do you expect a decrease in  grant funding or donations this year? How are you going to handle it? Are you  going to aggressively go out look for more funding, or do you have to cut back?  How are funding changes going to hurt your your nonprofit agency political  support? You know, if we're doing elections locally every couple of years in the  US, if there's a change in leadership in your particular country. Do you anticipate a shift in political support this year that would enable your nonprofit to exist, not  just survive and do well, but even to exist? Is there a reason for you to be  concerned over these political shifts. What is their agenda? What is their  motivation? Are they shifting? Is the leadership in your area shifting from being  largely Christian based over time to more of a Muslim focus? What? What does  your business stand to lose because of these political changes? What happens  when that takes place? Do you adapt to embrace this new community that's  coming in that political support, or are you going to pull back and say, we're  going to build walls and we're going to be here for the long term? You know,  whatever? You got to have a very intentional strategy for dealing with this  government regulations again, you know, the new regulations are coming out all  the time. Are they going to cost you more money? Are they going to hurt  production of how much food you can make, how you're even able to make  food, whatever and you need to identify any of these changes or potential  changes over the next year and understand what sort of damage that these  regulations, these new initiatives, could have on you and and the services that  your nonprofit is delivering changing relationships. What outside business  relationships? Partnership Relationships are changing if you have a partnership  with a similar nonprofit, one where they complement what you're doing, how is  that changing? Are they better funded? Are they better delivering better  services, a better level of services into the area? Is there any turmoil within  those particular nonprofits? I mean, do they have non they have toxic people  working for them? What's going on? You need to be tuned into that you need to  just sort of have your antenna up. What's going on with those relationships.  Target Audience shifts again, being tuned in to how the demographics of your  target market are changing. Are they obviously getting older? Are there newer  people that are moving into your neighborhood. Do they have different needs. 

You know, communities that were built 60 years ago. When they were built, it  was the 20 year olds and the 30 year olds that bought these homes. Well, now  they're 80 years old. Or 90 years old, and or they're getting older, and you're  providing services to the more elderly community. And as they pass away, as  they move away to assisted living or to a nursing home, and you get younger  people moving in, there's dramatic shifts in the types of services that might be  needed, maybe you find the fact that you're offering services to the elderly  community all of a sudden there isn't a big need for it anymore. In the next five  years. You need to be aware of that. So especially if your audience is changing  in a way that you can't accommodate as part of your mission statement, do the  market research. You need to, again, as kind of the point person, as the director, as the CEO of your nonprofit organization, do the market research. Understand  all of this. You need to just step back like I always tell you, know, consulting  clients that I work with, you need to be able to look at this from the 40,000 foot  level. What's the big picture of what's going on with you and with your business  and your nonprofit, what's going on with the community? How does that affect  everything. So somebody here in your successful nonprofit needs to have that  vision and then be able to articulate how that's going to affect what you're doing  going forward. And that's especially true with identifying and isolating threats or  potential threats to how you deliver your products and your services. The  second thing you want to do here is list every possible threat you can think of. If  you think it's a threat, list it even if that threat has consequences that aren't  going to be felt immediately in the next six months or the next 12 months, if you  think it could be a threat or possible threat at some point down the road, it's  really a good idea, as the point person is the CEO or the Managing Director, to  have that trend on your radar going forward and just kind of be tuned into it.  Threats exist. It's a fact of life. Don't panic. Listing threats cause a lot of anxiety,  but remember that every business, every nonprofit, every organization that  exists on the planet has threats to its existence. It's always better to know about  threats than it is to just turn a blind eye and hope for the best. That's not a  strategy that's not good. Plus, we're going to give you some strategies in our  next couple of modules about the SWOT analysis to help you give you tools to  help you minimize these threats. So once you've listed those threats, your whole entire SWOT template really now should be filled in, and you're almost done. 



Last modified: Monday, March 24, 2025, 2:56 PM