Nonprofit SWOT Analysis: How to Run One That Leads to Decisions

A sample row, from a fictional food pantry. Weakness: 70% of revenue comes from two grants, both up for renewal in 2027. Decision: the board approves a 12-month individual-giving pilot, and the executive director skips the fall gala for a year to staff it.

The steps below get you from the first line to the second.

Where Does a SWOT Fit in Strategic Planning?

A SWOT is the situational analysis step of a strategic plan: an organizational assessment done after you confirm the mission and before you set goals. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors the organization can change. Opportunities and threats are external forces it can only prepare for or respond to.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. BoardSource describes it as a tool that “helps boards and staff understand the internal and external environment before setting priorities and direction.” In nonprofit strategic planning, the grid is raw material. The decisions you make from it are your nonprofit’s strategy. If the mission itself needs work first, these nonprofit mission statement examples show how other organizations word theirs.

For borderline items, ask: could we change this ourselves within a year? A thin donor list is a weakness. A state budget cut is a threat.

When Should You Run One, and When Not?

Run a SWOT before a new strategic plan, a change of executive director, merger talks or a big shift in funding: moments when you have to choose a direction. Skip it when the question is what your community needs or whether your programs work. A needs assessment or a program evaluation answers those.

A SWOT gathers what the people in the room know. It cannot tell you what the people you serve need. A needs assessment survey, as the Community Tool Box describes it, asks community members what they see as the most important needs.

“Strong programs” belongs in the strengths only with outcome data behind it, and collecting that data is program evaluation. If you are unsure why a program should work at all, start with a theory of change.

Who Should Be in the Room?

Invite six to twelve people: the executive director, senior staff, two or three board members and at least one person who works directly in a program. Collect input from the people you serve, donors and volunteers through a short survey beforehand. Then pick a facilitator who is not the executive director.

The Community Tool Box advises a facilitator “who has good listening and group process skills,” and breakout groups of three to ten. An executive director who runs the session cannot also argue for their own items without steering the room.

A board member with meeting skills, an executive director from a peer nonprofit, or an outside facilitator or consultant can run it. The executive director still leads the decision step that follows and brings the result to the board.

How Do You Run a Nonprofit SWOT Analysis?

Run a nonprofit SWOT analysis in five steps: send questions and a data pack a week ahead, collect anonymous answers, spend 15 to 20 minutes on each quadrant with evidence for every item, vote each quadrant down to five items, and spend the last hour on decisions.

1. A week before: send four questions, one per quadrant, and a data pack: two years of program numbers and revenue by source, peer Form 990s from ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and county figures from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
2. Anonymous answers: staff and board members send items in writing beforehand, so weaknesses get named.
3. Quadrant by quadrant: 15 to 20 minutes each, about 80 minutes in all. Every item needs a source: a number from your records, a document, or the person who said it.
4. Cut to five: each person gets three dots per quadrant, and the top five items stay. The Community Tool Box suggests refining a list to “the best 10 or fewer points.” A cap of five per quadrant keeps the decision step to an hour.
5. The decision hour: cross the quadrants and leave with two to four decisions.

What Goes in Each Quadrant? A Sample SWOT

Strengths and weaknesses cover your people, money, programs and systems. Opportunities and threats cover funders, policy, demographics and partners. The sample below is a fictional food pantry with an operating budget of about $240,000, two staff and 60 regular volunteers. Each item names its source.

The first strength and the last weakness are two sides of one fact: long-serving volunteers carry the pantry, and 12 of them plan to step back. When one fact lands in two boxes, that is usually where a decision is waiting. Here: train a second group of weekday volunteers, and test the senior housing complex as a source.

How Do You Turn a SWOT Into Decisions?

Cross the quadrants. Pair each strength and weakness with the opportunities and threats it touches, and each pairing points to one of four moves: do, fix, protect, or stop and watch. Choose two to four, give each an owner and a date, and the SWOT becomes the first draft of the plan’s priorities.

Strategy textbooks call this a TOWS matrix: a grid that pairs each internal factor with an external one to produce strategy options. The Community Tool Box shows one adapted from Fred David’s textbook Strategic Management. The four labels below are our own shorthand for its pairings:

• Do (a strength meets an opportunity): the weekly produce gives referred patients fresh food, so pilot the hospital partnership with 20 referrals a month.
• Fix (a weakness blocks an opportunity): similar pantries raise most of their money from individuals, and no one here owns donors. Start a 12-month individual-giving pilot with one staff member spending five hours a week on donors.
• Protect (a strength under threat): households served keep rising while food bank deliveries drop to every other week, so ask the board chair’s store to cover the off weeks.
• Stop or watch (a weakness meets a threat): if the job-training funder drops the pantry, a gala that nets $9,000 for 300 hours will not fill the gap. Skip the gala for one year, give its 300 hours to the giving pilot, and bring the gala back if the pilot raises less than $9,000. Watch the funder’s renewal.

The four moves are a menu. Keep the ones you have the people and money to start this year, each with someone willing to own it. The pantry’s group picks three: the giving pilot, a year without the gala and the volunteer training. The referral pilot goes to the six-month review, because no one can own it yet. In this example, each leaves the room with one name and one date, and the board approves all three at its next meeting. They become the first goals in a strategic plan template, and the giving pilot also belongs in a business plan for that revenue line.

The stop item is the decision that pays for the others.

Plans stall when no one owns the next step. In CNPC’s own intake records, strategic planning is the coaching need named in 30 of 152 applications, and applicants want to carry out plans rather than shelve them.

The hard part is the conversation, especially the stop item, because every event has people who love it. If your SWOTs keep ending without a decision, a volunteer executive coach can help you prepare to lead that conversation. The coach does not fill in your SWOT or run the session.

What Mistakes Make a SWOT Useless?

The common SWOT mistakes are items with no evidence, wishes listed as opportunities, a grid built to defend a decision already made, a board left out of the strengths and weaknesses, and no stop-doing item. Each one keeps the session from ending in a decision.

Wishes as opportunities. “A major donor discovers us” is a hope. An opportunity names something already happening outside your walls.

Starting from the answer. The Community Tool Box warns that a SWOT can be used “to justify a course that has already been decided upon.” CNPC sees a version of this at intake: a board decides it needs a consultant, or that the executive director needs training, before anyone has named the problem.

A SWOT run to defend a decision already made is a permission slip.

Leaving out the board. Board attendance, giving and committee work belong in the strengths or weaknesses too.

No stop item. A plan that adds four things and stops none has only added work.

Quick win: this week, ask your board chair and two staff members one question. What is one thing outside our walls that could cut our revenue by a fifth in two years? Their answers start your threats quadrant.

To prepare for the decision conversation with a coach, six sessions of executive coaching cost $300 to $600 depending on operating expenses, because volunteer coaches donate their time. Apply Now

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