Part 1: Nonprofit Manager
Lesson 1: The Nonprofit Sector
- An Overview of the Nonprofit Sector
- The Impact of Nonprofits on the Economy
- Your Vision for a Better World
Lesson 2: Defining Your Mission/Imagining Your Vision
- Your Mission
- Your Mission Statement
- Looking to the Future
Lesson 3: Governance and Leadership
- The Roles and Responsibilities of a Nonprofit Board
- Board Recruitment
- Governance by Committee
Lesson 4: Volunteer Management
- Developing a Volunteer Program
- Recruitment and Training
- The Legal Landscape
- Managing Your Volunteers
Lesson 5: Nonprofit Finance
- Financial Policies
- Financial Statements
- Budgets
- The Nonprofit Tax Return (Form 990)
Lesson 6: Fund Development
- Funds
- Charitable Dollars
- Fundraising
- Creating a Successful Development Program
- The Fundraising Plan
Lesson 7: Other Revenue Sources
- Earned Income
- Government Contracts and Grants
- Corporate Partnerships
Lesson 8: Marketing and Communications
- Getting Attention
- Creating Your Marketing Plan
- Public Relations and Crisis Communications
Lesson 9: Meeting Your Mission: Programs, Accountability, and Measurement
- The Well-Developed Program
- Mapping Activities and Strategies
- Measuring Success
Lesson 10: Human Resources
- Building Teams
- Evaluating the Employees
- The Legal Angle
- Succession Planning
Lesson 11: Diversity Equity Inclusion
- What Do We Mean by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
- Creating DEI at Your Organization
- Fundraising and Communications in a DEI World
Lesson 12: Change is The Only Constant
- Strategic Planning
- Scenario Planning
- Change Is Coming
- Final Exam
Part 2: Entrepreneurship: Start-Up and Business Owner Management
Lesson 1: The Entrepreneur and the Idea
- Entrepreneurial characteristics and mindset
- Benefits, risks, opportunities, and drawbacks of entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurial decision-making and venture goals
Lesson 2: Understanding the Market
- Idea generation and opportunity assessment
- Market demand and customer needs
- Value proposition and opportunity viability
Lesson 3: Testing Your Business Assumptions
- Identifying assumptions behind the idea
- Understanding how business creates value
- Distinguishing assumptions from evidence
- Recognizing risks
Lesson 4: Learning from Potential Customers
- Customer discovery
- Writing effective interview questions
- Conducting customer interviews
- Learning instead of selling
- AI Highlight: Refining customer interviews with AI
Lesson 5: Making Sense of Customer Feedback
- Identifying patterns in customer responses
- The difference between feedback and evidence
- Revising assumptions based on insights
- Identifying emerging risks and concerns
Lesson 6: Exploring Business Idea Viability
- Evaluating business idea viability
- Supporting vs. contradictory evidence
- Making a Go, Pivot, or Stop decision
- Midterm Exam
Lesson 7: Understanding What the Business Requires
- Operational needs and responses
- Defining outsourcing and support services
- Comparing funding options
- Recognizing operational constraints
Lesson 8: Explaining Your Business and Its Value
- Defining target customer
- Explaining the customer problem
- Communicating the value proposition
- Getting and keeping customers
Lesson 9: Choosing Your Business Structure and Understanding Costs
- Comparing legal structures, intellectual property, and regulations
- Understanding fixed and variable costs
- Estimating startup and operating costs
- Understanding pricing decisions
- Recognizing financial risks and constraints
Lesson 10: Projecting Revenue Costs and Potential Risks
- Understanding financial projections
- Building your revenue and cost estimates
- Building and reading the pro forma
Lesson 11: Building the Business Plan
- Organizing the business plan structure
- Common pitfalls in a finished plan
- Reviewing your business plan
- Evaluating the overall business plan
- AI Highlight: Improving business plan writing with AI support
Lesson 12: Presenting the Business Idea Clearly
- Understanding the pitch
- Building the pitch deck
- Turning your plan into a pitch
- The problem and the solution
- Presenting risks and key decisions
- AI Highlight: Recognizing where AI can and cannot support pitch development
- Final Exam
Lesson 13: Preparing for a Certification Exam
- Understanding the exam
- Picking your study tools
- Improving your memory
- Creating your plan
- AI Highlight: Leveraging AI chatbots as a study resource
Project: Business Plan
- Develop and refine a business plan, then submit the completed plan as a PDF for evaluation.
- Apply concepts from opportunity assessment, operations, marketing, funding, and financial planning.