Financial Sustainability Matrix

As part of the Financial Structures for Arts Managers course (LEAP 540) we explored the use of a sustainability matrix via the guidance, worksheets, and templates in the book “The Sustainability Mindset: Using the Matrix Map to Make Strategic Decisions” written by Steven Zimmerman and Jeanne Bell.

To explore the use of this type of matrix in future nonprofit strategic planning, we were divided into groups of three to mimic a mini board of directors that would be tasked with using a survey and scoring of our programming portfolio against our intended impact and placing that alongside the profitability of our programming. To accomplish this we first had to develop a fictitious organization and mission statement. We each drafted three pieces of programming that we would offer to support this mission. In addition to the type of programming, we each had to build a budget and consider expenses to arrive at our profitability numbers. Each team member scored our programming against the intended impact of our mission.

This data was placed in the matrix template master data sheet to create our matrix map (found on the final page of the document below). This allowed us to see which programs had high impact/low profitability (Heart), high impact/high profitability (Star), low impact/high profitability (Money Tree) and low impact/low profitability (Stop).

Our group was asked to create a response document to our matrix work using guiding questions. This is found below.