““Normal” may be a thing of the past.”

This remarkable statement comes from The 2009 Shift Index: Measuring the forces of long-term change by the Deloitte Center for the Edge. The Center’s mission is to look at the trends at the edge of the competitive landscape and to forecast which ones might be the central moving forces that will affect business in the future.

I sort through a lot of reading material every day. But the first paragraph of this report’s executive summary caught my eye because it touched on some thoughts that I’ve been wrestling with this year as a funder. In short, the paragraph noted how tough economic times, such as our present environment, cause managers and economists to look hard at all the traditional data sources. But those sources often fail to reveal the essential trends behind these changing times. In short, traditional measures are biased towards the idea that everything will get back to “normal” again.

But what if there is no more “normal?”

Foundations are seeing an increasing number of requests from organizations making just that assumption; there is no more normal. Organizations cite case after case where funding sources have either been reduced or vanished, forcing them to look elsewhere for support. As a result, organizations are now hoping to begin work on capacity-building and revenue diversification.

But too often these strategies are adopted due to a crisis rather than good planning. Since foundations have also seen their resources decline they lack the ability to begin funding new efforts or to dramatically increase support to make up for reductions by other funding sources. Further, those programs and causes that foundations have long supported are also looking for increased support in this tough economy.

Does this mean the situation is hopeless? No. But it does challenge nonprofits to look hard at their strategies for surviving these tough times.

First, have a plan for the long-term. In the flood of requests that foundations face today the priority will tend to be on those proposals that plan for the future. Helping an organization make payroll this month or making a grant to help an organization break even for this fiscal year may only be forestalling the inevitable. True, some funders will make grants in such situations; usually to long-time grantees for whom the funder has a special concern. But if you need to expand your reach beyond those funders who’ve been friends of the organization, you need a solid plan.

Ask yourself, what does this organization need to look like in three to five years from now in order to thrive rather than just to survive? What tools do we need to get there? And do we have a model that tells us both that this future is possible and what steps we have to take to get there?

Second, have a plan for the short-term that allows your organization to survive. Nonprofits and small businesses share one key trait: when they go out of business it usually has more to do with cash flow that the actual value of their work. For the short-term you may have to radically cut back services to those core activities central to your mission. And when you make those cuts, be sure that you fully understand the relationship between your income stream(s) and the services you provide. Too often development staffs are among the first cut. But if your organization can’t raise enough unrestricted cash to fund key core functions it can’t continue to win grants that pay for direct services.

Finally, look at your organization’s role in the community. Are there other organizations that offer similar programs? Are there opportunities for joint programming or administrative consolidations? There are only a few areas where we in the nonprofit sector can gain productivity. Generally, program services can’t become more productive. A counselor can only handle a certain caseload; an arts organization needs a minimum number of actors or players; a child care has to maintain a teacher to child ratio.

But there are some gains in productivity that we can gain in the back office functions, though they often are not easy to see. Too often nonprofits shortchange the back office functions. For example, how many small nonprofits hire entry level people to write grants and carry out marketing/development work? Or how often do organizations try get by with the least amount spent on bookkeeping/accounting functions?

But what if you found a really skilled person and shared them among two or three organizations? Often the smallest organizations need the talent and experience of the most seasoned development staff—they just don’t need them for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

If indeed normal is no longer “normal” we need to look at this sort of out of the box thinking; not because of the current economic situation but because several long-term trends within the nonprofit sector are no longer on the edge, but rather front and center to our every day concerns.