About

No Margin, No Mission™ Client Spotlight: 

When Franciscan Center needed an earned income business plan, we helped them develop one in 5 days with our new Business Planning Boot Camp!

Sister Anne Dougherty, President and CEO, Franciscan Center

Sister Anne Dougherty, A Spiritual Leader and Social Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of being introduced to Sister Anne Dougherty, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Franciscan Center in Tampa, Florida, earlier this year. It was our mutual interest in building social impact through innovative margin and mission generating activities that brought us together.

Like many other nonprofit leaders seeking to identify new sources of revenue beyond grants and donations, Sister Anne had a powerful idea that she believed would ultimately benefit the Franciscan Center and the community at large. Thanks to generous support from Allegany Franciscan Ministries, a leading local funder, she applied for and received grant funding to develop an earned income business plan with No Margin, No Mission, in addition to startup funds to help launch the new initiative and get it off the ground.

A Powerful Idea to Address an Important and Growing Need

A social entrepreneur at heart, Sister Anne’s idea was to bring a much-needed initiative to Tampa Bay. As the leader of Franciscan Center, and the chaplain for local law enforcement officers with the FBI, Tampa Police Department, and Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Sister Anne saw an opportunity to address the growing need to help the local law enforcement community and their families cope with severe trauma that was increasingly resulting from being on the front lines of major crises that were occurring in and around Tampa Bay.

With her usual can-do attitude and take-charge approach, she quickly gained support for her compelling new idea from Tampa Bay and Hillsborough County leaders, and planning commenced for the Franciscan Center Post Trauma Education and Retreat Program. The initiative, as Sister Anne described it, was to be an intensive 4-night, 5-day experience for first responders and their families designed to help them cope with post trauma stress in a peaceful place to confidentially begin the process of renewal and restoration in their lives.

“Help Us Develop an Earned Income Business Plan in 5 Days!”

The Franciscan Center needed an earned income business plan in 5 days!

With Sister Anne’s busy schedule, and an equally busy team of colleagues to support her at the Franciscan Center, she insisted that the process of business planning with No Margin, No Mission move quickly. With limited time and capacity to do the work, the organization simply wouldn’t be able to accommodate No Margin, No Mission’s standard 12-14 week timetable for business plan development. Instead, timing needed to be significantly accelerated so the first Franciscan Center Post Trauma Education and Retreat Program could be piloted during the summer.

Always eager to meet our clients where they’re at, No Margin, No Mission came up with an innovative and effective new process for business plan development that eliminated several weeks from the timetable. Thanks to Sister Anne, No Margin, No Mission’s newest offering was born!

Introducing No Margin, No Mission’s™ Business Planning Boot Camp

With this unique new approach, we were able to compress our standard 12-14 week schedule for business plan development into 5 consecutive days, which included 1 full-day plus 4 half-days of intense onsite work. During this time, our consultants worked with Sister Anne and a small team of her colleagues to write a thoughtful and comprehensive business plan that grew out of much discussion, dialogue, brainstorming, and debate.

The team in action at one of the onsite business planning work sessions at the Franciscan Center.

As part of the accelerated process, we used a hands-on, intuitive, and highly interactive approach, which included the latest cloud-based online business-planning tool, to write and complete a first draft earned income business plan for the Franciscan Center Post Trauma Education and Retreat Program. At the end of the 5 days, the team had developed the essential thinking and steps that would be needed to build and launch their new mission-focused earned income venture!

So successful was the new 5-day business planning process with the Franciscan Center that No Margin, No Mission’s™ Business Planning Boot Camp was immediately added as a new client offering. Much to our surprise and delight, it has quickly become one of our most popular!

Working with No Margin, No Mission™

Sister Anne Dougherty (left) and Christina Strain (right) actively participate in the Franciscan Center business planning work sessions with No Margin, No Mission.

When asked about working with No Margin, No Mission on the earned income business plan for the Franciscan Center Tampa, Sister Anne Dougherty said, “We appreciated No Margin, No Mission’s flexibility in their approach to business planning with us, and were delighted they were able to develop a 5-day accelerated process tailored specifically to our needs.” Sister Anne continued, “More importantly, the work and quality of thinking we were able to accomplish in a short period of time was outstanding, thanks to the hands-on, interactive, and practical methods that were used to facilitate and guide us through the process.”

ABOUT NO MARGIN, NO MISSION™

No Margin, No Mission™ is a social enterprise and national consulting practice that helps organizations with a social mission increase revenue, expand impact, and build a lasting future through entrepreneurial thinking and business strategy.

With offerings targeted to nonprofit leaders and funders providing support to grantees, No Margin, No Mission™ engages with clients to consult, train, speak and implement on topics such as entrepreneurial leadership, social enterprise, revenue diversification, earned income, business planning, as well as marketing and communications strategy.

No Margin, No Mission’s™ client roster includes numerous nonprofit and philanthropic organizations across the country, in cities such as Denver, Hartford, Miami, New York, Orlando, Palm Beach, Palm Harbor, Seattle, Tacoma, and Tampa. Among its many mission-focused clients are 2-1-1 Palm Beach / Treasure Coast, Allegany Franciscan Ministries, AtWork!, Catalyst Miami, Children’s Resilience Initiative, Coalition for Independent Living Options, Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery, Franciscan Center Tampa, Generation Schools Network, Health Council of South Florida, Health Council of Southeast Florida, IDignity, The John A. Hartford Foundation, Lotus House Women’s Shelter, Medication Assisted Recovery Services, The Nonprofit Chamber of Palm Beach County, Palm Beach Habilitation Center, and Volunteers of America-Western Washington.

No Margin, No Mission’s™ co-founders, Larry Clark and Michael Oxman, are cutting-edge thinkers, innovative leaders, and entrepreneurs who are passionate about social change. With collective experience that spans decades in the nonprofit, for-profit, and foundation sectors, their client relationships include numerous nonprofits, philanthropies, universities, government agencies, and coalitions. To learn more about No Margin, No Mission™, visit www.NoMarginNoMission.org, check us out on Facebook, or email us at info@NoMarginNoMission.org

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