Business Skills
Understanding basic business practices is key to delivering successful programs and services. Nutrition programs can benefit from honing business skills for planning, budgeting, marketing, and more. By ensuring your program runs smoothly and efficiently, you can focus on what matters most.
Quick Guides
- Conducting Needs Assessment Surveys— Guide from University of Kansas Community Tool Box
- Business Acumen Basics for Senior Nutrition Programs — Build better business skills by
understanding “business acumen” - Quality Nutrition Services for Senior Nutrition Programs — Summary brief addressing components
of quality nutrition services - Food Service Basics for Non-Food Service Program Managers and Staff — Summary of food service management
- Basic Tips for Creating Surveys — Tips to build effective and simple surveys for participants
Guides
- Creating a Business Plan — Blueprint guide to writing your business plan
- Trauma-Informed Organizational Change Manual— Guide from University at Buffalo on implementing and sustaining a trauma-informed approach
- Embrace Technology to Innovate — Comparison of select technology platforms used across the aging services network
- Steps in Conducting a Market Analysis During COVID-19 — Steps to uncover opportunities for valuable strategic partnerships within your community
- Use of Incentives for Older Americans Act Grantees — Definition and examples of incentives
- Urgency for Change: A Call to Action for the Aging Network — Making meaningful changes and innovations to meet the needs of older adults
- What Works: How Howard County, Maryland Is Addressing the Health and Well-being of Its Seniors — Q&A with the Howard County Office on Aging & Independence
Fact Sheets
- Creating a Business Plan — Blueprint guide to writing your business plan
- Business 101: Tips To Ensure Your Senior Nutrition Program Runs Smoothly and Efficiently — Recommendations for running a successful nutrition program
- Tips to Help Your Senior Nutrition Program Run Smoothly — One-page look at key points from Business 101: Tips to Ensure Your Program Runs Smoothly and Efficiently
- Tips to Help Your Senior Nutrition Program Run Smoothly — One-page look at key points from Business 101: Tips to Ensure Your Program Runs Smoothly and Efficiently
- Tips for PowerPoint Presentations — Best practices and design tips
Tools & Toolkits
- Quality Scale Survey — Participant survey to measure the quality of meals received and overall services
- Simple Feasibility Studies for Senior Nutrition Programs — Primer on evaluating proposed projects for potential cost and impact
- Senior Nutrition Program Survey — Survey to receive feedback on your senior nutrition program
- HCBS Business Acumen Toolkit— Toolkit to prepare community-based organizations to contract with integrated health care entities
- Building the Business Capacity of Senior Nutrition Programs — Profiles of eight agencies
- Change Management Considerations for Senior Nutrition Programs — Importance of change management
- Piece of the Pie: Making the Business Case for Nutrition Services — Resources to strengthen business skills
- Evaluating Food Service Approaches Tip Sheet — Tips for evaluating features and limitations of different food service approaches, including contracted or self-operated models
Presentations and Trainings
- Participation and Promotion ican! Module— Training on identifying the “who” and “why” of the senior nutrition program and how to increase participation
- Business Management: Personnel Management ican! Module— Apply best practices for effective communication tools and conflict resolution within volunteer and employee management
- Operating a Nutrition Services Program ican! Module— Master how to effectively lead as a manager and understand how management skills can be applied to provide quality services
- Creating an Effective Business Workflow— One-hour SCORE webinar that webinar identifies what workflow is, why it's important, and the steps you should take to evaluate and create an effective workflow
- Run Your Non-Profit Like a Business— 90-minute SCORE webinar that discusses financial, operational, sales (fundraising) and regulatory issues that all small organizations deal with
- The “New Normal” Way of Providing Key Nutrition Services to Seniors — Slide deck from presentation on tips and examples of offering virtual nutrition services
- State Unit on Aging Engagement With Area Agencies on Aging (YouTube)— Four-minute Network Spotlight on how Mississippi State Unit on Aging gathers area agency on aging nutrition professionals regularly to build relationships and provide education
- Placing the 'Value' in Evaluation: Practical Tips for Measuring Impact (YouTube)— One-hour webinar discussing why evaluation is important and how to use malnutrition and food insecurity screening tools, with accompanying presentation Placing the 'Value' in Evaluation Slides
- Business Plan Review — Considerations for developing business plans by Timothy P. McNeill, RN, MPH
- Big Data, Big Results: Leveraging Your Data to Quantify Your Program's Impact— MOWA presentation on validating messaging with data
- Life After the Learning Collaborative— MOWA presentation on lessons, achievements, and next steps
- Step by Step Business Planning for Community Nutrition Programs — Presentation on business planning for community nutrition programs