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 (University of Kansas Community Tool Box)
- Quality Nutrition Services for Senior Nutrition Programs — Summary brief addressing components
of quality nutrition services (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center) - Food Service Basics for Non-Food Service Program Managers and Staff — Summary of food service management (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- Basic Tips for Creating Surveys — Tips to build effective and simple surveys for participants (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
Guides
- Creating a Business Plan — Blueprint guide to writing your business plan (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- Trauma-Informed Organizational Change Manual— Guide on implementing and sustaining a trauma-informed approach (University at Buffalo, 2019)
- Embrace Technology to Innovate — Comparison of select technology platforms used across the aging services network (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- Urgency for Change: A Call to Action for the Aging Network — Making meaningful changes and innovations to meet the needs of older adults (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center, 2019)
- 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 (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
Fact Sheets
- Creating a Business Plan — Blueprint guide to writing your business plan (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- Business 101: Tips To Ensure Your Senior Nutrition Program Runs Smoothly and Efficiently — Recommendations for running a successful nutrition program (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- 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 (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
Tools & Toolkits
- Quality Scale Survey — Participant survey to measure the quality of meals received and overall services (Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging)
- Simple Feasibility Studies for Senior Nutrition Programs — Primer on evaluating proposed projects for potential cost and impact (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center, 2024)
- Senior Nutrition Program Survey — Survey to receive feedback on your senior nutrition program (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- HCBS Business Acumen Toolkit— Toolkit to prepare community-based organizations to contract with integrated health care entities (ADvancing States)
- Building the Business Capacity of Senior Nutrition Programs — Profiles of eight agencies (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- Change Management Considerations for Senior Nutrition Programs — Guidance on importance of change management (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center)
- Piece of the Pie: Making the Business Case for Nutrition Services — Resources to strengthen business skills (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center, 2020)
- Evaluating Food Service Approaches Tip Sheet — Tips for evaluating features and limitations of different food service approaches, including contracted or self-operated models (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center, 2023)
Presentations and Trainings
- Creating an Effective Business Workflow— One-hour webinar that identifies what workflow is, why it's important, and the steps you should take to evaluate and create an effective workflow (SCORE, 2017)
- Run Your Non-Profit Like a Business— 90-minute webinar that discusses financial, operational, sales (fundraising) and regulatory issues that all small organizations deal with (SCORE, 2023)
- 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 (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center, 2023)
- 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 (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center, 2023)
- Business Plan Review — Considerations for developing business plans (Timothy P. McNeill, RN, MPH)
- Big Data, Big Results: Leveraging Your Data to Quantify Your Program's Impact— Presentation on validating messaging with data
- Life After the Learning Collaborative— Presentation on lessons, achievements, and next steps (Meals on Wheels America, 2018)
- Step by Step Business Planning for Community Nutrition Programs — Presentation on business planning for community nutrition programs (Nutrition and Aging Resource Center, 2017)