New CEOs almost always want a clear picture of their organization’s program portfolio. What are we doing, what does it cost, and what does it achieve?

Most organizations do not look at this regularly. A full program assessment takes staff time and often an outside consultant. When the money and time are tight, it rarely makes the cut.

That can be a problem because program portfolios grow organically. A board member champions an idea. A grant funds a pilot. A partner asks for help. Each addition makes sense on its own, but over a decade, the portfolio becomes a collection of ideas that were good once, but may no longer be relevant.

A leadership transition is a natural moment to take that look.

Last year I wrote about the MacMillan Matrix. It helps leaders decide what to grow, what to refine, and what to let go. It asks whether a program fits the mission, whether it can attract resources, whether others already provide it, and whether you are the strongest provider. At its core, it is a tool about market position.

I have been digging into a second tool, the Matrix Map. It comes from Jeanne Bell, Jan Masaoka, and Steve Zimmerman, who introduced it in Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability. Zimmerman and Bell expanded it in The Sustainability Mindset: Using the Matrix Map to Make Strategic Decisions.

The Matrix Map asks a different question. For each activity, what does it contribute to mission impact, and what does it contribute to the bottom line?

The first step is to list every line of business, not only programs. Your annual meeting, your gala, your major donor work, and your journal all count.

Next, the leadership team and board rate the mission impact of each line. The authors suggest a 1 to 4 scale on four or five criteria the org chooses. Examples include alignment with mission, quality of execution, scale, depth, and whether the activity fills a gap no one else would fill. The average becomes the impact score. The authors are clear that this is an informed self-assessment, not an evaluation.

Then you determine whether each line produces a surplus or needs a subsidy from unrestricted funds.

Finally, you plot the results. Impact goes on the vertical axis. Profitability goes on the horizontal axis. The size of each bubble shows the relative size of the activity.

The chart sorts your work into four groups. Each group comes with a clear strategic direction.

• Stars are high impact and profitable. The instinct is to leave them alone because they run well. The authors argue the opposite. Stars deserve investment and attention because they are your best candidates for growth.
• Hearts are high impact but lose money. Keep them, but contain their costs. Every Heart needs a limit on how much unrestricted subsidy it can draw. An org can afford some Hearts. Too many will sink it.
• Money Trees are lower impact but generate a surplus. Keep them healthy and look for ways to raise their mission value. They tend to be neglected because they have always produced.
• Stop Signs are low impact and lose money. Close them or hand them to an org that does the work better. This is the hardest call, because each Stop Sign was once someone’s good idea.

The map also changes over time. A Star can become a Stop Sign when funding or member needs shift. That is one more reason to repeat the exercise regularly.

For associations, a few cautions apply.

The profitability axis is only as good as your cost allocation. If staff time and overhead are not assigned carefully, a program can look profitable when it is not. This is where most of the time and expense goes.

Dues add a second complication. Members pay for a bundle of benefits. How you credit dues revenue to individual lines is a judgment call, and different choices can move a program from one quadrant to another. Make that choice explicit before the scoring starts.

Impact scores are subjective by design. That works well for opening a candid conversation. It works poorly if program champions dominate the scoring group. Choose a balanced group.

I see the two tools as complements. MacMillan tells you whether you are the right org to do something. The Matrix Map tells you what each activity does for your mission and your finances. MacMillan leaves fundraising out. The Matrix Map puts it in. Together they give a fuller picture than either one alone.

Neither tool makes the decision for you. They give staff and board a shared picture and a common language. That keeps the conversation focused on the portfolio instead of on any one person’s program.

I am curious what others use. If you have led a program assessment, what tool or approach worked for you, and what would you do differently? Share it in the comments.