Category: organizational development

Where are all the new board members?

Board development, Fundraising, organizational development

Let’s face facts . . . your non-profit board has gaps in it. How do you know that? You know it because you and your board members sat down with one of any number of different board composition gap assessment tools (available in the public domain) and you did the math. You looked at demographics, experiences, skill sets, interests, fundraising, and social networks, and everyone at that board development committee meeting was able to see gaps.

Guess what? This happens every time and it happens in every organization. There is no such thing as the perfect board.

Hopefully, your board development committee is doing a gap assessment every year before it goes out to recruit board members. While your gaps may not regularly change, the reality is that your circumstances and the external world around you is in a constant state of change, which affects how you look at your gaps and approach your prospecting and recruitment efforts.

For example, you might have built a very strong “governance board” with gaps around fundraising acumen. In most years, this might not have been an issue because you had very strong grant funding from key foundations. Unfortunately, let’s hypothetically say that Wall Street decides that a major market correction was necessary and the stock market takes a historic tumble. Where do many foundations secure the money they give away every year? Yep, they distribute their investment income. With your foundation income streams in a state of flux, your fundraising gaps on the board have become a major liability. Perhaps, this year’s board recruitment efforts should focus on identifying prospects who possess private sector fundraising acumen and experience and come from a diversity of different social networks.

It is at this point where I have personally sat in board development committee meetings and the conversation always seems to bog down. The brainstorming and prospecting dialog oftentimes lead to someone saying, “There isn’t anyone in our community who I know that fits that description.” Even better, I’ve heard people say, “That person doesn’t exist in our community.”

I suspect that these reactions are a result of:

  • The committee giving up after mentally examining all of the “usual suspects”.
  • The composition of the committee being such that there isn’t very much diversity from a social network perspective sitting around the table.
  • Being unsure of how to determine what skills and experiences people bring to the table.

Regardless, you need find ways to push past this obstacle and stimulate a dynamic brainstorming exercise around prospect identification.

I’ve seen some non-profit professionals bring lists of people to that meeting such as: Chamber of Commerce membership lists and Rotary Club (or Kiwanis, Lions, Jaycees, etc) rosters. In my opinion, this can definitely help people start thinking; however, I’m always left with this one question:

What about your donor database?

Many of us have these amazing database programs with thousands of names. These are people who must have liked us at least at some point in time. In fact, they liked us well enough to write a check. For some of those people, they love our mission so much that they support us regularly.

If you are an “excelling organization,” then you have more than just names and dollars in that donor database. You’ve been collecting data pertaining to birthdays (aka age), occupation (aka skill sets and acumen), interests and experiences, and service club participation (aka social networks). If you aren’t this good and haven’t been collecting and recording this type of information, my suggestion is that you figure out a way to start doing so immediately.

Your donor database is an amazing tool on so many different front, and it isn’t just something you use for fundraising. It can and should be the best board development tool that your board development volunteers turn to every year when they start prospecting and brainstorming.

So, the next time someone on your board development committee suggests that your community has “run out of” board prospects, I encourage you to say poppycock and pivot quickly to your donor database for an endless supply of names to consider.

Does your organization use its donor database as part of its board development prospecting process? If so, what have been your experiences? Which board composition gap assessment tool do you use? Where did you find it, and can you point others in that direction? What is the biggest gap that you’re seeing on non-profit boards in your community (e.g. too many Baby Boomers and not enough young prospects or not enough people with fundraising skills, etc)?

Please scroll down and take 60 seconds out of your busy day to share an answer to one of these questions. Why? Because we can all learn from each other and something you share today might actually make a HUGE impact in someone else’s agency. It is time to “pay it forward”. Please?

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Planning can be scary so don’t do it alone . . . invite your donors to help!

Donor-centered fundraising, nonprofit, organizational development, Planning

There are those of us who like to make plans in the dark and by ourselves. I suspect some people like to do it that way because the act of planning is revolutionary and involves tackling the scary monster that most people recognize as “CHANGE“.

And doesn’t change involve “death”?

Ahhhh, I bet that got your attention. I suspect many of you are scratching your head over that logical leap, but is it really that big of a leap? Consider the following quote from Anatole France that I found online at BrainyQuote:

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

So, if planning equals change and change equals death, then through mathematical transitive properties . . . planning also equals death.

I know some of you are there with me on this ethereal point and others of you are still shaking your head. Regardless, let’s all agree that planning equals change, and both planning and change are scary propositions for some people. Keeping this in mind, let’s circle back to the question begging to be asked:

Who should you invite to the planning table?

While some people are very cautious and want to control the process and outcomes, I don’t subscribe to that paradigm. I am a firm believer that those people who are involved in planning are the people who you most need to roll up their sleeves once the planning process concludes.

So, if you like to be the Lone Ranger and have time to single-handedly implement (and fund) your nonprofit organization’s strategic plan (or marketing plan or resource development plan or any other kind of plan), then I encourage you to lock yourself in a closet and start writing that plan. However, if you want others to roll up their sleeves and open their wallets, then the answer to this question is that you need to find ways to involve all stakeholders including: board, staff, clients, volunteers, community supporters, donors, collaborative partners, etc.

This does not mean throwing caution to the wind and working in total transparency for the entire world to watch, worry and fret over. After all, there are times when revolutionary ideas are aired and debated during the planning process. For example, imagine how uncomfortable it might be for an organization to examine the merits of totally changing its mission in front of an audience of donors who have fallen in love with and funded the current mission.

Does this mean donors should be cut out of the planning process? Nope! However, getting the right donors involved does require great thought and care. Asking a trusted donor and friend of the agency to serve on the planning committee means creating ground rules and setting expectations upfront.

Does this mean donors should be ignored until the plan is ready to be unveiled? Definitely NOT! While focus groups and surveys are great ways to secure donors’ feelings and opinions during the planning process assessment phase, it needs to be done thoughtfully. Asking donors to share their thoughts means giving consideration to what they actually have to say regardless of whether or not you agree with it.

Are there risks? Yes, of course, there are, but you can do this!

Don’t take my word for it. I found this great Do-It-Yourself resource guide on strategic planning for those of you who prefer a more traditional planning model. Click here to read more about “Step One: Who Should Be Involved?”

If you didn’t like the first quote about change from Anatole France, then try this BrainyQuote from Robert Gallagher on for size:

“Change is inevitable – except from a vending machine.”

What have been your experieneces with involving donors in strategic planning (or any planning for that matter)? Did you experience difficulties? If so, how did you handle it? If you haven’t included donors in any of your planning processes, then what is holding you back and what needs to happen to help you feel better about doing so?

Kissing While Driving for non-profit agencies

leadership, organizational development

Welcome to O.D. Fridays at DonorDreams blog. Every Friday for the foreseeable future we will be looking more closely at a recent post from John Greco’s blog called “johnponders ~ about life at work, mostly” and applying his organizational development messages to the non-profit community.

Today we’re focusing on a post that John titled “Kissing While Driving“. In this post, he uses an Albert Einstein quote to investigate the perils of “multitasking” in the workplace by employees. He puts forward that employees who are running back and forth between various projects are likely only doing an “adequate” job at best for their employer because as Benjamin Franklin once said, “Haste makes waste”. More importantly John concludes:

  • this likely impacts employee engagement and loyalty,
  • can be dangerous for the company whose reputation is based on quality, and
  • is less than satisfying for employees who take pride in their work.

Reading John’s post brought me back to my “frontline” days of non-profit work. I honestly think this blog post is even more applicable to non-profit agencies because of how they behave in “resource deprived” environments. When I was the executive director of my local Boys & Girls Club, I used to laugh when people asked me: “What is your job?”

I used to describe my work as a daily “sprint” through a series of very diverse and challenging situations.

  • 7:00 am — network with donors at Rotary Club
  • 8:30 am — meet with development director about an upcoming special event fundraiser
  • 9:30 am — prepare meeting materials for upcoming Finance Committee meeting
  • 10:00 am — meet with program staff about a recent hiccup that was brought to my attention by a parent or collaborative partner
  • 11:00 am — double-check the bank deposit against the donor database report and check log; go to bank and make the deposit
  • 11:30 am — Troubleshoot a tech problem that an employee was experiencing (and was preventing them from doing their job)
  • Noon — Go to lunch with a donor or board member
  • 1:30 pm — Hop on a conference call for the state alliance
  • 2:30 pm — Last minute prep for the board development committee meeting
  • 3:00 pm  — Attend the board development committee meeting
  • 5:00 pm — Walk through the clubhouse facility to see programs in action and catch staff doing “good things” as well as connect with the mission
  • 5:30 pm — Respond to email and catch up on stuff that washed into my office throughout the day (possibly screening some cover letters and resumes for a job vacancy)
  • 6:00 pm — Pull together some paperwork and process grant receivables
  • 7:00 pm — Prep for the next day, do a little planning, or take advantage of the silence in the office and write a few sections for a grant application or upcoming newsletter
  • 8:00 or 9:00 pm — Go home for some sleep so you can do it all over again tomorrow.

While every day wasn’t always like this, most days were this way. It is the cross that a non-profit executive director must bear when they operate in a resource deprived environment. It is exhausting, and it produces a situation where many mistakes are made. It is a minor miracle anything got done and that any progress was made. In the end, it was one of the top three reasons I chose to leave the frontline and go to work for the national organization.

Hmmmmm . . . yes, I’d say it was a lot like “kissing while driving”. I wasn’t very satisfied. I wasn’t as engaged in the things that were most important to the agency. I made mistakes and felt horrible about making them. I ultimately left for what I thought were greener pastures.

In hindsight, I wonder what I could’ve done differently:

  • invested in a volunteer program to expand human resources
  • engaged board members and donors in seeing and help solving these challenges (rather than celebrating the insanity)
  • adjusted the agency’s strategic plan to focus less on growth and more on deepening the impact

Of these three ideas, the one I think might bring the highest return on investment is the second bullet point that speaks to engaging board members and donors. As I look around at all of my non-profit friends, I see too many of them placating their boards by always saying “YES” rather than walking them through “cause-and-effect” scenarios pertaining to board room decisions (e.g. budget, staffing structure, new programming, etc). I also see many of them telling donors whatever they think they want to hear just to get another signed pledge card.

I have a hard time believing that if board members and donors saw what your day REALLY looked like that they wouldn’t want to jump in and help solve those challenges. Right? And with multiple people focused on solving these challenges, I suspect the odds go up dramatically that either the car gets stopped so the kissing can continue OR the kissing stops so that some work can get done.

In the end, it is your leadership that will solve this problem. Perhaps, it is a new Teachable Point of View that you adopt as the leader. Or maybe it is your embrace of tools like GRPI or RASI. Regardless, it most likely starts and ends with you. So, what are you going to do about it?

Are your days as crazy as the one I described above? What tools do you use to tame that beast? Have you ever engaged board members or donors in this discussion? If so, what were the results? Please use the comment box below to weigh-in with your thoughts. Remember to also check out other blog posts on organizational development by John Greco at his blog johnponders ~ about life at work, mostly.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Introducing “O.D. Fridays: Non-profit Style”

organizational development

One of my dear friends recently joined the blogosphere. His name is John Greco, and he is an organizational development professional. His blog — “johnponders~ about life at work” — deals with issues like change, leadership, organizational structure, culture, and communication. Needless to say, I subscribed right away because I can listen to John talk about these things all day long. But then it struck me! Non-profit organizations deal with these issues every single day.

So, an idea was born. Every Friday for the foreseeable future, I will pick one of my favorite blog posts from johnponders~ about life at work and extrapolate on it from a non-profit perspective over here at DonorDreams blog. Thus, we should all now refer to Fridays as “O.D. Fridays”.   😉

Today, I want to talk about one of John’s posts titled: “The High Wire Act of Organizational Change“. When reading it, I found myself thinking about all the planning processes I’ve been a part of throughout the years (e.g. strategic planning, resource development planning, annual campaign planning, board development planning, succession planning, etc).

In my opinion, the common denominator to ALL planning processes is “CHANGE,” which many people seem to be allergic to undertaking. I wonder if it genetic or biological . . . hmmmm?

With so many non-profit organizations always stretching resources, it seems like many agencies are constantly trying to undertake some kind of change initiative (e.g. adding a program because of a grant, bringing on new board members, etc).

Whenever I’ve participated in planning processes, I’ve noted exactly what John references in his post. There is a dynamic tension between “preserving order” and “striving for change”.  It is those non-profit professionals who can walk this fine line that always seem to be successful. When I think about what I see those successful individuals doing, they always seem to be operating with a plan on how to conduct a planning process.  With this in mind, I’ve decided to share with you the “Six-Stage Process for Leading Change” that I once learned about at a Linkage training (source: predicated on the work of John Kotter and the works of Kouzes and Posner, Bennis, and Sayles):

  1. Make the case for change
  2. Enlist stakeholders to develop a vision and strategy
  3. Communicate the vision and strategy
  4. Remove barriers
  5. Set milestones and acknowledge progress
  6. Reinforce change

When you start a planning process at your agency, do you do so with a plan? To John’s point, how do you try to “preserve order amid change” AND “preserve change amid order”??? Please scroll down and use the comment section to share your thoughts, experiences and questions.

Oh yeah, by the way . . . if you have room in your inbox or RSS feed for one more blog, I strongly encourage you to flip over and subscribe to johnponders~ about life at work. I promise that you won’t be disappointed (and he doesn’t bite).  😉

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847