organizational development – Page 7 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Does your non-profit put its employees first?

September 20, 2013 erik organizational development

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

In a post titled “People-Service-Profit,” John talks about the impact that Federal Express’ corporate philosophy of People-Service-Profit has on it employees . . . which in turn has an effect on customer service and loyalty . . . which ultimately is reflected on the bottom line in profit

When reading John’s blog post this week, I immediately had two thoughts, which I will address below in two different sections.

Non-profit culture

People who work for non-profit organizations are different. In my experience, they aren’t motivated by the same things as their for-profit counterparts. Here are just a few examples of what I’ve seen people on the frontline of the non-profit sector do:

They often agree to work for less money than they otherwise might earn working in the for-profit sector.
I’ve seen non-profit employees work longer hours than they’re asked (or authorized to do). I’ve even seen hourly employees fudge their timesheet in order to avoid overtime (e.g. they get in trouble for working unauthorized time . . . overtime isn’t part of most agency’s budgets).
I’ve seen program assistants purchasing supplies for their programs using their personal money because there isn’t enough agency funding to do so.

peoplefirst2 The point I’m trying to make is that most non-profit organizations have built a culture that revolves around THE CLIENT. This focal point is so intense that ideas threatening to shift that focus are often seen as heresy.

While many people see a client-focused philosophy as altruistic, there can be a cost to this kind of corporate philosophy.

Low employee morale
Burnout
Cynicism
Poor staff cohesion

Another significant negative effect of this philosophy is “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle”. I talked about this phenomenon in a previous “DonorDreams: O.D. Fridays” post on July 26, 2013 titled “Is your non-profit only living for today? Then you need Picasso!”

In the Picasso post, I describe how senior leadership and board volunteers are blinded by the agency philosophy of CLIENT FIRST, which results in zero funding important organizational capacity building expenditures. The end result is a non-profit that has no capacity and starves itself out of business.

Heck, in yesterday’s post about budgeting, I confessed that when I was an executive director, my finance committee once convinced me to eliminate donor newsletters from the budget in order to balance it. Ugh . . . while this was done in the name of putting the CLIENT FIRST, the result was putting the donor second (which is the person who needs to see ROI on their investment if they are going to renew their support). How did THAT make any sense?

So, let’s jump back to John’s post about company philosophy and FedEx.

If you are an executive director or someone who supervises staff, you should click -through and read the 10 bullet points located in the middle of John’s post. After reading those FedEx examples of how managers should treat their employees, I encourage you to complete the exercise described in the paragraph after the list.

It likely will be an eye-opening experience for you.

The Loyalty Effect

I suspect many non-profit people who are reading today’s post are probably still not convinced that a CLIENT FIRST philosophy can be damaging.

More than a year ago, I wrote a week long blog series focused on “The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value,“ which is a book written by Frederich Reichheld. I mostly focused on translating some of his business themes into resource development messages.

However, one of Reichheld’s bigger points is how employee loyalty drives customer loyalty, which turns into profit on the bottom line.

If you are still one of those skeptics when it comes to this post, look at it from this perspective . . .

Many of your clients have “special relationships” with your staff. In fact, if you surveyed your clients, I suspect they would say they come to your agency primarily because of that relationship and secondarily because of your services. I know for a fact this was true for the kids using the programs at my former agency.

So, investing in your employees results in their retention and loyalty. This in turn keeps your customers coming back, which in turn drives impact and program results. When you communicate this impact (e.g. ROI) to donors, it improves your donor loyalty rates and you raise more money.

Please don’t misinterpret me here.

I am NOT suggesting you shouldn’t strive to make your clients happy and provide them with the best possible programming. However, I am saying the non-profit sector needs to take a page out of FedEx’s book and figure out how to invest in its people. It will make a huge difference in so many different ways!

Putting your employees first IS putting your customers first because your employees will put the customer first especially if your organizational values drive them to do so.

If you have some time this morning, I also encourage you to jump in the “way back machine” and check out that six part blog series about donor loyalty as it relates to some of Reichheld’s loyalty principles:

Want to change? Where to start?

If this post has you thinking about creating a different company culture, you may want to check out a post by Inc.com titled “How to Create a Company Philosophy“. It is definitely worth the click! 😉

Did you click-through and read John’s 10 bullet points? If so, how well did your agency do? What are you doing to invest in your employees? Is your organization avoiding the starvation cycle? If so, how are you making the case for investments in capacity building? Have you ever correlated your employee turnover to client turnover to donor turnover? If so, what have you found? Please scroll down and share your thought and experiences in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
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You’ve got to stop emailing your non-profit board members all the time!

September 18, 2013 erik Board governance, organizational development, technology

duck1 You know what Douglas Adams says (according to Brainy Quote). . . “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.” This quotation kind of sums it all up when I hear non-profit staff complaining about how disengaged their board members are, while they are in the middle of sending out another long email to those same board volunteers.

Let me start by telling you that I am one of the biggest offenders of overusing email. Guilty as charged! I need to seek help, but they say the first step in getting better is admitting you have problem.

My good friend (and former supervisor) used to remind me constantly that he believed email should be used as an “information tool” rather than a “communication tool“.

I spent many years contemplating this advice.

In the final analysis, he was saying email should be compared to snail-mail and the United States Postal Service. Email is like a stamp that you’re putting on a letter. He would advocate using email to send a document, but don’t use it to engage someone in a conversation about something.

I can almost hear him saying: “If you need to engage someone in something, then pick-up the darn phone!”

Of course, I don’t see this issue as being quite so black and white. Email technology has made tasks like coordinating meetings and answering simple questions really easy. So, I guess I don’t completely agree that email is only good for sending out agendas, meeting notes, etc.

HOWEVER . . .

Many of us are overusing email and doing so in ways that result in disengagement. I understand this is a serious assertion, but stay with me on this one.

duck2 When I look at my email inbox, I do a lot of scanning. I first look at the names of people who sent me something. As I do this, I am deleting anything that vaguely looks like spam or advertising. I don’t even open it. After this first purge, I re-visit those who are left standing and start looking at subject lines. I’m essentially trying to prioritize what I should open first versus leave for later when I have more time. And when I say “leave for later,” it could be days or weeks later.

(Confession time: at the time of this post, I currently have 1,027 unopened emails . . . I am truly embarrassed.)

I suspect some of you do the same thing. (Of course, de-nial isn’t just a river in Egypt as the old expression goes)

I also suspect that many of you are sending emails of all sorts to your board members’ work email address.

Finally, I am willing to bet that many board volunteers prioritize their work emails ahead of anything they get pertaining to their volunteer commitments. It is just a guess, but I think I’m on solid ground.

So, what just happened? You were put on the back burner regardless of how important you think your email might be.

In today’s fast paced world, I believe the technology revolution has created a new set of assumptions around communications:

If something is very important, it warrants a face-to-face meeting.
If something is pressing or needs to be discussed, it gets done by phone.
If something isn’t time sensitive, it gets put in an email or a snail-mail envelope.

Am I over-simplifying? Maybe, but then again I don’t think I’m too far off.

If you’re still with me, then it is hard not to conclude that sending lots of emails to your board members is the equivalent of sending them lots of unimportant stuff.

Choosing how and what and when to communicate with your board volunteers is important.

If you want to be relegated to the back burner of a board member’s email inbox, then keep sending those emails.

Here’s a suggestion . . .

Look at your board roster and select the names of your three most influential board members.
Sort your email outbox by name/email address
Count how many emails you’ve sent to each of those board volunteers.
If you’re averaging more than one per week, then you may want to re-examine how you communicate with them.

You may want to do a quick inventory of what you’re emailing board members. Once you develop a list, set-up informal policies for yourself on what is acceptable to email, what should be a phone call, and what needs to be done in-person.

The following are a few suggestions that I have:

Distribution of agendas and meeting notes — email
Checking in to see if a board volunteer completed something — phone
Getting buy-in from board volunteers on something — meeting
Coordinating calendars for a meeting — email
Checking to see who is still coming to a meeting (e.g. quorum call) — phone
Circling around to a board volunteer who was expected to make a meeting but didn’t show and needs to be “in the loop“– phone (possibly even a meeting over a cup of coffee)

There are lots of times that we shouldn’t be using email, but unfortunately we do it because it is convenient. If you have a moment, I suggest you read a wikiHow article titled “How to Know when Not to Use Email“. It is definitely worth the click!

Do you overuse email? Are you seeking a support group like me? LOL What are you doing about it? Can you add to the list above regarding when it is OK to use email vs. phone vs. in-person meetings for various communications with board volunteers? Please scroll down and use the comment box to share. Your kindergarten teacher would be proud of you. 😉

Here’s to your health!

What is your non-profit vision?

September 16, 2013 erik organizational development, Planning

vision As with most things in this world, there are different schools of thought on different things. While working with a client recently, I was reminded of the two camps that non-profit professionals tend to fall into when it comes to writing vision statements. So, I thought it would be fun this morning to explore both perspectives.

On one hand, you have the folks who believe a vision statement must focus on the community and the future state that the non-profit is striving to bring to the community. While digging around on the internet for examples, I came across great examples at Top Nonprofits blog in a post titled “30 Example Vision Statements“. The following are just a few examples from that post:

Feeding America: A hunger-free America.
Human Rights Campaign: Equality for everyone.
Make-A-Wish: Our vision is that people everywhere will share the power of a wish.
ASPCA: That the United States is a humane community in which all animals are treated with respect and kindness.

Wow! Big expansive visions. They are packed full of inspiration, and clearly explain in just a few words to donorswhat they are investing in. They are chock-full of aspiration, and guide the organization’s decision making.

Of course, this isn’t the only way to write a vision statement.

On the other hand, you have folks who believe a vision statement should focus on the organization and the change it strives to bring to itself and its clients. The following are a few more examples that illustrate this way of thinking:

The United Way of Elgin will be a recognized catalyst for mobilizing resources to build a healthier, more compassionate community.
Greater Elgin Family Care Center is known in the communities it serves for high quality, patient-centered care, delivered by a team of competent and committed staff. GEFCC will grow responsively and responsibly to fulfill unmet health needs, enhance community relationships and maintain financial viability.
It is our vision that the Rappahannock Youth Symphony will become a major regional youth orchestral organization that nurtures young talent and enriches the greater Fredericksburg community through the performance of orchestral literature.

OK . . . perhaps, these vision statements aren’t as grand as the ones previously cited, but they are certainly very utilitarian and functional. I suspect donors are no less inspired by these visions, and the organization is much clearer on what decisions it must make and actions it must take to get from point A to point B.

Let me be clear. I find both schools of thought to be perfectly acceptable when it comes to writing non-profit vision statements.

Is your organization reaching the end of road with its current strategic plan? Have you fulfilled your vision? Are you getting ready to develop a new vision and plan?

If your answer is ‘YES’ to the previous question, my first piece of advice is to make a conscious decision about which school of thought you subscribe. Recognize that you are at a fork in the road and must make a decision on which road to travel. Once you make this decision, then you may want to check out some of the following resources on how to go about developing and writing your vision statement:

wikiHow: “How to Write a Nonprofit Vision Statement“
Brainzooming: “Strategic Planning Doesn’t Have to Kill Creativity“
Brainzooming: “What Are We Trying To Say?“

How is your non-profit vision statement written? To which school of thought do you subscribe? What process did you use to develop your vision statement? How do you use your vision statement?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit boards need to stop crying about evaluating their CEO

September 13, 2013 erik Board governance, organizational development

In a post titled “There Is No Crying In Performance Reviews!,” John talks about how year-end evaluations are difficult exercises not only for the person being evaluated but also the person doing the evaluation. He goes on to talk about the reasons for the anxiety, shares a few difficult stories, and finishes with how he has made a few changes to make the process easier.

If you are responsible for evaluating employees, you should click-through and read this post.

However, when I read this post, my mind was in a very different place.

I had been working with a number of different non-profit boards and facilitating trainings on board roles and responsibilities. I usually administer a simple little pre-test a few days before conducting the training. Not only does it help me get a sense of the board’s collective mindset, but I share the aggregated results with the board prior to launching into the curriculum. I’ve found that doing so gets participants’ attention and creates a greater sense of focus.

CEO review1 One of the pre-test questions that tends to trip people up is whether or not the board has a responsibility to “oversee the CEO“. Believe it or not, it isn’t uncommon for one-quarter to one-third of board volunteers to say “NO“.

I always find it funny because the previous question on the pre-test asks if they are responsible for “hiring the CEO,” and almost everyone agrees that is a basic non-profit board responsibility.

So, where is the disconnect?

If you are responsible for hiring someone, then doesn’t it follow that in most situations you’re responsible for developing their annual performance plan AND evaluating their performance?

After re-reading John’s post this morning, I think the answer is simple.

The collective board and its individual members feel anxiety about evaluating its one and only employee. As John describes in this post, it is the same feelings that individual managers experience.

Understanding where that anxiety comes from is a step in the right direction of solving the problem. The following are just a few of the reasons cited by John:

not being organized;
not doing your homework;
not knowing the jobs being assessed, or how they’ve really done them; and
not having detailed examples to cite in defense of critical feedback.

If your non-profit organization is going to thrive, then you and your board need to GET OVER IT. As John points out in the title of his post, “There Is No Crying In Performance Reviews!”

CEO review2 So, maybe you don’t know where to start?

Well, I think some of the answers can be found the aforementioned bullet points (aka the causes of this avoidance behavior). Here are a few of my suggestions:

Make it a board policy that an annual performance plan, which is rooted in your strategic plan, is developed and issued to the executive director by the start of the year. Make sure this policy speaks clearly to the issue of who is responsible for making this happen and how they engage the board in the process.
Develop a 360-degree feedback process and get input from all of the executive director’s direct reports.
Make it a practice to ask the executive director to self-evaluate themselves as part of the process.

These are just a few suggestions. The following are even better resources that I found online:

First Nonprofit Foundation: “Evaluating the Executive Director: Your Role as a Board Member” by Vincent Hyman
Berkeley Development Services: “Evaluation of the Chief Executive: A Briefing for Non-Profit Boards of Directors“
blue avocado: “Executive Director Evaluation Survey Form“

Oh yeah! One more thing . . . once you start down this path, take great care not to fall into some common pitfalls. What would those pitfalls be? Well, the following are just a few according to a document I recently found in an old board governance manual:

Avoid falling prey to the “halo effect“. (aka the CEO can do no wrong mentality)
Keep personality out of the process . . . this is only about performance. (e.g. Just the faces, ma’am)
Being too lenient (e.g. the glass is half full)
Being too critical (e.g. the glass is half empty)
Being clouded by recent events (e.g. letting a crisis or recent victory override an entire year’s worth of performance)

In my experience, the vast number of non-profit boards don’t do a good job with managing and evaluating their executive director’s performance. This needs to stop because “that which gets measures . . . gets DONE“. In other words, if you want your agency to succeed, you need to stop crying and figure it out!

How does your agency evaluate its executive director? What have you done that takes some of the anxiety out of the process? How do you keep from falling into common pitfalls? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Is your non-profit organization dead or alive or BOTH?

September 6, 2013 erik organizational development

In a post titled “Alive AND Dead,” John shares a thought experiment that was devised by Austrian physicist Irwin Schrodinger. It was a mind bending story about a box, a cat, poison, food and a conclusion that proves that the cat is dead AND alive until someone opens the box to check the situation out.

Yes . . . my friend, John Greco, shared a story that was used to demonstrate the nature of quantum mechanics in a blog post about organizational development.

Yes . . . I am going to go down the same rabbit hole this morning and apply all of this to non-profit organizations by sharing two stories. One story is about an organization that was both alive AND dead. The other story is about an executive director who was also both alive AND dead.

I encourage you to click through and read John’s post. But, if you haven’t done so already, please keep in mind that the basic premise to all of this is best summed up in John’s own words:

“It seems our perception is reality only until we see reality. In this sense, during times of great change, we can be living and working in a world that no longer exists if we do not actually see the changes in the world we are actually living and working in …”

The agency is alive AND dead

alice2 If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it hundreds of times. And I bet you have, too. I will omit the names to protect the innocent.

Once upon a time . . . there was a non-profit organization that everyone in the community looked upon as being big, strong and invincible. Their staff was well regarded. They had very impressive volunteers who sat on their board. They are what I describe as a “blue chip agency“.

Ask anyone in the community and they would tell you that the organization was awesome. Ask any donor what they thought, and they’d swear the agency was a terrific investment. Ask any of the agency’s board members, and they’d tell you that they can do ANYTHING (and they actually believe it). Ask the staff and you’d hear the same thing.

As the story goes . . . one day someone gets the bright idea to run a capital campaign and double the size of their existing facility. Donors are engaged. Millions of dollars are raised. The facility is expanded.

Putting aside the question of “alive vs. dead” . . . let’s re-frame it a little differently. Did this agency have the “organizational capacity” that everyone thought they did?

As we learn from John’s blog post, the answer is both ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ until you open the box and take a good look.

In this story . . . everyone perceived that organizational capacity existed; funding was secured based on those perceptions and the building was expanded. Unfortunately, when you looked a little deeper this organization didn’t have the capacity to raise the necessary annual operating dollars to run a facility twice its original size.

For a period of time, this agency was both alive AND dead.

The CEO is alive AND dead

alice3 We’ve also all seen this situation.

Once upon a time . . . there was an executive director who was well thought of by their peers. They were doing what was necessary to keep the agency together and everything moving in the right direction. Donors love the executive director. The staff would take a bullet for their boss. The board of directors continued to say nice things on the year-end evaluation.

This person seemingly had lots of job security, but one day everyone in the community wakes up to the news that the board voted to fire the CEO.

(Spoiler alert . . . before you start asking ‘who’ is Erik talking about, let me confess that this example is an amalgamation of many different situations that I’ve seen over time.)

So, what happened to precipitate this reversal of good fortune for the executive director? Here are just a few real life explanations that I’ve seen turn things upside down very quickly:

A major grant or funding source is lost and great stress descends upon the agency.
One employee decides they should be the executive director and starts rocking the boat.
One board member has been unhappy for quite some time about (insert issue here) and decides to stop being quiet. They finally have the courage to stand up in the face of general contentment and makes it an issue, which gets traction quickly.

For a period of time, this executive director was both alive AND dead.

The moral to these stories?

head in sand A non-profit organization that doesn’t invest time and resources into evaluation and critique is akin to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

Does your agency . . .

Host a critique meeting after each of its special event fundraisers?
Formally evaluate its executive director at the end of every year?
Host a critique meeting after its annual campaign pledge drive?
Formally evaluate every board board volunteer at the end of every year?
Host an annual meeting for donors to learn more about your agency? And survey your donors to solicit feedback on how they think you’re doing and what you can do better?
Formally evaluate every employee at the end of the year?

If you answered ‘NO to any of these questions, there there is a possibility that your organization is both . . .

Dead AND Alive

As always, John sums it up better than I can, when he says:

“Help people look into the box. One key component of change management is communicating the need for change early and often. It is selling the problem. It is noting the forces and effects that require change. It is articulating the “burning platform.” It is projecting out in compelling fashion what the consequences are if we don’t begin transitioning.”

Is your organization dead? Is it alive? Is it BOTH? Using John’s words, what does your agency do to “help people look into the box“? By the way, I know someone who can help you look inside that box and provide an outsider’s perspective. 😉

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit board and staff go together like chocolate and peanut butter

September 5, 2013 erik Board development, Board governance, organizational development, volunteers

at each others throat Over the years, I’ve met non-profit board volunteers who didn’t see value or the need for staff. Likewise, I’ve met countless numbers of staff who complain about their board members. I’ve also met executive directors who deliberately do things to disengage their board volunteers (e.g. taking on fundraising responsibilities, reducing the number of board meetings, etc).

Why is it that these two very important stakeholder groups sometimes can’t get a long? I suspect the answer to this question is layered and complicated, but the following must be in the top three:

There is a blurry understanding of what each other’s roles are.
There is an unequal division of responsibilities.
No one is paying attention to what it takes to nurture a productive relationship.

Last week, I was on vacation in Michigan visiting friends. One of those visits was with someone who served on a local non-profit board. He served for more than a decade, and he was the board president for almost one-third of his tenure. When I asked him how things going, the news wasn’t good. He was burned out. His fellow board members were burned out. Things were falling apart. A merger with a neighboring agency was inevitable.

When I asked “What happened?” the answer was simply: “We don’t have any staff. It is an all-volunteer agency. It is us against the world.”

I think it is an indisputable fact that . . .

Board need staff AND staff need the board!

So, what can be done to turn this relationship FROM something that looks like the scene at the end of the movie “War of the Roses” TO something like this vintage 80’s television commercial:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLDF6qZUX0]

I’ve reached back into an old board development training manual and found the following characteristics of an effective board-staff partnership:

Common expectations
Cooperative planning
Open and honest communications
Respect
Mutual evaluation

If board and staff can accomplish these things, it will result in clarity around the following questions:

Where are we going?
Why?
How are we going to get there?
How will we know if we achieved what set out to do?

Have you ever worked for a non-profit agency where board and staff weren’t on the same page? How did it make you feel? What was the result? How does your current agency achieve some of the characteristics spelled out in the aforementioned bullet points? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Engaging your non-profit board volunteers more effectively

August 29, 2013 erik Board development, Board governance, organizational development

Board member engagement is a common thread running through many of my blog posts. This isn’t because I’m a broken record. The fact of the matter is that so many of the things that plague non-profits are simply “symptoms” of a bigger problem. Yep, you guessed it . . . the root cause of many of our challenges in the can be traced back to our boards.

So, a few days ago I received an email from Suzanne Culhane. I don’t know Suzanne, but she is a fundraising consultant for Bob Carter Companies. Apparently, one of my posts hit her just right, and she took to heart my frequent rally cry at the end of many of my posts to “. . . please share your thoughts . . . we can all learn from each other . . .”

So, in the spirit of complying with my own point of view, I’m going to use my bully pulpit this morning to share Suzanne’s tips on “How to get your board members to be more effective advocates for your cause“.

Here is what she recommends:

Only elect board members who are passionate about the mission and rank the organization as number one or two in terms of their own volunteer and philanthropic priorities.
Implement an annual give/get requirement end enforce it! This is best done through an annual commitment form which includes personal fundraising goals and volunteer responsibilities (e.g. committee and event involvement). This keeps board members focused on giving personally and asking others to do so.
Conduct an annual commitment review session should be conducted with each board member. In addition to personal giving and fundraising, this individual meeting should also offer the opportunity to discuss the board member’s experience of serving, any unfulfilled interests, challenges and concerns. That is, the organization must regularly invite individual feedback from leaders.
For empowerment, periodic interactive workshops should be conducted and all board members should be fully support by the staff in their undertakings on behalf of the organization.
Celebrate all accomplishments and victories as a team! Organizational impact and fundraising results should be regularly shared with the board.

For the record, I love all of these ideas (except I waffle on the give/get policy and only suggest it when a board’s culture is devoid of philanthropy). I’ve personally used all of these suggestions when I was on the front line and as a consultant. They are best practices, and they work!

So, let’s keep this going. Sharing is fun. What else do you do at your agency to engage your board volunteers? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. Why? Yep, you guessed it . . . because we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Revisiting LinkedIn’s Board Member Connect service

August 20, 2013 erik Board development, Board governance, organizational development, volunteers

When I engage non-profit organizations in board development related issues, it can be like simultaneously operating in two parallel and polar opposite universes. One universe exists where everyone is talking about how things are “supposed to be” done. This is described in the agency’s written board development plan. In the other universe, there are board members and staff sitting around a table talking about “some guy” they know without any discussion about board composition gap assessment, prospect lists, prospect evaluation or anything that sounds like process.

Growing the capacity of your non-profit board is a complicated formula that includes you doing the following:

Understanding the holes you need to fill.
Successfully identifying prospects who fill those gaps.
Thoughtfully evaluating and factoring in a prospect’s skill sets/talents and experiences so a smart determination can be made about moving forward with recruitment.
Developing and using a recruitment process that sets expectations and helps a potential prospect see what they are potentially say ‘YES‘ to doing before making that commitment.
Employing a thorough new board member orientation program and ongoing boardroom training calendar.
Developing and using tools (e.g. performance plans, dashboards, scorecards, etc) to show board members where they’re at and what they still need to do.
Engaging in year-end evaluation discussions focused on recognition and deeper engagement.

Your board governance and board development program will be “top shelf” if you do ALL of these things. Just having it in writing doesn’t count. You need to practice what you preach.

Not doing even one or two of these things is akin to skipping ingredients in a recipe. Following this analogy through to its logical conclusion, I ask you to imagine what a bread recipe looks like if you forget to add the yeast or the flour.

I often hear board development committee volunteers and staff openly complain about how hard it is to:

identify good prospects
ascertain skill sets and experiences
complete prospect evaluation exercises in a satisfying manner

With this in mind, I am reminded of an old “Mondays with Marissa” post from a year ago titled “How Nonprofits Can Maximize LinkedIn to Grow Their Community“. In that post, Marissa talked briefly about LinkedIn’s new Board Member Connect connect service. This was a new service launched in 2012, and it was just getting off the ground.

In the last few days, I was poked by LinkedIn about this fee-based service for non-profit organizations. They’re organizing another informational webinar on Wednesday, September 4, 2013 at 1:00 pm (Central Time). Click here to learn more and register.

In the meantime, I thought I would take a look around the blogosphere to see what others were saying about LinkedIn’s Board Member Connect service. The following are just a few of the more interesting articles I decided to share with DonorDreams blog readers who might be interested in learning more:

Organizational Solutions blog: “Can LinkedIn Board Member Connect Revolutionize Nonprofit Board Recruitment?“
Beth’s Blog: “5 Ways to Make LinkedIn Board Connect Work for Your Nonprofit“
Take Two blog: “How LinkedIn Can Boost Your Board“

What I found most interesting is that I didn’t come across any web reviews from non-profit leaders who’ve used LinkedIn’s Board Member Connect service. It makes me wonder if . . . a) no one is really using this service or b) everyone is so happy that there isn’t even one random web review complaint?

I suppose the only way for your agency to find out is to attend the webinar and ask around.

Have you used LinkedIn’s Board Member Connect service? What was your experience? If not, how else is your board development committee identifying good prospects for your board? Please scroll down and share your thought, ideas and practices in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Mmmmm … strategy for breakfast again?

August 9, 2013 erik Board development, Fundraising, organizational development, volunteers

In a post titled “Making Breakfast,” John talks about how “culture eats strategy for breakfast“. He is referencing the importance of your organizational culture in everything you do. Of course, John says it in a way that only an organizational development professional can:

“The strategy required specific organizational knowledge, competencies, and behaviors to effectively execute and deliver the results as envisioned. And the organization didn’t have those. So with every presentation of the strategy, I was conflicted. Despite being consistently motivated by the possibility, I was increasingly concerned about the capability.”

In 2006, I made what I’ve now come to see as a brave decision when I left the front line and took a job as an internal consultant working for a national non-profit organization. For five years, I woke up every morning (usually in a hotel room somewhere on the road) and learned over and over again that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

To broadly and simply define my job . . . I was “Strategy Man”. My employer armed me with a 110 page manual focused on how to plan, organize, develop, implement and evaluate an annual campaign pledge drive. In addition to that manual, I was provided tons of tools, templates and samples that filled my consultants toolbox.

Some of you might be thinking “Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.” But you would be way off target. Why? Because culture eats strategy for breakfast!

So, picture this . . .

I walk into an organization’s boardroom and sit down with a group of agency staff and volunteer board members. I pull out my PowerPoint presentation and lots of other shiny objects. Nothing up my sleeve … right? This fundraising thing is easy. Making an in-person, face-to-face fundraising solicitation is as easy as following these simple 12-steps.

When I was done selling the sizzle (e.g. teaching fundraising strategies), I was often met with resistance, bombarded with reasons why it wouldn’t work and told why they wouldn’t do it that way (e.g. organizational culture).

breakfast1 Do you see it? Culture eats strategy!

If your non-profit organization has hired staff who don’t possess fundraising skill sets and don’t have a track record of success with resource development, then sitting through a meeting listening to “strategy” can be arduous and sometimes downright frightening. The typical response is “resistance,” which is what John means when he says culture eats strategy for breakfast.

The same explanation holds true for your organization’s board of directors.

If you are just recruiting warm bodies to fill chairs around your boardroom table without being intentional, then you probably have a boardroom of people who say things like: “Ask me to do anything, but please don’t ask me to fundraise.” (If I had a nickle for every time I heard that expression, I’d be retired and living on a tropical island sipping cool drinks in the shade.)

“If you want strategies to work, then you need to have the right people sitting around the table!”

Hire the right people. Recruit the right volunteers. Be intentional.

Last week, I was told by a board volunteer that he didn’t appreciate all of this talk about developing and following a board development process to increase the size of his board of directors. He kept arguing that we should throw process out the window and ask every existing board volunteer to ask a friend of theirs to join the board. Doing so would double the size of the board much quicker than how I was suggesting they do it.

breakfast2 Hmmmm … looking back at that meeting, I think he was cooking up a hearty breakfast for me.

Some of you are probably wondering if your hiring and recruitment practices are intentional. If you answer ‘YES’ to many of the following questions, then you are probably being intentional:

Do you have a board development committee focused on growing the board?
Do you use tools that set expectations for prospective new board members (e.g. written volunteer position descriptions and commitment pledges)? Do you share these tools with prospects before asking them to join your board?
Do you build prospect lists with the thought of filling gaps and acquiring volunteers with specific skill sets and experiences?
Are you doing some informal background checking (e.g. asking friends and acquaintances about their current commitments, passions, past experiences, etc) before prioritizing who you plan on approaching first?
Are you able to rattle off a list of characteristics and traits of a successful board volunteer? How about a successful fundraising volunteer?

If you want to succeed at whatever your organization is looking at doing, then first ask yourself if your agency “possesses the organizational knowledge, competencies, and behaviors to effectively execute and deliver the results as envisioned“. If not, then you need to work on organizational culture first before introducing strategies into the discussion.

How do you change organizational culture? Be intentional!

If you choose to plow forward with strategy with a blind eye turned towards culture, then you better be hungry for a large heaping breakfast plate. 😉

Have you ever had to change the people (e.g. staff, board, etc) who were sitting around your table? If so, how did you do it? What lessons did you learn? Do you have a very intentional board development process? Scroll down and use the comment box to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Is your non-profit organization failing enough?

August 2, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development, technology

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.

Yesterday, I started cleaning out my email inbox, which is when I came across a whole bunch of old emails from my friends at 501Videos.com. They are the folks who publish those amazing FREE “Movie Mondays for Fundraising Professionals“. I came across Episode #237 featuring one of my favorite social media bloggers Beth Kanter. With a title like “How smart nonprofits are using failures to become more successful,” I couldn’t help but click the link and watch.

At the end of the video, my AH-HA moment was “This will make an amazing ‘O.D. Fridays’ post. All I have to do is pair this video with a post from John’s blog, add a little bit of my non-profit thoughts and PRESTO it will be another great Friday post.” Unfortunately, it hasn’t been that easy. After spending an hour combing through “johnponders ~ about life at work, mostly,” I was hard pressed to find many posts that speak to the idea of failure.

So, I’ve decided to turn this Friday’s post into three segments:

The challenge
The summary
Additional resources

The challenge

I think organizational development is fascinating subject matter, which is why I dedicate my Friday posts to echoing John’s blog or bringing a non-profit flare to his posts. As I wrote in last Friday’s post, non-profits tend to get caught in a starvation cycle, which in my opinion is nothing more than a blatant disregard for investing in organizational development.

However, I find it hard to believe that there aren’t more posts by John about failure and the great things that can come from celebrating it and fighting the stigma associated with it.

So, here is the challenge, John . . . “Your mission if you choose to accept it is: a) how about writing a post or multiple posts about failure and/or b) highlighting successful people or organizations who embraced the idea of failing.

The summary

Beth Kanter shares some incredibly interesting things in the Episode #237 video. For example, people tend to have three typical reactions to failure:

Blame someone else
Blame yourself
Deny it

It is for these three reasons non-profit organizations (and probably all of us) tend to avoid taking risks because the costs associated with failure are huge.

However, Beth is a great storyteller and she is masterful at highlighting examples of where agencies took risks, failed and amazingly great things came from doing so. She speaks to the idea of changing your organizational culture to celebrate failure, which changes the risk/reward calculation and stimulates innovation in your workplace.

If you have six or seven minutes, I strongly encourage you to click-through and listen to what Beth has to say.

Additional resources

As I searched my blog and John’s blog archives for posts about failure, I did find a few things that are related. If you have a few minutes, you may want to click-through the following links and contemplate how your agency’s culture helps or hinders programmatic, fundraising, board governance innovation or limits an individual from reaching their full potential:

johnponders blog: “Possibility Girl“
DonorDreams blog: “How do you deal with your inner ‘Non-Profit Possibility Girl’?“
DonorDreams blog: “Is your fundraising program failing? Good!“
DonorDreams blog: “Is ‘fear of failure’ defining your fundraising program?“

Does your non-profit organization celebrate failure? If so, how? If not, why not? Do you have an example of where your failure blossomed into a triumphant success? Please scroll down and share your thoughts and experiences in the comment box. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!