Non-profit lessons in a pot of split pea soup

April 4, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development, volunteers

After last weekend’s Easter celebrations, I had a lot of ham leftovers. So, I decided to do what I normally do . . . I went to the store and bought all of the ingredients for split pea soup. This is what my mom did when I was a kid, and this is what I now do as an adult. Unfortunately, this year’s undertaking went horribly wrong, but the good news is that I walked away with a story that all non-profit organizations will appreciate.

I worked on this pot of soup all day long on Monday. Split peas, celery, carrot, onion, garlic, bay leaf, salt, pepper, marjoram, and leftover ham from Easter. Boil . . . then simmer . . . then gently heat throughout. Stir, stir, stir some more. Taste, stir, taste, stir . . . you get the idea.

As this process unfolded, I kept retreating to my home office to work on projects for clients. Long story short, I got really wrapped up in something work-related and forgot to stir the soup for an hour-and-a-half. Needless to say, I burned the soup. Here was what I ended up doing between 6:00 pm on Monday night and 11:00 am on Tuesday morning in an attempt to remedy the situation:

Call Mom and cry . . . then ask for her expert advice.
Transfer soup from burned pot to new pot.
Add water.
Add more spicing.
Add more onion, celery and carrot.
Add more peas.
Add more ham.
Add more spices.
Go to Google and search: “I burned my split pea soup.”
Read lots of crazy internet content about how to fix a pot of burned split pea soup.
Deep breath . . . add a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter to the soup.
Cry some more because now I had a pot of burned peanut butter soup.
Sleep and dream about burned peanut butter (supposed to be split pea soup)
Wake up to attend a meeting at a local coffee shop. Bringing a mug of my burned soup to the meeting and ask friends to taste it and weigh-in with their opinions.
Call Mom and brother fromon my way home from the Tuesday morning meeting to beg for any advice they may have been holding back on.

Let me stop here and bridge this topic over to our work as non-profit and fundraising professionals.

As I look back upon my time on the front line, I dealt with a ton of burnt pots of split pea soup. Here are just a few examples:

Hiring the wrong person to do a job.
Recruiting the wrong person to help with a fundraising campaign.
Recruiting the wrong person to serve on the board of directors.
Asking the wrong board members to serve on the wrong standing committee.
Investing way too much time cultivating a prospective donor who had no intention of ever making a contribution.

In each of these business examples, I did the same thing as I did with my pot of soup. I kept sinking more time, energy and resources into fixing a situation that just wasn’t fixable.

In the case of making the wrong hire, it was additional meetings, coaching, corrective action plans, and more corrective action plans.

In the case of the fundraising volunteer, it was additional meetings, taking tasks off their plate and doing it myself, and recruiting a co-chair and other volunteers to supplement the work I originally had counted on them to do.

My partner (and the love of my life) is a corporate sales tax guy. He hangs around accountants all day long, and he is constantly telling me:

“Sunk costs are never a consideration!”

As much as it pains me to say, he is right.

As for my pot of burned pot of split pea soup, my mother and brother convinced me to throw it out and start from scratch on Tuesday morning.

All of those sunk costs kept making the pot of soup bigger and bigger, which is what made throwing three gallons of soup in the trash so difficult. If I had only listened to what my partner is always telling me, there would’ve been a lot less food (and money) going in the garbage.

As it relates to your non-profit organization, it is important to remember that your time is money. This means hiring the right people and recruiting the right volunteers is very important. Failing to do so is the equivalent of making an ever expanding pot of burned split pea soup.

You might as well open your wallet and start burning dollar bills. It is the same thing! And what non-profit organization has enough money laying around to do that?

How do you make sure you are hiring and recruiting the right people? How do you know when to pull the trigger and cut your losses when it comes to volunteers and staff? Please use the comment box below to share stories or best practices because we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
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Non-profit boardroom diversity includes a man named Thomas

April 3, 2013 erik Board development, volunteers

Easter was just a few days ago, and I still have things like fake basket grass, plastic eggs, and empty calories on my mind. I’ve also been working hard at turning leftover ham into split pea soup. Apparently, other bloggers have Easter on the brain because I just read a great post titled “Who’s Your Thomas?” that Tom Okarma posted on the Fox West Philanthropic Network’s LinkedIn discussion board. I loved this blog post because it was better than anything the Easter Bunny brought me . . . it was the gift of “AH-HA”.

As you probably get from the title of the post, Tom talks about the value of having a board volunteer who is not a rubber stamp. In fact, this person actively doubts all sorts of things that your agency is about to undertake. They express their concerns. They ask questions . . . lots of them. They share what they believe is the “unvarnished truth” regardless of whether or not the timing is convenient.

When I was on the front line, my Doubting Thomas was a board member named Lee.

I wish I could tell you that I used Lee’s talents appropriately, but I cannot. I worked hard to silence him, and more than a decade later I now see how wrong I was.

Gosh darn it . . . hindsight really is cruel. LOL

Guarding against the rubber stamp

I cannot count how many times I’ve seen a group of people sit around a table, discuss an issue, and look like a bunch of bobble-head dolls. Let’s face it. People are busy and on any given day we can get distracted and fail to focus on the business at hand.

If you have “Board Member Thomas” sitting around the table, the odds are much higher that the bobble-head dolls might bobble at a slightly slower pace and fewer mistakes/oversights might be made.

Improving the decision

One of the things I’ve seen work when it comes to satisfying “Board Member Thomas” is answering their questions. This usually entails more than just verbally telling them what they want to know. It almost always involves data, reports, and documents. After receiving these things, it also almost always involves discussion, discussion and more discussion.

In the end, this information and discussion results in better boardroom decision-making.

Too much of a good thing is always bad

On a few occasions, I’ve had the privilege of being in a non-profit boardroom full of Doubting Thomas board members. Just thinking about those few experiences still sends a chill up my spine. LOL Would you be surprised if I told you those boardrooms brought the expression “paralysis by analysis” to life?

There are two important points that need to be made here:

Diversity is about more than just age, gender and ethnicity. It includes all kinds of other factors: profession/occupation, personal and career experiences/successes, social networks, and . . . yes . . . personality types (e.g. Doubting Thomas).
The funny thing about diversity is that if you over-pursue one thing, then you end up losing your diversity. Target too many Millennial and GenX board prospects, and you end up with a young and ineffective board. If you recruit too many Doubting Thomas board volunteers, then you end up with grid lock. So, tread carefully!

Do you have a Doubting Thomas on your board? How do you manage that asset? How do you work with your board development or governance committee to identify and target such a board prospect? Do you have any Doubting Thomas boardroom stories to share with your peers? Please scroll down and use the comment box to share a thought or two on this very important board development topic. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Outcomes, impact and criminal prosecution — A harbinger for the non-profit community?

April 2, 2013 erik Fundraising

Attention non-profit professionals . . . are you paying attention to the news? There is a news story developing in Atlanta, and it may be a harbinger of things to come for non-profit agencies who take money from the government. This made-for-cable-television-drama involves a school superintendent, dozens of teachers and administrators, and a conspiracy to change thousands of standardized tests. All of this was done in the name of maintaining government pass-through funding.

Click here or on the YouTube window below to get a better explanation of what is going on, and then we’ll talk about why I believe this is relevant to the non-profit sector.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3CDcWDmbL8]

When I heard this story, my mind immediately turned to the countless number of non-profit organizations that are struggling to develop a community impact and program outcomes model. The intent behind these efforts usually include:

evolving with their local United Way community impact initiative,
becoming more competitive when it comes to foundation and government grant writing, and
being able to show individual and corporate donors a return on their investment.

Of course, one of the central questions at the center of this struggle (as well as at the center of the No Child Left Behind debate) is:

“Who cares if test scores go up if it doesn’t result in solving the greater community need?”

For example, there is some evidence that shows students doing better on standardized tests, but more and more of incoming college students are enrolling in remedial classes their freshman year because they didn’t learn what they needed to learn prior to applying for college.

Isn’t it the same question for non-profit organizations?

How many youth development agencies are running child obesity programming with government funding and using pre- and post-test methods to determine if the participant was able to digest and regurgitate the program curriculum. Of course, knowing that I shouldn’t eat Cheetos and actually not eating them are two different things. Right? So, what is the donor really paying for and are we measuring the right things?

The bigger question being begged by the Atlanta school district news story is:

“If we tie student test performance to school funding, then aren’t we creating a situation where institutions are tempted to bend rules and even cheat the system?”

As I asked earlier, isn’t it the same question for non-profit organizations?

Do I believe there are non-profit organizations who “fudge” their program outcomes evaluation in order to keep their United Way happy? Sure I do!

Do I also believe there are non-profit organizations who do the same thing with their government grant deliverables? Yes, I believe there are a few.

You can chalk this blog post up to my cynicism. Or you can use it to ward off temptation to game the system. I suggest the later and not the former because there isn’t any difference between what the educators in Atlanta did and a non-profit organization misrepresenting its outcomes data to a local, state or federal funding source.

If you buy into this line of reasoning, then keep your eyes on the Atlanta news story because I predict the plot will thicken and jail time could be in a few people’s future.

Does your agency have policies in place that help protect against any of this happening (e.g. ethics policy, whistleblower policy, document destruction policy, etc)? Are these policies just on paper or are their routinely used? Does your organization have shared values? If so, how are those values integrated into the hiring process to ensure that you’re hiring ethical employees? Do you believe the Atlanta school story is a harbinger or am I just over reacting? Please weigh-in using the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Is your non-profit board old? Paging all Millennials and GenXers?

March 26, 2013 erik Board development, organizational development, volunteers

Recently, I’ve heard at least three or four of my non-profit friends lament that their board lacks diversity in the area of age. It seems as if their boards of directors are primarily packed with Baby Boomer generation volunteers in their 50s and 60s.

At first, my response to each of my friends was:

DUH!!!

Isn’t it obvious that young people between 20- and 40-years-old are climbing life’s challenging career path trails? Not only are these individuals focused on career, but they are having children and raising families. In my opinion, these ingredients are a cocktail of NO TIME + NO MONEY.

So, I wasn’t surprised to learn the following facts in an article published in The Guardian titled “How can charities attract young trustees to their boards?“:

The mean age of a non-profit board member in the UK is 57.
Only 0.5% of board volunteers are between the ages of 18 and 24.
One-fifth of board volunteers surveyed said they lack age diversity on their non-profit board.

I am a fan of diversity and believe it is important, but I am not a fan of tokenism. You do yourself and your non-profit organization a great disservice when you recruit people to fill gaps just for the sake of filling gaps.

When your organization decides it is time to add more young people to its board of directors, your board development committee has its work cut out for itself because the prospects you identify, evaluate and cultivate must be able to hold their weight with other more experienced and better resourced board volunteers.

Young board members must be able to:

make a personal financial contribution;
be willing to attend board meetings, committee meetings and events;
have the ability and willingness to solicit their personal and professional network to support the organization.

In all honesty, I am a really big fan of getting young volunteers involved in special event planning, standing committees and task forces, and young professional groups first before asking them to join the board. However, if you’re determined to diversify your non-profit board of directors, your board development committee must have the following in place first:

comprehensive new board member orientation,
board volunteer training opportunities, and
new board member mentoring program.

Has your organization brought Millennial and GenX aged volunteers onto your non-profit board? How has it worked out for you? What lessons did you learn? What would you do differently? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. Why? Because we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Under promise and over deliver? Managing donor expectations?

March 22, 2013 erik Fundraising

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 “Squeeze Out the Doubt,” John looks at both sides of the “Under promise . . . Over deliver“. Yes, there is a debate surrounding this concept. One side says, this approach is the key to producing win-win business outcomes. The other side says, managing expectations will lead to inflated expectations and the need to always over deliver in order to attain a win-win outcome (e.g. unsustainable vicious cycle).

As someone who saw “Under promise . . . Over deliver” as a basic truism, I find this debate interesting and something I mentally chewed on for the last few days. While masticating on this concept, my mind turned to the relationship that non-profit organizations have with their donors (aka investors).

As I thought about it more, I think this debate is at the center of every agency’s fundraising program. Here are a few questions that I’ve heard clients and colleagues ask themselves:

Should we tell our donors how close we are to closing our doors? Or will it set the fundraising bar higher next time we solicit them for funds?
Do we share our mediocre program outcomes data with our donors? Or should we cherry pick the data and make them feel good about ROI?
When writing our case for support, should we under state our goals for program outputs and outcomes?
When talking about our fundraising campaign goals, should we talk about the stretch goal as if it is what we’ve budgeted?

It would be easy for me to come out and proclaim that honesty and transparency are always the best policies; however, I think it is much more complicated than a black-and-white proclamation.

For example, I am not a big fan of non-profits who run around their community screaming from every mountaintop that they are running out of money and weeks away from closing their doors. On one hand, I’ve talked to some non-profit professionals who see this as a way of low-balling expectations. If they keep the doors open, then they win. It also creates a heightened sense of urgency among donors. Right? On the other hand, donors don’t like to throw good money after bad money. So, the next time your agency asks for money, donors will set the bar higher than they might have otherwise done because they want to make sure they aren’t investing in the S.S. Titanic.

OK . . . this might not be the best example, but the point that I’ve driving at is that employing an “Under promise . . . Over deliver” strategy takes careful thought and application.

Please use the comment box and share examples of where you successfully employed this strategy with your board members, donors, volunteers, or staff. Did it result in a win-win? Or do you subscribe to another school of thought entirely (e.g. honesty is always the best policy, never promise anything and just deliver, etc)? If so, please tell us how that has worked for you.

Here’s to your health!

Congratulations on the new Pope and all of your ‘Good Works’

March 21, 2013 erik volunteers

I was Baptized in a United Church of Christ congregation in Park Ridge, Illinois where my parents both grew up. I was raised in a Lutheran Church in Mount Prospect, Illinois where I took my first communion and got confirmed. In recent years, my religion has faded and it seems as if none of my religious training stuck. (Note to self: I wonder if I can get a refund? I should check into that.) However, in recent weeks I’ve been bombarded by all things Catholic thanks in large part to our news media who is stuck in overdrive. All of this coverage compels me to write a little something about our Catholic brothers and sisters, who work by our sides in the non-profit trenches.

Pope Francis: A sight for sore eyes

This Pope’s namesake is Francis of Assisi, who is one of the better known saints. He is the patron saint of animals and the environment, and is synonymous with the concepts of poverty and humility. In taking the name “Francis,” it is widely believed the Pope is sending a message to the world. Many have speculated this message is that one of the church’s major initiatives will be its focus on social justice and its work with the poor.

As someone who has spent almost his entire life in the non-profit sector working in the social services/human services sub-sector, this is welcome news.

You don’t need to be a Catholic to appreciate this development. I am excited about the future and can’t wait to see where this all leads. I hope you are, too.

Beware of false prophets

As I confessed in the opening paragraph of this post, my Baptismal water didn’t take and the church that I now attend on Sunday morning is Meet The Press on NBC. David Gregory is my pastor (which is kinda funny since he is Jewish). Go figure!

This last Sunday one of the roundtable participants was former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, who is a Catholic and served on one of the church’s child abuse task forces. During my hour-long mass, I heard Keating saying something that really caught my attention:

“In the United States, 50 percent of social services are provided by the Catholic church.”

This declaration stuck with me for days until I couldn’t resist Googling around in my free time in an effort to fact check this statement. I guess I wasn’t the only person who was bothered by this statement because PolitiFact has already done the research and posted an article titled “Does the Catholic Church provide half of social services in the U.S.”

If you have a minute or two to spare in your busy schedule today, I strongly recommend that you read the PolitiFact post. It is super interesting and a quick read. It drives home the point that we all need to beware of false prophets. Damn politicians . . . you can’t believe a word of what comes out of their mouths! LOL

Here is the long and the short of what PolitiFact found out:

“So by our estimate, Catholic-affiliated charity amounts to 17 percent of the funds spent by nonprofits on social services — well short of the 50 percent Keating cited. Even doubling this share to create a generous margin of error brings it to 34 percent — still well short of half. But even this may overestimate the footprint of Catholic-supported charities, since it doesn’t include social-service expenditures by the government. In his comment, Keating didn’t specify that he was only talking about social services funded by private groups.”

Truth be told . . . I knew that Catholic-affiliated charities did a lot of work, but I never understood how much work it does. I am still impressed with 17 percent! I think you should be, too.

Celebrating ‘Good Works’

One of the core tenets of the Catholic faith is that “good works are done to glorify God and are done in honor of him.”

There is a lot of confusion around this concept and what it means to Catholics. I found a really good blog post that explains it really well. Click here if you want to learn more.

As a non-profit professional, I really appreciate the fact that there is a network of 1.2 billion people who dedicate their lives to doing good things for other people.

With the media in overdrive about all things Catholic, I encourage all non-profit professionals to take a moment out of their busy day to appreciate the good works of the church and its members. When you’re in the car commuting, simply ask yourself the following questions:

I wonder how many of our board members and volunteers are Catholic?
I wonder how many of our donors are Catholic?
I wonder how many of our clients have been impacted by other Catholic-affiliated charities?

After scratching your head and contemplating these questions, simply end your thought with a simple “Thank goodness for good works!”

Did the “Festival of All Things Catholic” by our news media inspire other non-profit related thoughts for you? If so, please share those thoughts in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Charlie Brown would’ve been a great non-profit executive director

March 19, 2013 erik Fundraising, Uncategorized

As many of you know, I spent last week in California visiting friends and a whole lot of wineries in Sonoma County. During my adventures, we stopped at the Charles M. Schultz museum in Santa Rose, CA. It was one of the highlights of my trip. Not only did I get to walk down memory lane (because Snoopy and his friends were a big part of my childhood), but I was reminded of why I loved this cartoon/comic strip so much.

As I passed through one of the many exhibits on Charles Schultz’ amazing career, I was reminded of this very famous quotation by William Hickson:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

How many times as a child did you see Lucy pull that football away from Charlie Brown as he flew through the air and crash to the ground?

It is an image burned in my head as I am sure it is for countless numbers of people around the world.

Charles Schultz drew this image over and over and over again because he wanted kids to understand:

Failure is part of life.
It is OK to fail.
When you fail, you simply pick yourself off the ground.
You never stop trying.

What an incredibly important lesson to learn!

On my first day back from vacation, I had the privilege of having lunch with a friend who is the executive director of a non-profit organization. While breaking bread and catching up on things, my friend reflected on his career path as a non-profit professional and he said something that made me think of Charlie Brown. He said people who strive to be an executive director need to understand that they will fail, and they will do a lot of it.

Wise words from a very wise man.

The following is just a short list of failures that I’ve seen in my years from executive directors and fundraising professionals:

Recruiting the wrong volunteer to do the wrong job.
Pairing the wrong fundraising volunteer to solicit the wrong donor.
Pursuing the wrong strategies at the wrong time.
Not adhering to best practices when they are so desperately called for.
Cutting corners and thinking the ends justify the means.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all failed. And we’ve all picked ourselves off the ground and pushed forward.

Do you have the soul of Charlie Brown? Do you look for this quality in the people you hire? What about in the people you recruit as volunteers? Please scroll down and share a story in the comment box about a time you missed the football and how it made you a better non-profit professional.

Here’s to your health!

Questions every non-profit executive director should be asking

March 13, 2013 erik Fundraising

It has been an exhausting whirlwind of work the last few months. While I would never dare complain about work so as not to upset the consulting gods, I need to take a short break. So, this week I will re-run some of the most viewed DonorDreams blog posts on fundraising and leadership. I hope you enjoy today’s post on questions every non-profit CEO should be asking. Enjoy the flashback! ~Erik

Questions every non-profit executive director should be asking

Originally published on June 14, 2012

Tony Stoltzfus explains in his book “Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Questions” that there are many reasons why asking questions is important. I highlighted the following three reasons:

Asking empowers
Asking develops leadership capacity
Asking creates authenticity

I believe the very first reason in this list explains why non-profit executive directors need to get better at asking questions of their board members. The following is what Tony says about “asking empowers”:

. . . roughly 80% of the time, I find that they already know what to do: they just don’t have the confidence to step out and do it. Self-confidence is a huge factor in change. When you ask for people’s opinions and take them seriously, you are sending a powerful message: “You have great ideas. I believe in you. You can do this.” Just asking can empower people to do things they couldn’t do on their own.

Sure, Tony is talking about executive coaching in that passage, but in some regards executive directors serve as a coach to the board of directors. At least sometimes . . . right? (Yes, that job involves a weird little dance and sometimes the board leads and other times the executive director leads. Sigh!)

I cannot tell you how many non-profit executive directors tell me that their board members are disengaged. While there can be many reasons for this phenomenon, one reason could be that the executive director is doing too much talking and not enough asking. Think about it for a moment.

When I decided to open The Healthy Non-Profit LLC last year, I saw a blog post from Seth Godin titled “Questions for a new entrepreneur“. After reading it, I posted it to the bulletin board in my office. I periodically go back and re-read it because the questions he suggests a new business owner ask are right on target. Here are a few of those questions that I think are applicable to non-profit executive directors:

Are you aware of your cash flow? What’s your zero point? What are you doing to ensure you get to keep swimming?
What’s your role?
Are you trying to build a team?
Why are you doing this at all?

Circling back around to the idea of engaging board members, here are a few questions I found in Tony Stoltzfus’ book “Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Questions” that I believe non-profit executive directors should be asking of their board members in committee meetings and in the boardroom:

Where do you see this going?
How do you want things to turn out? What’s the best possible outcome?
What do you think this looks like from the other person’s point of view? (e.g. donor, client, staff, etc)
How do you feel about that?
What are the real issues here?
How should we make this decision?
What do you need to know to make a great decision?
What would a great decision look like?

I believe the following Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation can best summarize how important a good executive directors can be to their board of directors, especially if that executive director knows how to ask really powerful questions:

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”

What questions do you hear being asked by executive directors? Are they powerful and engaging questions? Please use the comment box below to share a few examples.

Here’s to your health!

Fundraising, stonecutters and ignoring best practices

March 8, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development, volunteers

In a post titled “All That Had Gone Before,” John gets philosophical. He points out how a stonecutter’s success is attributed to a series of chips just like your successes in the workplace is the result of the people who came before you. He says, “Our results today; our performance today; our effectiveness today; is not from what we have done today; but all that we’ve done before.”

I read this and immediate think of a recent fundraising training that I facilitated for a bunch of volunteer solicitors.

In my training, I talk about the 12 steps to making a successful face-to-face solicitation. If followed exactly without any corner cutting, each step is designed to quiet our “inner saboteur’s voice,” which is rooted in fear and the mistaken belief that we are “begging for money.”

I’ve conducted this training almost 100 times in my life (if not more), and it never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t want to slowly and methodically chisel away at their solicitations by following the 12 step process. Here are some of the most recent things I’ve heard people say in the wake of this training:

“I don’t need to make my own pledge before going out to solicit my friends. I know that it is the first step in the 12 step process, but I give my time and that should be enough.“
“If the donor indicates that they don’t want to meet with me, I’ll just solicit them over the phone. I know these people well enough so there won’t be a difference between a phone and in-person solicitation.“
“I know that I shouldn’t leave the pledge card behind with the donor, but I know this donor very well and they will send it in and everything will be fine.“

These people used to frustrate me. After all, they don’t seem to understand these best practices were developed by countless numbers of volunteers and professionals before them. Ugh! However, after reading John’s blog post, I’m going to attempt to change my perspective.

From this point forward, I will simply look at these folks as inexperienced stonecutters who are trying to split that big rock in half with just one or two swings of the hammer. They choose to ignore all of the progress made by everyone who preceded them because they are simply apprentice stonecutters. Right?

As a non-profit and fundraising professional, how do you channel your inner stonecutter when working with donors? When working with fundraising volunteers? When working with your board? Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Too much PowerPoint in your non-profit boardroom?

March 7, 2013 erik Board development, organizational development, technology

A few weeks ago I was sitting down with a client putting the final touches on their Board Retreat agenda, and I received what I thought was an odd request from the board president. He emphatically asked me to please spare him and the board from using PowerPoint presentations during the course of the retreat. He explained that in his line of work he sees far too many PowerPoint presentations, and his eyes glaze over whenever someone starts clicking through their slides and droning on about something obviously important.

Well, I thought it was an odd request, but the customer is always right. Right?

However, out of curiosity I went to Google to see if there are other people who feel the same way. Here is what I found:

strategicsense blog: “Too much PowerPoint can kill you“
Fast Company: “Death To PowerPoint!“
Wendy Russell at about.com: “PowerPoint — The Ugly“
Harvard Business Review: “PowerPoint is Evil, Redux“

Well, alrighty then!

I never realized how many people are tired of PowerPoint presentations (especially bad ones). So, I was left wondering what I should do because I am apparently one of those consultants who over uses PowerPoint.

Luckily, the board president saved the day and told me about a presentation service he found online — Prezi.com. This online service as a software (SaaS) is a dynamic virtual whiteboard that brings a 3-D quality to your presentation. Click here for a better explanation. You can also watch this YouTube video to see a demonstration.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxhqD0hNx4Q]

I’ve now used Prezi a few different times, and I can honestly say that I like it (and I’m not getting paid to say any of this).

Just yesterday I transformed one of my PowerPoint presentations on the “12 Steps to Making a Face-to-Face Solicitation” into a Prezi. After the training, I had a few different volunteer solicitors thank me for using a different format. You can check-out that presentation by clicking here or the graphic below.

Let me end this post with a dose of skepticism.

I personally don’t believe that people are tired of PowerPoint presentations and I don’t think Prezi is the solution to all of our problems.

In fact, I suspect that what non-profit volunteers are actually trying to tell us is:

Enough of the presentations! Can we have a discussion?

Perhaps, we’re talking too much at our board volunteers, and we need to figure out how to incorporate more discussions into our board meetings and board retreats.

Have you been struggling with this question recently? If so, please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box about the following questions:

Who should facilitate these engaging discussions in the boardroom, especially when no one on the board is a highly skilled facilitator?
Are there trainings available that a board president can easily access to improve his/her facilitation skills?
What role should staff play in framing and staging these conversations before, during and after the board meeting?
When information is vital to framing an important discussion, what is the best way to present it to board members without lulling them to sleep?

Please don’t misread me. I’m not suggesting that you throw all of your PowerPoint slides away. I’m not suggesting that Prezi is manna from heaven. I’m not telling you to only have robust discussions in the boardroom or board retreat. However, I am suggesting there is a delicate balance and we need to figure out if we want our non-profit boards to get better at governance.

We can all learn from each other. Please weigh-in with your thoughts using the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!