Non-profit board volunteers should all dress the same

September 21, 2012 erik Board development, organizational development, volunteers

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, I am focusing on a post that John wrote about “Decision Fatigue,” which is a fascinating organizational development concept that applies perfectly to so many different aspects of non-profit work life. I mean come on, John! It would be soooooo tempting to expand on the “Kissing while driving for non-profit agencies” post from March 9, 2012 and talk about the utter insanity behind most executive director’s day-to-day routines. But I won’t do that and instead decided to focus on the board of directors.

After reading John’s post this morning, I was transported back in time to March 20, 2000. I will never forget that day because it was my first day on the job as a newly minted executive director.

At the top of every new CEO’s “To Do List” is a whirlwind tour of meeting board members. This is one of the most important first tasks because you are trying to get a feel for:

what is going on throughout the organization
what personalities are sitting around the boardroom table
how decisions get made in the board room

When I stuck the thermometer in the turkey on March 20, 2000, it immediately registered “DECISION FATIGUE“.

This board had operated for more than six months without an executive director. Some of the people during our first meeting even told me of their plans to resign. Needless to say, within the first 90 days the board roster shrank from 20 people strong to 11 very weary individuals who bravely faced the future and simply said, “FORWARD!”

The list of decisions that fatigued the board prior to hiring an executive director is endless, but here are just a few of those decisions they routinely faced:

Where are we meeting? What time?
What’s on the agenda?
Who is attending? Do we have quorum?
What materials should be distributed prior to the meeting? Who puts all of that together?
How do we make sure everyone is properly prepared for tough discussions and decisions at the upcoming meeting?
Do we have enough money in the bank to make payroll next week?
Which employee just quit? At which site did they work? What does that mean for operations? Is there paperwork that needs to get filled out? Who is doing THAT?
Who is doing what and with whom with regards to the annual campaign pledge drive that is scheduled to start next week?
Uh oh . . . I though we were just focusing on the pledge drive, but now we’re talking about special event planning for the dinner that is 12 weeks away. Who is doing what and with who regards to all of THAT?
Ummm . . . how does all of this mesh with the decisions happening at home and at my paying job?

This is just a small sampling of what was on those board member’s decision-making list.

One of the most interesting things I found in my first 90 days was the board decision made right before they hired me. It was the decision to stop meeting monthly and only meet every other month. When I asked why they made this decision, they said that their monthly meetings had gotten way out of hand and too long. Those meetings apparently lasted sometimes three or four hours!

Like you, I scratched my head, and asked how in the world that decision made any sense.

If you think about it for a moment and put yourself in their shoes, it makes perfect sense:

They were tired.
They needed more time between meetings to re-group.
This allowed them to “empower” the executive committee to make decisions for the board during the off-months (e.g. dump the tough work on a smaller group of people).

I don’t need to tell you how damaging that decision was to the agency’s health, but it made sense when you look at it through a “decision fatigue” filter. It took me almost three years to get them to reverse their decision and start meeting every month again.

It is the job of the executive director to help the board avoid “decision fatigue”.

Good non-profit executive directors support the work of their board by facilitating and assisting with everything including:

developing agendas
taking meeting notes
recruiting new board volunteers
supporting committee work
helping board volunteers process tough issues and position them for making tough decisions in the boardroom
supporting all of the planning work that occurs ranging from strategic planning to special events
And much, much more!

So, I titled this blog post the way I did because of the Vanity Fair article that John cited in his blog post. In that Vanity Fair interview with President Obama, they explain why the President is almost always seen in blue or grey suits. Of course, it has everything to do with decision fatigue, and this got me giggling about non-profit board volunteers as I envisioned a boardroom full of volunteers wearing the exact same thing.

Hmmmm . . . perhaps board tee-shirts might not be a bad idea. 😉

Is your board tired? Have you given any thought to why? What role have you played in their fatigue? What could you be doing differently? Here’s a thought . . . if this is something with which you’re struggling, use the comment box below to ask a few questions of your fellow non-profit peers and see what they have to say. Or if you have a great success story, please feel free to share that as well.

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

Non-profit inside-the-box thinking: Sell-Sell-Sell ! ! !

September 20, 2012 erik Board development, Fundraising, organizational development

As promised in last Friday’s post, I dedicated Tuesday, yesterday and today to challenging proponents of “outside-the-box thinking” and examining various “inside-the-box thinking” principles. This week’s posts were determined by DonorDreams blog subscribers who took the time to voice their opinions via a poll last Friday. Thank you to those of you who voted. Additionally, the foundation of these posts are rooted in Kirk Cheyfitz’s book “Thinking Insider The Box: The 12 Timeless Rules for Managing a Successful Business.”

DonorDreams blog subscribers voted to hear more about chapter six of Cheyfitz’s book, which is titled “The Marketing Box: Unifying the Whole Business”.

I love how the author starts each chapter with a short sentence that serves as “food for thought”. The following is how chapter six started:

“You should be selling all the time.”

This is a complex chapter and a little mind-bending because the author contends that the average person’s idea about marketing is all wrong. Most people equate marketing with advertising, when in reality it is much bigger. He says in the book:

“Economists, academics, and marketing professionals have come to see marketing this way — as the single discipline that embraces and unites virtually every aspect of business activity. Marketing: Guides production . . . Governs distribution . . . Controls advertising, promotion and all marketing communications . . . Peter Drucker has written that business’s only purpose is “to create a customer,” and because of that, “marketing and innovation” are the two basic functions of business”.

Well . . . WOW! In a nutshell, Cheyfitz is saying:

Marketing is everything and

successful businesses do it all the time!

As I said in yesterday’s post, this concept is a little difficult to apply to non-profit corporations because the word “customer” usually conjures up images of clients and donors (or both) depending on which chair you sit in. Unlike yesterday, I won’t limit today’s blog to just talking about donors. I will attempt to GO GLOBAL.

I could probably write pages and pages on this topic because there is a lot of ground to cover. Instead, I will start a laundry list of examples and hand-off the baton to you so you can continue it in the comment section.

The following are just a few examples of marketing (and you will see how it unifies everything we do):

How your program staff talks to and treats clients is marketing because it shapes the perceptions of your brand in the community among volunteers, donors, potential staff, prospective donors and future board members.
The decision to create a new program and write a big grant to get it off the ground is marketing. You are sending messages to people around you about what is important and what is a priority. These messages get picked up by volunteers, staff, clients, and donors. They in turn amplify these messages throughout the community. These actions and messages will even impact the long-term sustainability of your new program depending on donor perceptions.
Sticking with the creation of new programming from the last bullet point . . . talking with clients and prospective clients before making the decision to offer that new service is marketing. If your new program doesn’t fill a community need and your actual or potential clients, then it is your initiative will likely failure (which will likely have a ripple effect among donors, etc).
How and what the executive director says to or does with their staff is marketing. When they tell co-workers that the agency has challenges, it impacts staff turnover and in turn affects program quality and how the donor community’s perceptions of their investments.
Talking to volunteers and donors before developing another special event fundraiser is marketing. You need to determine if people will support this new idea before investing time and money into developing it.
What an executive director includes in the board packet and says in the boardroom is marketing. All of those messages get amplified by your community ambassadors (aka board volunteers) on the street when they’re networking.

Cheyfitz tells us that marketing happens pre-production, during production, and definitely after production. In non-profit terms, it happens before the donor writes the check, during the solicitation process, and in-between gifts for the duration of your relationship with that donor. More specifically, marketing happens during every waking moment of a non-profit professional’s life in their dealing with staff, volunteers, clients, board members, donors, and the community-at-large.

At the end of this chapter, Cheyfitz offers six different tips on how to build your organization’s box rather as opposed to thinking outside of it. I won’t ruin the surprise (because you should buy this book and read it), but I will share two of his tips to whet your appetite:

Marketing (in other words everything you do) must unify every aspect of a business around one purpose: creating a customer.
Every time a company touches a customer, there is an opportunity to win or lose that customer. These opportunities must be maximized, not avoided.

How does your organization see and approach “marketing”? Are you trying to thread the idea of marketing throughout everything you do? If so, can you share a few examples? How do you prepare others (e.g. staff, board members, etc) to communicate and demonstrate what your agency is all about? Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit inside-the-box thinking: Donors are the boss

September 19, 2012 erik Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

As promised in last Friday’s post, I am dedicating yesterday, today and tomorrow to challenging proponents of “outside-the-box thinking” and examining various “inside-the-box thinking” principles. This week’s posts were determined by DonorDreams blog subscribers who took the time to voice their opinions via a poll last Friday. Thank you to those of you who voted. Additionally, the foundation of these posts are rooted in Kirk Cheyfitz’s book “Thinking Insider The Box: The 12 Timeless Rules for Managing a Successful Business.”

DonorDreams blog subscribers voted to hear more about chapter five of Cheyfitz’s book, which is titled “The Box Top: Customers Are The Boss”.

I love how the author starts each chapter with a short sentence that serves as “food for thought”. The following is how chapter one was started:

“Give customers what they want, not what you want to give them.”

Most of this chapter talks about how the “customer experience” has been the foundation of our economy for centuries and is easily traced back to the Middle Ages. Cheyfitz does a great job telling readers about customer-centric lessons we can all take to heart that were developed by the silk merchants in the 1300s, the town butchers in the 1700s, and the department store barons like Sears and Wards in the 1900s. It was eye-opening to see how the author took seemingly “modern” business practices (e.g. using CRM to segment customers into niches, using customer loyalty programs to reduce turnover, etc) and trace them back to pre-Magna Carta days.

As I attempt to make heads-or-tails out of this chapter for non-profits, it strikes me that non-profits have a more difficult challenge than their for-profit cousins when it comes to focusing on customers and thinking inside-the-box.

Why? Because when a non-profit reads the word “customer,” two different images are conjured up . . . “donor” and “client”. I believe that successful non-profit leaders are able to balance these interests and develop customer-focused approaches for both audiences. However, for the balance of this blog post, I am just going to focus on the donor side of this equation.

For those of you who routinely read DonorDreams blog, it won’t be surprising to learn that everything Cheyfitz talks about in chapter five aligns perfectly with what Penelope Burk espouses in her book “Donor Centered Fundraising“. You can see this is clearly the case from the following language on page 74:

“Simply put: Find out what customers really want, then give it to them. Make sure they have plenty of choices — in what they buy, where they buy, how they buy, and how they pay for it all. And address them personally, talk to them honestly, and treat them well every step of the way.“

The bigger question for me is: “How many non-profit organizations are really doing this?”

We work hard to convince donors to give us unrestricted gifts rather than funding a specific program.
We write funding proposals aimed at telling donors what we need.
We solicit donors using tactics that fit our needs and match our resources rather than how the donor feels most comfortable being solicited.
We fire off a database generated thank you letter and skimp on the transparency when it comes to showing donors exactly what their contribution paid for and what good it helped do.

As I think back to some of the most successful donor relationships that I’ve personally built, it really goes back to personal interaction, building a relationship into a friendship, understanding what the donor really wanted to get out of the relationship, and treating them like I treat members of my family.

So, how can non-profit organizations get back to the customer service principles used by the small town butcher or general store owner? How do we build our box and think inside of it rather than trying to “think outside-the-box”?

At the end of this chapter, Cheyfitz offers six different tips on how to build this box. I won’t ruin the surprise (because you should buy this book and read it), but I will share two of his tips to whet your appetite:

Never assume you know the reason a customer does anything. Always ask. Always listen. Always use the resulting information.
When creating a customer relationship plan, ask . . .

Who needs to be talked to and courted?
What different groups do they fall into?
What outcomes are desired?
What messages will be delivered?
How will success be measured?

Not only will these tips help you craft an awesome stewardship plan for your donors, but they are the basis for almost any plan you will ever write for you organization (e.g. strategic plan, marketing plan, business plan, board development plan, etc).

It is easy to conclude after reading this chapter that if you’re not personally sitting down with at least one donor every day, then you’re not living “inside-the-box” and your organization is not donor-centered.

How do you meet your donors’ needs? How do you know what those needs are? How do you successfully align donors needs with your clients’ needs? What are you doing to keep this “inside-the-box” principle in front of you every single day? Please use the comment box below to share answers to these questions or any other thoughts that this post may have inspired.

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit “inside the box thinking” — Understanding change

September 18, 2012 erik Fundraising

As promised in last Friday’s post, I am dedicating today, tomorrow and Thursday to challenging proponents of “outside-the-box thinking” and examining various “inside-the-box thinking” principles. This week’s posts were determined by DonorDreams blog subscribers who took the time to voice their opinions via a poll last Friday. Thank you to those of you who voted. Additionally, the foundation of these posts are rooted in Kirk Cheyfitz’s book “Thinking Insider The Box: The 12 Timeless Rules for Managing a Successful Business.”

DonorDreams blog subscribers voted to hear more about chapter one of Cheyfitz’s book, which is titled “The Basic Box: Some Things Never Change”.

I love how the author starts each chapter with a short sentence that serves as “food for thought”. The following is how chapter one was started:

“Know the difference between what will change and what won’t, and pay attention to the former.”

Most of this chapter talks about how some economists and many pundits are flat wrong about what they see as a “new economy”. He points to the dot-com bust of 2001 and talks about how ignoring human behavior and the basic principles of capitalism will get you and your company in trouble all of the time.

This chapter got me thinking about Gail Perry’s recent post titled “Post Recession Donors Have Changed” over at her Fired Up Fundraising blog.

After reading Perry’s post about donors, I realized the following:

There will always be donors regardless of how good, bad or sluggish the economy is. This will never change.
The mindset of those donors and conditions upon which they will donate is always evolving. This is constantly changing.

Cheyfitz’s encourages us to pay attention to “what will change” because not focusing on the ever-changing landscape is what puts too many companies (both for-profit and non-profit) out-of-business.

Gail Perry tells us in her blog that post-recession donors . . .

trust non-profit agencies less than they used to,
crave more information about ROI,
want to see more transparency, and
want to contribute to fewer unrestricted fundraising campaigns.

Read Gail’s blog for a few great tips on how to use “inside-the-box thinking” to address these perceived trends in the donor community.

There are also many other interesting trends occurring in the donor community:

technology’s impact on giving,
technology’s impact of cultivation and stewardship activities, and
donor communications moving from one-way to two-way communications.

Cheyfitz urges us to not focus on “the shiny object” (in this case it would be technology) and throw what works out the window for what we don’t understand (e.g. ePhilanthropy). However, he does not tell us to ignore the changes that are starting to happen. Instead, he point to the words that are chiseled above the entrance of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.:

“The past is prologue”

He ends the chapter by saying, “Paying attention to history, in short, can save a lot of time and pain and produce a lot of gain.”

The non-profit sector has seen this kind of change in communication technology before, right? I am thinking about the rise of “direct mail” and how that changed how we cultivate, solicit, and steward donors today.

I suspect that non-profits, who tossed their special events and peer-to-peer annual campaigns onto the trash heap and invested everything they had into direct mail, probably went out of business. Those who survived kept their eyes on the trend, engaged their donors in thoughtful discussions about their preferences with direct mail, and proceeded forward with caution and strategic focus.

Again . . . outside-the box thinking will sink you, and inside-the-box thinking will keep you afloat.

At the end of every chapter, Cheyfitz provides a few tips on how to “build your box” so that you can think inside of it. He offered four tips at the end of chapter one, but the last tip struck me as very appropriate for non-profit organizations during these challenging and changing times (read the word “customer” as “donor” to help with the non-profit translation):

“Use your time to focus on how your customers’ lives are changing and how you can serve their emerging needs with new products and services (delivered using the same old business models).”

Are your donors behaving different after the economic crash of 2008? What is your donor data telling showing? What are donors telling you? What kinds of “inside-the-box” best practices are you employing to thrive in this new economic climate? Please scroll down and use the comment box to share a thought or two with your fellow non-profit professionals this morning.

Here’s to your health!

Is your fundraising program failing? Good!

September 11, 2012 erik Fundraising

I opened an email from a dear, old friend this morning. His name is Jim Chambers. We’ve known each other for 20-years and worked together at two different non-profit organizations. The email was titled “Something for you.” The message was equally simple and said, “Hope you are well. I thought you may like this video.”

Needless to say, I couldn’t resist clicking on the YouTube link at 7:00 am this morning.

At the other end of that link, I saw this title:

Innovation Keynote Speaker Jeremy Gutsche –
30 Minute Speech

I then realized that the YouTube video was 28:49 minutes in length. OMG!!!!!! It is 7:00 am in the morning. Are you kidding, Jim?

However, I knew in my heart that Jim knows me better than most people, and there must be a reason he sent me this video. So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and clicked on the link.

I’m glad I trusted Jim this morning because 28:49 minutes later I have more non-profit thoughts running through my head than I’ve had in a long time. So, I thought I’d take the next few minutes to dump those thoughts out into a bullet point list for your enjoyment and see if it sparks and discussion. Enjoy . . .

In times of tremendous economic crisis, chaos and upheaval, history has shown us that opportunity is abundant if you just open your eyes and look for it. What is your non-profit organization doing to take advantage of the chaos? Are you re-inventing your resource development plan? Are you approaching and engaging donors differently? Are you broadening your message or changing your services?
Companies that succeed and get stronger during crisis do a lot of experimenting. With this comes a lot of failure, which is what inspired today’s blog headline. What are you doing different? What are you failing at? Does your organization embrace failure and celebrate it with regards to your fundraising efforts?
We’re all focused on emotionally connecting with the customer, and fundraising professionals pursue this same connection with donors. However, there is something much more powerful — a “cultural connection“. Does your fundraising program make this distinction and even try to make this connection? I suspect that the fundraising thought-leader who figures this one out will de-throne Penelope Burk and her “Donor-Centered Fundraising” philosophies as the hottest new thing.
Does your fundraising case for support connect with donors or is something just connects with you and your volunteers? The speaker says that messages that connect with people travel faster than your competitors messaging. Are people buzzing about your agency? Is your fundraising message being talked about around the water cooler? Are people echoing your mission and fundraising messaging on social media?
When your mission and vision as well as your fundraising activities are just “average,” then that is all it will ever be. What are you doing that is fun, exceptional, and buzz-worthy. How are you communicating that? How do you get your clients, volunteers, and donors excited about anything?
Can you define in “7 words or less” what you do? Are you “obsessed” with your story? Is it simple? Is it direct? Is it supercharged?

I am willing to bet that I could go back to that 28:49 minute video, watch it again, and wring another six bullet points out of it, but there has to be at least one thing I shared with you or questions that I posed that has you scratching your head this morning. If that is the case, then please scroll down to the comment box and share your question, answer, or interesting thought.

If you have a little bit of time today, I really urge you to watch Jeremy Gutsche’s video about innovation. It is really awesome and thought-provoking. Here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4gAkM72ah4&feature=player_embedded]

Here’s to your health!

Don’t sing the ‘goodbye song’ to your non-profit donors

September 7, 2012 erik Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising, organizational development

Today, I am focusing on a post that John wrote about attribution theory and contingency theory based upon a “classroom song” story that a friend shared with him over a fierce game of Scrabble. After reading his post, a song jumped into my head from my days at Grace Pre-School in Mount Prospect, Illinois. It goes something like this:

“Grace Pre-School is over and its time for us to go home;
Goodbye, goodbye;
Be always kind and good;
Goodbye, goodbye;
Be always kind and good.”

That was the song we sang at the end of the day when it was time to pack-up and go home. I can’t believe how four decades later that song sprung into my head as conveniently as if I had just sung it yesterday.

At the ripe old age of four, that pre-school song helped me bring the school day to a close. It reminded me to put my toys away, say goodbye to my friends, get my coat and bag, find my Mom, and leave the building without shedding a tear. It only worked within the confines of the church that housed my pre-school program. It didn’t result in me being “kind and good” . . . you can ask my Mom and she’ll tell you that I could be a terror on certain days.

To think that singing my pre-school — anywhere and anytime — would yield the same results or “cause” me to be “kind and good” is quite simply misattribution.

In the non-profit fundraising world, we do this all the time with donors and it goes something like this:

Contribution comes into the office,
The contribution is entered into the donor database,
The computer generates a thank you letter that is sent to the donor,
The donor gets added to a newsletter mailing list, and they receive a few newsletters,
Another solicitation is made that results in another contribution.

Cha-ching! The donor is conditioned. The money rolls in. It is oh so simple. I can almost hear fundraising professionals singing a song that goes something like this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq3tVrTFcKk]

Cause and effect is such a great thing until you realize that you’ve attributed the wrong stimulus to the wrong results.

Penelope Burk, CEO of Cygnus Applied Research, does a great job in this interview with The Chronicle of Philanthropy of debunking the myths associated with singing the donor song. She points to research illustrating how the average non-profit loses 50% of donors somewhere between their first and second contribution to their agency.

Huh? I wonder if those fundraising professionals mistakenly sang my pre-school “goodbye song” to their donors instead of the “money song”. LOL

All kidding aside, Burk is the queen of “Donor-Centered Fundraising” which tells us that cookie cutter approaches to donor stewardship result in high turnover rates. Donors stop donating because they feel “over-solicited”. Many fundraising professionals hear this and think that fewer solicitations are the remedy. This conclusion is simply not true. Burk does a great job of explaining the subtle nuances behind “over-solicitation” in The Chronicle of Philanthropy interview:

“. . . over-solicitation is not a frequency of asks in a set period of time; rather, it is being asked to give again before donors are satisfied about what happened with their last gift.”

Let’s bottom-line this . . .

Every donor is like a snowflake — they’re different.
Everyone has a different threshold for what they need to see in order to be satisfied about what happened with their last gift.
No one responds to the same stewardship activities the same way.

When Burk talks about being “donor-centered,” she is really saying that we need to get to know our donors individually. We need to craft stewardship strategies around donors’ needs and preferences in order to avoid “over-solicitation”.

Am I hearing some of you mutter words like “crazy” and “impossible“? If so, then I encourage you to dwell and explore the following ideas:

database contact records
segmentation
surveys
discussions
focus groups
stewardship plan

My parting advice to you is stop misattributing the “money song” to securing donations because you are losing half of your donors after their first contribution and 90% by the fifth gift. Read up on the concepts of “Attribution Theory” and “Contingency Theory” and stop singing the “Goodbye song” to your donors.

How does your non-profit organization customize its stewardship activities to individual donors? Do you just do so for your major gift prospects? Where do you store your individualized stewardship plans? What role does your donor database play in managing your Moves Management program? Can you share your success results? Did your donor loyalty rate improve?

Here’s to your health!

Reaching for the stars? Do your homework first!

August 31, 2012 erik Fundraising, organizational development, Planning

Today, I am focusing on a post that John wrote that was inspired by the following quotation from Robert Browning:

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?”

He uses Browning’s words to springboard off into two significant issues that every non-profit organization confronts during strategic planning.

How lofty should the strategic goals be?
What capacity building efforts need to be undertaken to support the new vision and strategic goals?

If you’re a non-profit professional who dislikes strategic planning, I suspect that John’s blog post might speak to you. I also suspect it will give you a much-needed new perspective before heading into your next strategic planning initiative.

While it is tempting for me to use John’s post to get on a soapbox and pontificate about strategic planning, I will resist doing so and instead talk about annual campaign planning.

As many of you know, I spent the last six years working with countless non-profit organizations on planning, implementing and evaluating annual campaigns. During the planning process, there are a variety of decisions that must be made including how big is the fundraising goal.

My approach has always been to starts off conservatively:

Identify prospective donors
Evaluate capacity to give and propensity to give
Set a suggested ask amount based upon what the prospect is likely to give (factoring in who is asking, giving history to the agency, and state of the relationship between the organization and prospective donor)

After going through all of these gymnastics, we have a spreadsheet with names and ask amounts. It is at this point that I urge the planning committee to sum the column of ask amounts and then divide by two.

Why divide by two? First, not everyone is going to say ‘YES’ to your request for a contribution. Second, not everyone who agrees to contribute will agree to the give at the suggested ask amount. Third, we sometimes miss the mark when setting suggested ask amounts.

This approach flies in the face of Robert Browning’s quotation and John Greco’s blog post.

But wait . . . there’s more!

Looking around the planning table, the sight isn’t pretty. Campaign volunteers are usually a little upset. All of that work and the goal seems small. The executive director or fundraising professional is wringing their hands and they look nauseated.

It is at this point that I like to introduce the idea of “reaching for the stars”.

In my opinion, timing is everything. To introduce the idea of reaching for the stars, before everyone has a realistic view of organizational and campaign capacity, is irresponsible.

Truth be told, this is my favorite part of the annual campaign planning process. Campaign volunteers are chomping at the bit to talk about what needs to be done to increase the size of the campaign goal. The following are just a few of the questions that get asked and answered:

How many more prospects need to be identified and added to our prospect list?
How many more volunteer solicitors need to be recruited?
Does the case for support need to be strengthened?
Is there more cultivation or stewardship activities that should be done prior to the solicitation that would maximize the chances of getting what we need to reach our campaign goal?

These are engaging and powerful discussions that are tons of fun to facilitate!

Finally, these conversations always end with a robust discussion about how the new annual campaign stretch goal should be included in the agency’s budget. This is where it gets interesting.

Some folks are conservative and advocate for budgeting the original smaller goal. Others want to go for it and budget the whole amount.

Over the years, I’ve given lots of different sounding advice to a number of different organizations. However, the common thread has always been that you need to have “skin in the game”. If you don’t hold yourself accountable to reaching the stretch goal, then you’ll never reach it.

Human beings normally don’t accomplish things unless we absolutely have to do so. Behind every audacious vision has been an urgent and pressing need to do it. So, whatever you end up budgeting, it needs to feel like a bit of a stretch.

In conclusion, I encourage you to set an annual campaign goal that is a bit of a stretch, but whatever you do don’t just pull the number out of the air or apply a percentage increase over last year. Do the hard work around prospecting and evaluating propensity and capacity, then conservatively divide everything by a factor of two or three.

It is only at this point that everyone will be ready to reach for the stars and focus on those capacity building questions that are necessary for success!

How has your organization set its annual campaign goals? What has worked or not worked for you? Please share your thoughts in the comment section because we can all learn from each other.

Non-profit organizations turn, turn, turn . . .

August 24, 2012 erik Board development, organizational development, Planning

Today, I am focusing on a post that John wrote that was inspired by a baby crib mobile. He uses the mobile as an analogy for organizational change and equilibrium. Throughout his post he references both major and minor changes in the corporate landscape and talks about how those cultures balance and re-balance.

As I dwell on this post, I think about a number of non-profits who I’ve had the honor of working with throughout the years:

There is the organization who employed one of the most talented fundraising professionals I ever knew, and they decided not to re-hire the position after his departure. Needless to say, their resource development efforts are struggling.
There is the agency whose most influential and engaging board volunteer resigned due to “burn out,” and they decided to not find ways to keep him engaged. Needless to say, he faded away and isn’t even a donor anymore.
There is an executive director who freaked out after the economic crash in 2008, decided to lay off his grant writer and assumed on all of those responsibilities in addition to his regular responsibilities. Needless to say, someone is feeling overwhelmed and burned out.

I think the baby crib mobile is such a great analogy for what non-profits deal with on a daily basis. In fact, I think it is even more appropriate for non-profit organizations than for-profit corporations. Why? Simply look at how much juggling the average organization does because of significantly limited resources. Consider how much more important a board of directors is to the functioning of a non-profit organization compared to a for-profit corporation. So, when one talented employee or influential board volunteer leaves, then everything feels off off-kilter and the struggle for equilibrium feels like a roller coaster ride.

Looking at a non-profit through this mobile lens, I see a chaotic, whirling dance of people that’s bobbing and dipping and threatening to crash and burn.

The difference between a non-profit organization crashing and burning versus re-balancing to find a new equilibrium is huge and highly dependent on their approach to managing change. To some extent, I also believe that organizational cultures that embrace planning at their core and actually implement and adhere to those plans (e.g. succession plan) during times of change are the most successful at re-balancing in a graceful manner.

Those organizations, who don’t have very much capacity and make poor decisions during tumultuous times, end up in crisis. Sure, balance is ultimately achieved, but at what price?

The bad news for these types of non-profits is that change is a constant in our world, and their baby crib mobile probably looks like the tangled and dysfunctional one that hung above my crib (because you know that I was the kid who could never leave anything well enough alone). 🙂

Looking back at the three examples that I described at the beginning of this post, I see a common thread . . . LEADERSHIP. I am talking about both board leadership as well as executive leadership. There is no doubt in my mind that the key to successfully keeping your organization from getting tangled and unbalanced is talented, engaged and committed leaders.

And isn’t that just the perfect cherry on top of the sundae when you look back of all of this week’s blog posts? Again, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Dani Robbins, for guest posting all week-long on board development and executive leadership. I am very happy that she will be contributing a board development post to DonorDreams blog every month.

After reading John’s blog post, I can’t get this song out of my head. So, I thought it would be appropriate to end this post with it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvf20Y6eoM]

How chaotic is your organizational mobile? Do you have a story about how your agency managed “change” really well? Please scroll down and share it with the rest of us in the comment section.

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit boards ask: To search or not to search?

August 23, 2012 erik Board development, organizational development

Dani Robbins is the Founder & Principal Strategist at Non Profit Evolution located in Columbus, Ohio. I’ve invited my good friend and fellow non-profit consultant to blog this week about board development related topics. She also agreed to join the DonorDreams team and contribute a board development post every month. Dani also recently co-authored a book titled “Innovative Leadership Workbook for Nonprofit Executives” that you can find on Amazon.com. I hope you have enjoyed the genius musings of my friend for the last next few days . . .

The question comes up anytime someone resigns, and often when someone is forced out as well. Do we really have to do a search?!?! It’s usually followed by “we have someone that’s great” or “there’s a Board member that’s interested.” Wonderful! Encourage those people to apply and do a search.

Why? Because it’s the most legitimate way to ascend to leadership. The absence of a search leaves people, at a minimum, with the perception of impropriety. Even if you are the one they think is great, or you are the Board member who is interested, encourage the search and then apply. Perception is reality and leadership is hard enough without people thinking you didn’t earn the spot. Why set your new leader — or yourself — up for that?

In the absence of a search, people, at best, become mildly uncomfortable by the thought that there might be something unsavory going on. At worst, they choose not to follow what they perceive as an illegitimate leader. Either way, an internal conflict gets created that takes people’s attention away from the work at hand. It is a conflict that could have been easily avoided. It may also be a violation of your organization’s policies. Most policies include a requirement and a process for doing a search. Any lawyer will tell you that once you violate one policy, the remaining policies become more difficult to enforce.

Now is the easiest and least expensive time to post an opening. In Columbus, Ohio alone, there are a variety of free or low-cost search web opportunities including OANO, the United Way and Craigslist. Post it on your organization’s website; and if your organization is part of a larger national organization or state or county-wide collaborative, then post the position opening on the group’s web site as well.

You can also create a posting and send it out to all the agencies with whom you partner and ask them to post it.

Finally, if you have a budget, you can pay for an ad, and because of the internet, that ad can be as long as you’d like. If you’re interested in advertising in the classified section of the local paper, you will still have to pay per word, but even in that case, there is usually a contract with an internet site to post the ad as well. In your ad, I recommend you request a cover letter as well as a resume.

Before you post the position . . .

review what you want in a candidate (both overall and by priority area)
determine what salary range you can offer
review the current range for such a position in your community
consider the job you want the applicant to do and the skill set and experience they will need to be successful (both the minimum requirements and your preferred qualifications)
consider the culture of your organization and the values a candidate would have to have to be successful in that culture.

If you are seeking resource development staff, consider if you want an event planner, a grant writer or an individual giving / major gifts person. If you are seeking an executive director, consider if you want someone to grow your organization, maintain it or turn it around. Each is a different skill set, and even if the applicant has previous experience in the role, then it may not be relevant to the needs at hand.

Prioritize the skills you seek. Write your interview and reference questions to reflect the needs at hand, by priority area. An Executive Director may be proficient at resource development, board development, operations, community profile building, marketing, financial acumen, and more. They may or may not be a subject matter expert. They may have prior experience at a similar agency. What are the top 5 priorities in order of importance to your organization? Develop three questions under each priority area and one or two questions, each, for everything else.

Inquire as to what applicants have done as opposed to what they would do. There are lots of things we would all like to do in a perfect world, but what we have done is a much better gauge of what we will do in the future. Plus, you can confirm it during the reference check.

Once you begin receiving resumes, filter applicants by their ability to follow your instructions to include a cover letter and resume, their writing ability (if writing is a piece of the job), and if they meet your minimum or preferred qualifications.Education and relevant experience are the price of admission to an interview. After that, good judgment and fit are the most important criteria for me.

In addition to the standard questions confirming relevant experience and preferred education, I also recommend including values-based questions:

How does the candidate respond to mistakes s/he made and mistakes made by others?
Within what amount do they return phone calls/emails?
How has s/he handled it when s/he disagreed with a supervisor?
Do they generally get work in early or at the last-minute?

You will learn a lot about the judgment of your applicants, and their ability to fit onto your team during the interview process. Good leader can do a lot to groom and guide a mentee, but improving someone’s judgment or changing their values are not usually among them.

Create a measurement tool to rate applicant’s answers by section. Interviewing should not solely be about feel. While it’s true that you should always trust your gut, you should also always have a process to assess candidates. I recommend prioritizing the skill sets you seek and use a 1-3 scale for each answer that allows you to tally up answers by priority area. This process will allow you to compare applicants against your criteria by area and overall. I recommend a minimum of two interviews, with a background check being conducted in between, and a reference check of your top candidates being conducted after the final interview.

When you call the finalist to make an offer, include information about salary and benefits. When you finish speaking, wait for them to accept. Know before you make the call if you have the authority to negotiate salary and if so, how high. Be prepared to answer benefits questions. Once they accept, discuss start date and a plan to announce your new hire to your organization’s constituents. Congratulations!

Hiring is one of the most critical factors to the success or failure of your organization. It takes time, as does almost everything worth doing. A search will inspire the board, the staff, and the community’s confidence in your leader and your confidence in their success. It is one of the most important roles and responsibilities of your non-profit board.

I’m a non-profit board volunteer

August 22, 2012 erik Board development, organizational development, volunteers

Dani Robbins is the Founder & Principal Strategist at Non Profit Evolution located in Columbus, Ohio. I’ve invited my good friend and fellow nonprofit consultant to blog this week about board development related topics. She also agreed to join the DonorDreams team and contribute a board development post every month. Dani also recently co-authored a book titled “Innovative Leadership Workbook for Nonprofit Executives” that you can find on Amazon.com. I hope you enjoy the genius musings of my friend for the next few days . . .

I’m presenting a workshop this summer called the “10 Dysfunctions of a Board”. As you might imagine, one of the top ten is what I have begun to think of as the “I’m a Volunteer” syndrome.

Perhaps you’ve had some version of this conversation with a member of your board. It sounds like this:

“Dani, I don’t have time for this; I’m a volunteer!”

And they are, but they are also a board member who agreed to do the work of the board. Now, agree may be a fuzzy verb to use because it’s possible they didn’t agree at all. It’s possible, all they were told is:

“We only need an hour a month of your time.”

If that’s the case (and it often is) shame on whoever told them that. Boards represent the community as the stewards of an organization. It is very difficult to steward anything well in one hour a month.

You will get the Board you build.

Now, this blog is not intended to knock the millions of dedicated and committed volunteers across this city and the county that serve their local non-profits with distinction. I applaud you, and I am grateful for your commitment! Thank you for your service to our community!

This blog post is not intended to knock anyone. I aspire to lay out a path of development, so that organizations can have the right people in leadership seats.

How do you do that? The best way I know to do that is to front-load it. Front-load is my 2012 word of the year. It means to be clear about things up front, so there is no confusion.

Front-loading board prospect appointments look like this:

“Thank you for your interest in serving on the Board of Directors.
We are delighted to have this opportunity to meet with you.
Our Board meets on the 1st Tuesday of the month at 8:30 am. Are you available at that time?
We anticipate Board service will take approximately 5 hours per month, (1.5 hours at the board meeting, 1.5 hours at a committee meeting, 2 hours working with the committee or the CEO to accomplish the work for the committee), but that could go up significantly should there be something of consequence to discuss or address.
Board members are expected to attend 75% of Board meetings, serve on at least one committee, attend agency events, act as an ambassador in the community, introduce us to your circle of influence, give a “significant to you” financial gift, and help us to secure an additional gifts from your circle of influence and, as appropriate, your company.
Is this something to which you can commit?”

If they say yes, Great! Though we’re still not finished.

Their candidacy still needs to be vetted by the Board Development committee. If they are recommended, nominated and approved, then they also need to be oriented. I like to orient board members after their election yet before their first meeting. That way, they can still opt out once they understand the full scope of the expectations and the role of the Board.

After their orientation, individual board volunteers, and the boards upon which they serve, should be evaluated annually. This can be as simple as taking your board expectations document and turning it into a 1-5 self rating form. It can also be as complicated as tracking all gifts, training, participation and meeting attendance and asking the Board Development or Executive Committee to evaluate each member individually.

The important thing is that you are intentional about your needs and clear about your expectations. If you are, then people will rise to the occasion, or they will defer because they can’t. Both will work toward your goals of building a strong board of directors that understands their role and works collectively to serve the agency and the community.

As always, I welcome your comments, and your experience.

Innovation Keynote Speaker Jeremy Gutsche – 30 Minute Speech

Innovation Keynote Speaker Jeremy Gutsche –
30 Minute Speech