nonprofit – Page 57 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Are you a successful non-profit professional?

August 3, 2012 erik leadership, organizational development

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

I just had lunch with dear friend a few days ago. She is smart. She is talented. She runs an awesome non-profit organization that is growing by leaps and bounds. However, during lunch our conversation turned to lots of questions and doubts:

Is she still the right leader for this organization at this point in time?
Has the organization outgrown what she has to offer?
Will she know when it is the right time to leave?
Is there someone she should be grooming to whom she could pass the baton at the appropriate time?

This discussion was surprising to me because she is so obviously successful, but it isn’t apparent to her. This got me thinking of an awesome blog post by John Greco titled “Success“. Since today is OD Friday at DonorDreams blog, I encourage you to click over and read John’s post. After digesting his thoughts, please circle back here and re-read the list of questions that my friend posed over lunch. After accomplishing all of that, scroll down and post your thoughts in the comment box below.

What practices and tools do you and your non-profit organization utilize to let you and your donors know that you’re successful? We can all learn from each other. So, please take a moment to share!

Here’s to your health.

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

A one page strategic plan in 60 minutes?

August 2, 2012 erik Planning

When it comes to strategic planning, many of my non-profit executive director friends tell me that it is not one their favorite things to do. In fact, many of them told me they would rather have a root canal performed without novocaine than go through a strategic planning process.

I can sympathize with this mindset. Very few people like to wake up in the morning and take a good hard took at themselves in the mirror. Most planning models start with an assessment / evaluation phase, which sometimes feels very harsh and judgmental. If assessment isn’t the objection, then the consensus building process can feel tedious for some people and in some cases it can even become contentious if a few strong-willed individuals hijack the process.

Unfortunately, these objections to planning can erode organizational stability because planning gets put off sometimes forever. Without an organizational blueprint, everything becomes an organic process and decisions get made based upon the loudest voice in the boardroom.

This is not the best way to run a non-profit organization.

When talking to friends who are obviously anti-planning, I usually steer the conversation toward different planning models in an effort to find something that might work better for their circumstances. After all, one size doesn’t fit all . . . right?

Recently, I decided to expand the number of planning models in my consultant toolbox. So, I purchased the following two planning books and started reading:

To be honest, I was a skeptic before I started reading. Now, I am much less so.

If you are looking for a shortcut that results in a comprehensive strategic plan that addresses a variety of strategic issues all condensed down into a one page document, then you will be disappointed. This strategic planning model is interesting, but it cannot perform miracles.

However, if you have one (possibly two) things that need some attention, then this model will work for you. It will help focus your agency those issues into goals, measurable objectives and accountable actionable.

Perhaps, the most important thing to keep in mind is that regardless of the planning model your organization chooses for strategic planning, it still involves engaging a variety of different stakeholders and building consensus around the who-what-where-when-why-how. Most importantly, all planning models must get participants to focus on one key question:

“Which parts of this plan am I so excited about that I’m willing to take responsibility for making it happen.”

After all, planning is not an event . . . planning is not about the resulting document . . . planning is an engagement activity.

No strategic planning model will ever change this basic idea.

On a side note, fundraising professionals should look at this planning model because I suspect it would be great to use with a special event fundraising committee or your annual campaign team.

Have you ever employed the 60 minute, one page planning model to anything at your agency? If so, how well did it work for you? What do you attribute to your success or lack of success?

Managing vs Leading: a follow-up post

August 1, 2012 erik organizational development

Last week, I wrote a post titled “Managing versus leading at your non-profit organization“. Well, it seems like this is a hot topic for many of you because a day has not gone by without someone saying something to me or emailing me about it. Additionally, my blog analytics reports indicate that this post has been popular. So, I thought I’d take a moment this morning to post a quick follow-up on this topic and share some of what you’ve said to me privately.

Smaller non-profit organizations

The idea of leading versus managing appears to be different for small non-profit organizations. Those of you who work at agencies with budgets under $1 million have emphatically said to me that you wear many different hats throughout the day primarily because your budget is stretched very thin. As a result, many of you have described a typical work day that you believe involves significantly more managing than leading.

When I’ve pressed many of you on the question of how to solve this situation, you’ve all had the same reaction, which is that you need to raise more money and hire more staff.

While I generally agree with you, this solution is simple and possibly unattainable because you’ve described being caught in feedback loop that doesn’t allow for you to find the time to focus on fundraising.

In the interest of being solution-focused this morning, the following are just a few ideas that you may want to chew on:

Identify a funding partner and secure organizational development and capacity building funding to help build a volunteer program, improve your fundraising efforts or strengthen your board.
Identify a strategic alliance with another non-profit organization in your community. This might free you up and allow you to shift more time from managing to leading.
Explore merger and acquisition opportunities. If what you’re saying about bigger non-profit organizations is true (e.g. more resources allows their CEO to spend more time leading), then it makes sense to chew on the idea of how you can become a bigger organization.

Bigger non-profit organizations

The idea of leading versus managing also appears to be different for larger non-profit organizations. Those of you who work at agencies with multi-million dollar budgets have emphatically said to me that you end up focusing more on managing than on leading when the staff underneath you doesn’t perform or do well at executing their jobs.

With a sluggish economy and job market, the solution is obvious . . . find ways to hire more talented people than what you currently have on your staff. While this is a simple solution, it is something with which many of you are struggling. Why? Because we are non-profit professionals and we see this approach as ruthless. You have explained to me that non-profit organizations (specifically social service agencies) are in the business of saving people and not putting them in situations where they need help.

You need to find a way to get over this attitudinal barrier because the job market will not be abundant forever. Now is the time to upgrade your staff. Finding a way to do so in a compassionate way might be one of the most transformational things you do during this decade.

Your leadership toolbox

As many of you have engaged me in this conversation, we’ve found ourselves talking about tools, strategies and approaches that you think help you restore balance between the competing ideas of leading and managing. The following is a brief list of your thoughts:

Board development is important. Leadership isn’t just something that comes from the CEO’s office. A strong board that understands their roles and responsibilities and keeps its nose out of the operational details and focused on big picture strategic issues is more likely to demand the same from you.
Strategic planning is foundational. Many of you have said that it is impossible to lead without a leadership blueprint, and your strategic plan serves that function. The plan is not an “end” strategy, but you’ve said it is a “means to an end” . . . it is a starting point.
Executive coaching provides perspective. While executive coaching still seems to be more prevalent among for-profit CEOs, some of you told me that you’ve engaged the services of an executive coach. It is hard to “see the forest through the trees“. Your executive coach helps you with this issue and brings a sense of accountability and action-focus to your job.
Tools and systems make it easier. The following is a list of tools and systems that many of you referenced: annual performance plans, organizational dashboards, time management tools and practices, trainings, weekly meetings with key staff, etc.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this topic is very large and could take up a month’s worth of blog posts. I also find it curious that so many of you want to have this discussion off-line, which is why I decided to double back and ask you to please reconsider and post your thoughts in the comment box below. How do you know when you are leading compared to managing? What are you doing (what tools or strategies are you using) that enables you to do more leading? We can all learn from each other. It will only take one or two minutes out of your day to post a comment. Please?

Here’s to your health!

Why Nonprofits Should Use Skype

July 30, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, Uncategorized

Communication has come a long way since quill and parchment. Today information is sent through the air at high speeds and people can get what they need in a matter of seconds. Email is a standard in today’s communication arsenal, but today I’m going talk about voice calls. Talking is still faster than writing and today we are going to look at how Skype can help when it comes to communicating through voice.

Image representing Skype as depicted in CrunchBase — Image via CrunchBase

Skype is a powerful tool that can be a great benefit to any nonprofit organization. Skype can be used to make voice or video calls to people in your contact list. I know what you might be thinking, “we already have phones for this, Marissa”, but allow me to show you the flexibility of using Skype for calls.

Calls (voice or video) to users in your contact list who are also using Skype are free. That’s right, FREE. This can add up to big cell phone savings. How many times do you send an email knowing it’s going to take longer than you’d like to get the information you need just because everyone has a ton of email to go through? If everyone in your organization was on Skype if a person had a question, they could just Skype call them and get the information in a matter of seconds. Skype calls can be answered no matter where the person is logged in from, if that’s home, a cafe, or the cubicle next door.

By adding money to your Skype account, phone calls can be made to landlines. This is a nice feature to have if a person on your team is even found in a place with a wifi signal but no cell phone reception. Additionally, by adding money to your Skype account, you can make international calls at lower rates than you would if you used a landline phone.

Skype also allows users to attach a single phone number to their account to make it easy for calls, whether made from Skype or a landline, to be answered from anywhere. With a mobile app, Skype users are able to answer voice and video calls on the go.

Skype also comes with voicemail functionality. This can be a great tool for agencies. By simply creating an account with phone number attached to it, messages left in this voicemail box can be accessed by anyone who has access to the account; making returning calls a team effort.

One more feature of using Skype for voice calls is the ability to record phone calls. If your agency is having an important conference call, it can be easily recorded through Skype. This recording could the be posted for absent team members to listen to when they are available.

There is much more to Skype besides just making voice and video calls that can be helpful for your organization. When in a video call on Skype users have the ability to share their screens with people on the call. This feature could come in handy for Board Meetings being held online if not all of the Board Members could make it. Skype also comes with an instant messaging service that allows you to send quick messages to people in your contact list when a call is not needed. Through this chat system, documents can also be easily shared between team members.

Skype is a feature rich application that has a lot to offer a nonprofit organization. I have seen where using it has increased communication between team members just due to the pure flexibility that comes along with it. Do you think Skype is a good fit for your agency? Do you already use Skype? If so, what do you use it for the most? Let talk about it in the comments below!

Your non-profit organization is like a car and you are the mechanic

July 27, 2012 erik organizational development

I am trying something new this Friday with John’s organizational development blog post. Please take a moment and ask yourself the following few questions:

Are you trying to build organizational development capacity? Are you a small organization who is trying to get bigger?
Are you experiencing a staffing issue? Is one of your employees not fitting in well with the rest of the team? Or are they experiencing performance issues?
Are you adding a new program or a new service location?
Are you contracting your organization and eliminating programs and service locations?
Have you hired a consultant to help your agency with something?
Is your organization’s board of directors disengaged?

As I read John’s post titled “Pieces / Parts,” I found all of these questions racing through my head as potential springboard themes for my post this morning.

So, here is what I propose we do this week. If you answered ‘YES’ to any of the above questions, please click here and go read John’s post.

As you read his long and systemic post, I know you are going to have an epiphany about something happening at your agency regarding organizational development. When that happens, please jump back here and share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Are you a systemic thinker? If not, where are you going to find that person to help you with your quest of repairing, improving or building your car . . . errrrr, I mean . . . your non-profit organization?

We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Survey Says? We can all learn a lot from top non-profit brands!

July 26, 2012 erik Fundraising

When I think about opinion polls and surveys, the first thing I think of are the folks at Harris Interactive, who are widely known for The Harris Poll. Sure, there are lots of people in America who are in the business of knowing your opinion, but Harris is the granddaddy of them all. So, when Harris released the results from their 2012 Non-Profit EquiTrend study, I decided to click-through and see which non-profit brands average Americans recognize most, trust and value.

The following is how Harris describes this project:

“The 2012 Harris Poll Non-Profit EquiTrend (EQ) study measures the brand health of 87 non-profit brands across seven important categories, including Youth Interest, Animal Welfare, Health, Social Service, Disability, International Aid, and Environmental. Harris Poll EquiTrend provides the insight our communities, corporate sponsors, and non-profit organizations require to make informed decisions about donations and overall support.”

I must admit that I was a little confused when I first read the webpage that described their findings, and I had to go back and re-read everything a second time. Click here to see that page and read more about this project. I think the confusion resulted from Harris dividing their findings into seven different categories, and it was difficult to figure out which agencies were at the top of the “collective” non-profit branding survey. For example, the Girl Scouts were at the top of the EquiTrend Youth Interest Non-Profit Brand survey, but they weren’t one of the “overall” top four brands when you combined all seven categories into one comprehensive list.

The following are the top four non-profit brands in 2012 according to what people told Harris:

American Red Cross
Habitat for Humanity
Salvation Army
Feeding America

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that I regularly say: “We can all learn from each other.” I think this expression comes from a deep-rooted belief that re-inventing the wheel is a waste of time. With this in mind, I decided to share with you this morning YouTube videos from each of these top non-profit brands. Please take a brief moment and click-through these videos.

When you’re done (and it will take only a few minutes), please use the comment box below to share some of your thoughts and observations. What do you see these well-recognized non-profit brands telling people about what they do? Why do you think their messaging is so effective? Why does it resonate and stick with people?

American Red Cross
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fny_spkbC0s]

Habitat for Humanity
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur_2bpPvKtQ&feature=BFa&list=PLF93D4C1B5F0A2648]

Salvation Army
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QheOmr8C4dA]

Feeding America
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l-ojOoFSCo&feature=relmfu]

So, what did you think about what these four top non-profit brands had to say? Did you have any “big ideas” about your agency’s branding efforts while watching these videos? If so, please share that thought with us in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Advice for all non-profits: “It is time to talk human again!”

July 25, 2012 erik Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising, organizational development, Planning, technology, volunteers

So, I was sitting in my living room watching television and trying to multitask last night when one of the commercials that I was trying to ignore jumped out of my television, grabbed me by my shirt collar and shook me hard. It was an advertisement by Skype and it was very cute. You probably know which one I am talking about . . . it is the commercial with the middle school aged boy and girl passing notes in class. I’ve embedded it below if you want to view it again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCJAASK50lY]

I especially love the following line in this ad:

“Long before email threads, we turned to each other. It is when the spirit of collaboration meant more than an ‘FYI’ or ‘Reply All’. When messages were passed along by simple gestures, validated by an honest expression.”

Long after this commercial was over, my mind kept straying back to it. I must have re-played it over and over and over again in my head all night long. After a few hours, it dawned on me that there is something about this message that obviously resonates with me and my point of view about non-profit organizations.

For the last few years, I became more focused on using technology to engage people (e.g. non-profit clients, donors, board volunteers, etc) in a way that felt efficient and productive. Thinking back on it, I have tried all sorts of technology tools all in the name of saving time:

Email (Ugh . . . I can send wickedly long emails with lots of detail)
Google Docs
GoToMeeting
Conference call bridges
e-newsletters

I suspect this trend is rooted in the idea of being respectful of a donor and volunteer’s time. After all, life is so busy and very fast nowadays. However, are we really being more efficient? Are we really getting more done? Are we really simplifying things or do our efforts really just de-humanize the experience and end up doing more harm than good?

I think United Airlines hit the nail on the head more than 20 years ago when they run this iconic television ad:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU2rpcAABbA]

Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I believe technology is here to stay, and we all better learn how to appropriately use it to keep our donors and volunteers informed and engaged.

I suspect that technology will also continue to creep into our lives and become a stronger fundraising solicitation tool over the next decade. I also suspect that more and more board and committee meetings will happen over Skype and other online video platforms.

Before you totally surrender your non-profit and its relationships to the “Technology Gods,” I encourage you to take the following advice from our friends at United Airlines and Skype:

Scale back your email and non-personal technology efforts with volunteers and donors.
Don’t make-up reasons for volunteers to attend a committee meeting or board meeting. Make sure that the agenda contains important stuff.
Don’t make-up reasons to sit down with a donor. Make sure every touch is engaging, enlightening, fulfilling, and fun for them. It is more about them and less about you. Right? Connecting people with your mission in an emotional way is a recipe for success! And technology is anti-emotional.
Visit people in-person, but do so in a way that feels important and not a waste of time.
Try your hand at online video conferencing. Of all the technology available to you, this one somewhat allows some sense of personal interaction. Start small with an individual or committee first.

I think we can embrace technology in a way that makes sense and is not de-humanizing. It will take a conscious effort on your part. Are you up to the challenge? Or are you just going to continue ‘forwarding’ that email thread with an attachment and clicking ‘reply all”? Please scroll down and share your thoughts about either commercial? Did either have an impact on your non-profit point of view? I would love to hear your thoughts and what you plan on doing about it.

Here’s to your health!

Managing versus leading at your non-profit organization

July 24, 2012 erik Board development

This morning I am running off to facilitate an interesting discussion among some very smart non-profit professionals. The topic of the discussion is: “The Art of Being an Executive Director: Leading vs. Managing“.

To be honest, I’m so excited about today’s discussion that I’ve been looking forward to it for a month.

In preparation for today’s facilitated discussion, I developed the following questions to help get the creative juices flowing and stimulate discussion:

What is the difference between leading and managing?
How do you know when you’re leading or just managing?
Does this mean leaders can abdicate their role in implementation?
Are there tools you use that hold you accountable to leading?

Usually, when I’m asked to facilitate discussions like this one, I also try to bring various resources to the table that participants might find useful and seek out after the discussion. The following are just a few of the resources I plan on sharing:

Leading a Nonprofit Organization: Tips & Tools for Executive Directors and Team Leaders (an online pdf resource developed by Compassion Capital Fund National Resource Center)
How to Think Like a CEO: The 22 Vital Traits You Need to Be the Person at the Top (a book authored by D. A. Benton)
The Leadership Engine (a book authored by Noel Tichy with Eli Cohen)
Good to Great (a book by Jim Collins)
Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (a book and field guide by Patrick Lencioni)

Rather than going on and on this morning about my thoughts on leading versus managing your non-profit organization, I thought I’d ask you to think about some of the questions I posed and you can weigh-in with your thoughts using the comment box below.

As I’ve been saying for more than a year now . . . “We can all learn from each other.”

Come on . . . please? The comment volume for this blog has decreased in the last few months. I know that the summer is here, but let’s try to reverse this trend just for today. Please take a few minutes out of your morning and leave a comment. It might make all the difference in the world for someone else. I would consider it a personal favor. 🙂

Here’s to your health!

How to Keep Social Media Updated While on Vacation

July 23, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

Vacation season is well upon us so I thought in this post, I would focus on some applications that can help you keep the social media train running while you’re away.

In my mind, I see running social media as a customer service position. So it is important that while you are on vacation your community doesn’t feel left behind. Planning out your posts is an important step to make sure that your social media plan doesn’t skip a beat. There are many templates out there that can help you lay out what you are going to post and to which network. It is important that this plan is a detailed as possible and shared with a teammate who might be looking over your social media sites while you’re away.

After you’ve planned everything out you can actually schedule your posts to be posted in the future. This can be done in a couple of ways. First, Facebook recently added scheduling functionality. When you are typing a status update on your organization’s page, you will see a clock in the bottom left corner of the box in which you are typing. Upon clicking on it you will be able to assign a time that you’d like this post to be published. All posts are then accessible through the Activity Log in the page’s admin panel.

Third party applications can also help with the scheduling of posts on Twitter. The most popular application is Hootsuite. Hootsuite can also schedule facebook posts, so it might be the all-in-one solution for your and your team. Other social media sites such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+ do not seem to have scheduling functionality at this time. It will be important for you to leave your plan with someone who will have access to updating your sites while you are out of the office.

In addition, if your organization runs a blog, you can have those posts either waiting as drafts to be published or scheduled to be posted using your blog management software. That way, the blog doesn’t look like it has skipped a beat in your absence.

Even though you have taken the time before your vacation to schedule the posts to be published, I would recommend that someone still look over those posts and have the ability to cancel their publication if needed. Part of having a strong social media presence online is being current and sometimes something happens that needs to be posted over a post that you planned out a week ago. If you can, avoid sharing log in information with your team member and either make them an administrator on that site or set them up using a third party application such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck or Sprout Social.

Outside of planning social media posts, make sure you have your email covered as well. Don’t forget to activate an out of office message to be sent when you get an email while you are on vacation. Don’t forget to give people a place to go if the need an issue attended to in an urgent manner and let them know when they can expect to hear back from you. Out of office messages are able to be set up in both Gmail and Outlook and other email programs.

If your company uses gmail for their email service there is one plug-in that can help you send emails while away from your desk. The service is called Boomerang and using it allows you to schedule emails to be sent in the future. This could be helpful service if need to send a reminder to your team while you are on vacation.

Planning to go on vacation can be stressful. This is specially true when you work with social media because being connected is part of the job. I hope these tools can help ease some of that stress. What tools to you use when planning for vacation? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

John’s puppies provide perspective for non-profit organizations

July 20, 2012 erik organizational development, volunteers

Today, we’re focusing on a post that John titled: “Puppy Perspective“. In that post, he describes two different perspectives that he and his wife have on the exact same occurrence. The event in question has to deal with John’s dogs and the daily arrival of their mail carrier. While John’s post is cute and fun to read, you should really click over and read it for yourself because John’s dogs tell an important story about one of the biggest challenges every non-profit organization faces.

“Perspective” is a funning thing. It can sometimes feel like one of those circus fun house mirrors.

Think about how many different stakeholder groups your organization has:

Executive director
Fundraising professionals
Program staff
Clients
Donors
Board volunteers
Fundraising volunteers
Program volunteers
New prospective or incoming board volunteers
Prospective new donors

OMG . . . the list could go on and on, and John’s post “Puppy Perspective” very clearly shows us how common it is for different groups to have very different perspectives on the same thing.

This phenomenon means that building consensus around important decisions can sometimes feel like “Mission Impossible”.

When looking back at some of the organizations I’ve worked with on planning, implementing and evaluating an annual campaign, I now clearly see how different perspectives made implementing change difficult. To illustrate this point, the following is a short list of stakeholders and what I am sure they were thinking as they listened to me talk about running an annual campaign:

Staff — Ugh, this is so necessary, but this sounds like a lot of work and there is no time.
Board members & fundraising volunteers — Sitting down in-person with a donor and asking for money? That sounds scary!
Donors — OMG, another fundraiser? How many more times will they come back and ask for money?
Program staff — Why can’t people just give money and leave us to our important work? Outcomes measurement is so hard and takes time away from actual program time.

Everyone has a different perspective, and this makes getting something done very difficult. This is why non-profit executive directors must be highly skilled at driving change. When they aren’t good at getting everyone on the same page, then nothing happens and the non-profit organization dies a slow death.

Our friends at the Change Management Learning Center offer some interesting tutorials, training, and books that you might find helpful when developing your case and leading change.

Are you regularly on a different page than your board volunteers? If so, how do you manage that and close the gap? Has your agency’s fundraising staff found themselves at odds with program staff? How have you eliminated those silos and facilitated peace throughout your kingdom? Please use the comment box to share a story or an approach that has worked for you. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!