planning – Page 5 – The Healthy Non-Profit

What are you doing with your non-profit data?

June 13, 2013 erik Board development, Board governance, Fundraising, organizational development

If you are collecting data on your non-profit organization’s performance and doing nothing with it, then you should be tarred and feathered. You are too busy to be doing things that don’t get you a return on investment on your time. Unfortunately, data collection can be time-consuming if you haven’t built good systems to make collection easy, and there are too many small non-profit organizations who are under-resourced and haven’t built those systems.

So, why do so many agencies still invest the time to collect data when it is difficult to do and so incredibly time-consuming? In almost every instance that I’ve seen, it is simply because a donor is requiring it or they are affiliated with a national organization that makes it mandatory.

Here is a thought . . . if you are going through the effort, then why not benefit from it?

What should you measure?

The “WHAT” is hard to answer unless you know the “WHY”. In other words, you should measure things relating to board engagement and performance if you want to improve those things. You should measure things relating to money and donor behavior if you want to improve your resource development.

One national organization with whom I am very familiar (wink, wink), developed an entire organizational scorecard full of key performance indicators (KPIs) that breakdown into the following five ares:

strategic growth
increased impact
financial health
resource development
board of directors

I know that a number of subscribers to this blog aren’t members of this “unnamed national organization,” and you are probably wondering what are some of the KPIs listed under these categories. While I don’t think I’d be violating any major trade secrets in sharing those KPIs with you, I want to be respectful of their work. So, I’ll only share a few of those KPIs to give you an idea and a start:

net change in number of clients service
average days cash on hand
net change in total income
percent of board volunteers that attended 75% of meetings
percent of board volunteers who make a personal unrestricted financial gift
percent of board volunteers who make a face-to-face solicitation on behalf of the agency

If you are interested in developing KPIs and a scorecard for your non-profit organization, here are a few resources I’ve found online that may help you:

Association of Fundraising Professionals: “Key Performance Indicators: Nonprofits Need Them, Too!“
Liz Marenakos of Blackbaud: “Identifying and Measuring KPI’s“
Virtue Center: “Brutal Honesty: Measuring Non-Profit Success with Key Performance Indicators“

What next?

I point you back to my inflammatory opening sentence:

“If you are collecting data on your non-profit organization’s performance and doing nothing with it, then you should be tarred and feathered.”

Collecting this data isn’t rocket science, but it is time-consuming and you’re too busy to invest that time and get nothing back in return. Right?

If you are measuring program-related KPIs (e.g. outcomes data, impact data, etc), then you should share that info with the staff responsible for those programs. If you are measuring fundraising-related KPIs, then you should share that info with your fundraising staff and fundraising volunteers. If you are measuring board engagement related KPIs, then you should share that info with board volunteers.

I believe all KPIs should be shared with all board members in all instances (but at the appropriate time and setting) so they understand whether or not the organization is healthy or unhealthy. I also believe that where possibly, KPIs should be directly tied to performance management systems and evaluation tools.

The big idea here is that collecting this type of data, sharing this type of data, and integrating this type of data into systems like employee performance appraisal and board evaluation will drive change because it creates urgency, accountability and the assessment information necessary upon which organizational plans can be built.

Has your agency developed KPIs? If so, how do you use them? With whom do you share your data? What has been the result? Please use the comment box below to share your experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
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Dear board volunteers . . . I can’t do this all by myself.

May 9, 2013 erik Board development, Board governance, Fundraising, Planning, volunteers

DonorDreams blog is honored to be hosting the May 2013 Nonprofit Blog Carnival. The theme this month is “Dear board volunteer . . .” and the idea is “If you could write an anonymous letter to a nonprofit board about something they do that drives you crazy, what would that letter look like and what suggested solutions would you include?” If you are a blogger and would like more information on how to participate and submit a post for consideration, please click here to learn more.

I wanted to expand the Nonprofit Blog Carnival concept in May. So, I reached out to real non-profit people and asked them to also write an anonymous letter to their board volunteers. These people are executive directors, fundraising professionals, board members, donors, community volunteers, consultants and front line staff. I promised everyone anonymity in exchange for their submissions.

We will celebrate May’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival on Wednesday, May 29, 2013.

I hope you enjoy this real look at real issues that our community deals with on a daily basis.

Here is today’s letter:

Dear Board Volunteers:

First, let me say that I truly appreciate all the time, talent and treasure you give to our organization each year. That said, I must air my concerns regarding some practices that I see as undermining the functioning of our board and the ultimate success of our committees and fundraisers.

We have board committees designed to do work outside of the board meetings and then provide a written report to include in our board packet for review/approval at meetings. These committees are not functioning according to their design and reports are not being completed or submitted. As a matter of fact, few committees are even meeting unless I force the issue. Then I must type up the notes and follow-up on what is to be done.

New board members are learning the wrong way for committees to function. We developed the committee structure through a well thought out process….let’s use it.

You are all aware that we do not have a development person. So, it falls to me or the office manager to complete the tasks that you do not. While I understand that you are all busy, each committee chair could recruit community members to help with their committee. You can delegate and assign work to those folks. You can also check on your committee members completion of assignments.

Call/email/text your committee to stay in touch and remind them of their commitments. Get the job done!

When I am doing committee work, I am not doing the following:

writing grants,

completing billing or grant reporting,

marketing the agency, or

managing our staff and programs.

My job requires 50 hours a week to just keep my head above water. When I take on these other tasks, I am drowning.

I have no problem putting in the 60-70 hour weeks just before a fundraiser, but I cannot do this week in and week out in order to balance my every day responsibilities and those of the various committees. We need to work together to ensure the success of our organization.

With each board member renewing their commitment to their chosen committees, we can guarantee the success of each committee and fundraiser, so please do your part.

Let’s start this year with a great attitude and renewed motivation.

Sincerely,
One sleep deprived exec

If you have some advice for the author of our anonymous letter, please share it in the comment box at the bottom of this post in a respectful manner. If you want to submit an anonymous letter for consideration this month, please email it to me at the address in your signature block below.If you are a blogger looking to participate in this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival and want to learn more, then please click here.

Here’s to your health!

Using SWOT for more than just strategic planning

February 21, 2013 erik organizational development, Planning

I’ve had SWOT on my mind a lot lately. For those of you who don’t know, this acronym is a planning term that stands for “Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats“. It is an exercise you go through during the assessment phase of whatever planning process you’re undertaking. If used correctly, it should provide you with a platform upon which to build your goals, objectives and action plans. Unfortunately, I see too many organizations “going through the motions” and under-utilizing this very powerful tool.

Not just for strategic planning

SWOT gets used a lot in strategic planning projects, but I see very few people employing this tool when working on a:

board development plan
marketing plan
resource development plan
individual giving campaign plan
program plan
facilities maintenance plan
capital improvement plan
business plan

Generally speaking, a SWOT analysis tells you what your organization has going for it and against it. From this perspective, wouldn’t you want to know this before rolling up your sleeves and undertaking any project?

Scrambling the letters

There seems to be a genuine misunderstanding about the letters in this acronym. In my experience, people get confused and only use this exercise to look internally at their own organization. In reality, the SWOT exercise is designed to look both internally and externally.

The “S” and “W” stand for “Strengths” and “Weaknesses”. At this point in the exercise, participants should be inwardly focused on the following questions (as it pertains to the project you’re thinking about undertaking):

What do we do well?
What don’t we do so well?

The “O” and the “T” stand for “Opportunities” and “Threats”. At this point in the exercise, participants should be externally focused on the following questions (as it pertains to the project you’re thinking about undertaking):

What’s happening or about to happen outside of our organization (or your department) that we can take advantage of to help make this project successful?
What’s happening or about to happen outside of our organization (or your department) that we should be concerned about because it could negatively impact the success of this project?

In my experience, too many people don’t want to use the “O” and “T” to look external. For whatever reason, they like to remain focused internally and they conflate strengths and opportunities as well as weaknesses and threats.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a project run aground because of external factors that weren’t given any serious consideration during the planning process.

You want an example? Here you go . . .

Non-profit ABC decides to plan and implement an annual campaign pledge drive. They put together their campaign plan and their focus is 100% internal (e.g. staffing, volunteers, materials, reporting, systems, etc). They launch the campaign and quickly find out that donors (aka an external audience) don’t support the campaign for any number of reasons (e.g. not enough cultivation, not enough stewardship, etc).

Not following through

One of the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to using a SWOT exercise is not following through and using the analysis. This happens when participants do the good work in assessing their internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats and then stop right there.

At the end of any good SWOT exercise, the following questions need to be asked as you pivot toward goal setting:

What strengths will help us implement this project?
Are there specific strengths we should build our plan around?
Which organizational weaknesses pose challenges to our plan?
Should we build things into the plan that help us fix our weaknesses?
If fixing our weaknesses isn’t realistic, are there things we should build into the plan to help us compensate for our weaknesses?
Are there external opportunities we need to take advantage of to help us achieve what we want to achieve (e.g. low hanging fruit)?
Are there external threats (e.g. icebergs in the water) that we should try to account for in the plan?

SWOT just for the sake of doing SWOT is meaningless. The information and insights you gain from this powerful exercise should be used as a springboard into goal setting conversations. These questions can act as a lens by which you look at your “vision” and brainstorm the goals for accomplishing your vision. You can do the same thing when pivoting toward development of objectives as well as when you finally pivot towards action planning. In each of these cases, SWOT acts as a lens by which you frame the next stage of the planning process and keep things real.

My simple suggestion is . . . get in the habit of using SWOT before tackling any large project and use this tool to its fullest extent. Doing so improves your planning process and increases the likelihood of future success.

Has you organization ever used SWOT for anything other than strategic planning? If so, how did it work for you? Please scroll down and share your experience in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

There are no magic pills in fundraising

February 13, 2013 erik Fundraising

Has something ever drifted into your email inbox with a subject line that you just could resist opening immediately? Well, it happened to me yesterday when an email arrived announcing that Future Fundraising Now blog just completed a post titled “How to plug along like a fundraising machine,” and like the cat, curiosity got the best of me and I clicked it open right then and there.

What I read was something so simple and yet so true. It stuck with me all evening and carried over to my first cup of coffee this morning. The secret to becoming a “fundraising machine” really is simple.

I encourage you to click over and read what Jeff Brooks has to say, but the gist of it is this simple:

Follow the process for whatever fundraising project you’re working on.
Don’t cut corners.
Practice perseverance.

Simple yet so right on target!

Some of you might be asking yourself, “What ‘process’ is he talking about?” So, the next two sections more closely examine two fundraising processes that oftentimes get their corners cut.

In-person solicitation of a donor

There is a process that successful fundraising volunteers and professionals follow when sitting down face-to-face with a donor to ask for a charitable contribution. It is rooted in best practices and centuries worth of learning the hard way.

It is what I was taught, and I simply call it the 12-step process for making a face-to-face ask.

Make your own gift
Think about the clients (don’t psych yourself out by thinking about the money)
Choose good prospects (aka no cold calls)
Call the prospect and set-up the meeting (and don’t accidentally ask for the gift on the phone)
Prepare for the meeting
Talk about the case for support (e.g. tell impactful stories that demonstrates ROI)
Share your commitment (e.g. tell the donor how and why you are involved)
Ask for the gift
Be quiet!
Answer questions
Set another call/meeting to follow-up (esp. if you didn’t get the pledge right then and there)
Express thanks for time and consideration

Ta-da . . . process. This is one example of what Jeff was talking about in his blog post. His point was that people who are fundraising machines embrace a process like this and execute. People who are less successful, cut corners and are simply not as successful.

Keeping fundraising volunteers engaged and focused

There is a process that successful fundraising professionals follow when trying to keep board members and fundraising volunteers focused and engaged in reaching a campaign goal. As with the process highlighted in the last section, it is rooted in best practices and lots of trial-and-error.

Think of the following concepts as less of a sequential process and more like nine different cogs in the same machine working together to achieve the goal of “volunteer engagement“.

Planning
Setting expectations
Training
Organization
Well run and important meetings
Accountability
Urgency
Recognition
Mission-focus

Ta-da . . . process. This is another example of what Jeff was talking about in his blog. Successful fundraising professionals do these things like a chef following a recipe. The end result is an engaged group of board and fundraising volunteers who achieve their campaign goals. Those people who ignore some of these concepts usually end up falling short of their campaign goal.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look more closely at a few examples:

What happens when meetings are run without a lot of direction (e.g. without an agenda) and things seem to drift and go on forever? In my experience, people stop coming to meetings. In other words, they disengage.
What happens when there is very little urgency to raise money (e.g. deadlines are fuzzy and there are no scheduled report meetings)? In my experience, people drag their feet and prioritize the campaign to the bottom of their task list. In other words, they disengage.
What happens when there is very little mission-focus and the campaign focuses on the theme of ‘we need some money to keep our doors open’? In my experience, people resort to quid pro quo solicitation techniques and start procrastinating. In other words, they disengage.

The bottom line

Do you have professional fundraisers, board members and fundraising volunteers who you see cutting corners or not adhering to “process”? If so, the question is simply this: “What are you going to do with them?” Because they will not produce for you in the way that you need.

Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box below. Are you thinking re-training is the best strategy? What about termination or reassignment? Or is the problem YOU? If so, then what? What do you need to do differently to create the fundraising machine your agency so desperately needs?

Here’s to your health!

My big dream for 2013 is . . .

January 29, 2013 erik organizational development, Planning

The Nonprofit Blog Carnival is a collection of the best advice and resources that consultants, support organizations, and nonprofits themselves are offering to the nonprofit community through their blogs. The January theme focuses on “your big dream for your organization, cause or the nonprofit community this year, and how you’ll get there.” Today’s post looks at dreams and how your agency can go about framing its strategy in 2013.

Whenever I work with a non-profit organization on goal setting and planning, there are a number of quotes that immediately come to mind such as:

“Good is the enemy of great.” ~Jim Collins

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” ~Rita Mae Brown

A few weeks ago, I shared a cup of coffee with a local non-profit executive director, and we engaged in a conversation about grant writing and sustainability planning. During that conversation, she said something like: “If agencies only did things that at face value appear to be sustainable, there wouldn’t be a lot of risk taking and innovation going on in the non-profit sector.”

After chewing on this, I absolutely agree with her, but I also don’t see a lot of risk taking going on out there. This got me thinking about this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival topic related to big dreams.

My wish/dream for my non-profit clients in 2013 is that they overcome their resistance to planning.

The following are just a few quick tips I think will help agencies achieve quick little victories and get them closer to goal setting, taking a few risks, more deeply engaging volunteers, and moving the needle:

Don’t give up on doing some assessment work to get things started, but keep these efforts focused on quick and simple. A SWOT analysis tool can accomplish a heck of a lot in a short period of time.
Include volunteers at every step of the process because planning is an “engagement” activity. If you want a plan that only you will work on implementing, then exclude others. If you will need others to help, then include them.
Use SMART Goals. Any “dummy” can do it, click here for more information.
Focus on 50,000 feet in the beginning and make sure to come out of the clouds toward the end of the process by asking specific questions about who will do what and by when.
Find ways to inject urgency into the process. Don’t drag these efforts out over a few months. Can you work hard? Sprint? Get it done in a matter of weeks? I suggest setting deadlines and assigning someone the responsibility of being the “task master” (e.g. a person who pushes hard to keep your project on track).

Accountability and urgency are sometime best achieved if your agency engages an external consultant like me, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you are part of a larger national organization, I’m sure there are internal consultants standing by to provide technical assistance. If you don’t have money to hire someone like me and don’t belong to a national network, then you can always talk to your local network of nonprofit agencies. One of your peers might be experienced in facilitation and willing to donate their time in exchange for something. You never know unless you ask, right?

What obstacles do you find get in your way when dreaming big? What has worked for you when trying to overcome those obstacles to planning and engaging volunteers. Please scroll down and use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Avoid 19th Century donor cultivation tactics

January 15, 2013 erik Fundraising

Here is a tip for all of you fundraising professionals and volunteers out there: ” Women are powerful donors in their own right, and we settled most Women’s suffrage issues almost a century ago.” Those of us who cannot understand this simple yet powerful idea are “cruisin’ for a bruisin’” as a friend of mine used to say.

You’re probably wondering where this is coming from . . . so let me provide a little context. In the last few weeks, I’ve heard people twice say something that made me wonder if we were living in 1913 or 2013. Here are the two examples:

Some very nice woman was receiving an award and there was a group discussion about whether or not to tell her or surprise her from the podium. The decision was to talk to her husband and ask him to make the decision.
One group wants to get closer to a donor because he is one of those “very influential philanthropists” in town. You know the type. So, the decision was to start cultivating his daughter’s husband.

The first example is innocent enough and didn’t raise any red flags, but when put together with the second example it just got me thinking about the concept of “Women in Philanthropy”.

Did you know that Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis’ Center on Philanthropy has an internal division named the “Women’s Philanthropy Institute“? Here is a blurb from their website:

“The Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) studies how and why gender matters in philanthropy. Men’s and women’s motivations for giving and patterns of giving differ. What works for men in philanthropy may not work for women. As women’s economic power and educational achievements continue to increase in the 21st century, women are leveraging that power to influence philanthropic decision-making and to transform the philanthropic landscape in many ways.”

When I read something like this, it makes me immediately think:

Wow! Men and women make philanthropic decisions differently. I wonder how I should incorporate that from a strategic and tactical perspective into a written resource development plan?
If women are as influential as they appear to be in philanthropy, then why are we still doing these weird cultivation dances with their fathers and their husbands?

Am I off base? Maybe a little, but I know that I am close to hitting on something big.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a board volunteer who is a strong woman. She and I are working on a fundraising project together, and she talked about a conversation that she and her husband had about a particular charity. To make a long story short, here are the highlights:

She is concerned about the organization’s financial health.
He knows his wife too well and knows that she will give this organization more money to help them out.
He strongly stated his wishes not to let their philanthropy get out of hand because he wants to retire in a few years.

I look at this conversation and now see things very clearly. She is the person who makes charitable giving decisions in that family. He is pleading his case to “The Decider”. I wonder how many charities don’t see that and try to engage him first?

Still not convinced that your agency needs to do a better job planning for and engaging women in your resource development efforts? Then please consider what Betsy Brill wrote in Forbes magazine on August 18, 2009:

“Women now control more than half of the private wealth in the U.S. and make 80% of all purchases. According to Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, women will inherit 70% of the $41 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfer expected over the next 40 years. In addition to controlling wealth and consumer activity, women tend to donate more of their wealth than men do. A Barclay’s Wealth study titled Tomorrow’s Philanthropist, released in July 2009, showed that women in the U.S. give an average of 3.5% of their wealth to charity, while men give an average of 1.8%.”

What is your non-profit agency doing to make this adjustment? Will the next generation of philanthropists in America be dominated by women? Please use the comment box below to share what your agency is doing about this resource development trend?

Here’s to your health!

Solving the age-old battle between fundraising vs grantwriting

December 26, 2012 erik Board development, Fundraising, Planning

It is the end of the year and for many non-profit organizations it means:

constructing an agency budget for 2013, and
putting together a comprehensive resource development plan to add meaning and depth to the revenue side of the agency budget.

In the last few weeks as I’ve talked with various agencies about their resource development planning efforts, I’m reminded of age-old battle:

Fundraising vs. Grantwriting

Donors see government grants as “wealth redistribution” and a substitute for their charitable contributions. Fundraising volunteers (and even fundraising staff) get squeamish about asking other people for money, and they prefer asking government and private sector foundations over soliciting family, friends, co-workers and neighbors.

crowding1 This phenomenon is called the “crowding out effect” and I wrote about it in the following blog posts in 2011:

While I would love for you to go back and read those posts, I also encourage you to read an awesome 2009 research paper written by James Andreoni and A. Abigail Payne titled “Is Crowding Out Due Entirely to Fundraising? Evidence from a Panel of Charities“. They do an awesome job of looking at this from a data perspective, and they conclude the following:

Using instrumental variable techniques, we estimate total crowding is around 73 percent, and that this crowding out is almost exclusively is the result of reduced fund-raising. A $10,000 grant, for instance, reduces fund-raising expenses by $1370, which in turn reduces donations by $7271. Adding this $1370 savings in fund-raising expenses reduces the estimate of crowding out to 59 percent. If charities had maintained their fund-raising efforts, our estimates show that donations would have risen by the full amount of the grant.

hell2 The crowding out effect is real, and it is something non-profit organizations need to understand and deal with. If not, then I advise putting the following age-old expression in a frame above the boardroom door: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how to put the “crowding out effect” in check, and the following few paragraphs are just a few ideas. I think some are good thoughts and others are a little out there, but let’s work together on refining these ideas.

Planning – Planning – Planning

The planning process is not about the executive director putting stuff in writing and handing it over to volunteers for implementation. Planning is an engagement activity.

So, why not introduce volunteers who are involved in the resource development planning process to the research paper by James Andreoni and A. Abigail Payne and ask them: “What should we do about this? How should we accommodate for this in our plan?”

Simply stated . . . planning is the antidote for the crowding out effect.

Fundraising policies

I’ve always seen “policies” as a way of creating hard and fast rules for things that board volunteers and non-profit staff might otherwise find hard to implement if it weren’t “required“. Since so many people find grantwriting easier and preferable to fundraising, I started wondering if there weren’t some policies we could create that could put the “crowding out effect” in check. The following are just a few thoughts:

A written policy prohibiting government and private foundation grant revenue from exceeding a certain percentage of the agency’s overall revenue.
A written policy that commits board members to increasing their personal contributions by a certain percentage whenever grant revenue exceeds a certain level.
A written policy that commits board members to asking a certain number of new prospective donors whenever grant revenue exceeds a certain level.
A written policy that ties the agency’s annual campaign goal to the level of grant revenue. (e.g. every 1% increase in revenue goals from grant writing results in a 2% increase in qualified individual giving prospects and corresponding campaign infrastructure)

Truth be told . . . I’m not a huge fan of this approach, but I do think it is worth continued discussion and dialog.

Board development

I suspect that the best solution is the simplest solution — recruit the right board members.

Smart business people will understand a simple concept like the “crowding out effect”. Put this challenge in front of them and ask them to solve it.

I suspect they will simply conclude that more “fundraising-minded volunteers” need to be recruited to off-set the effects of grantwriting on the agency. After all, isn’t that what they’d probably conclude when it comes to their sales force staff and their business if confronted with the same challenge?

Are you in the middle of writing your 2013 resource development plan? Are you facing some of the same challenges with volunteers regarding the question of more fundraising versus more grantwriting? If so, how are you tackling this challenge? Do you have any suggestions on how to improve upon the recommendations I’m providing in this blog post? Please use the comment box below to weigh-in with your thoughts and suggestions.

Here’s to your health!

Does your non-profit organization have policies about grant writing?

December 11, 2012 erik Fundraising, Planning

grant writing1 This morning I am asking for your help with a small project I am working on. A few weeks ago I agreed to help one of my favorite non-profit organizations with a staff transition. Not only did their development director move on to greener pastures at the end of the summer, but their executive director also recently resigned. So, the board asked me to step into the void and help their management team with a variety of year-end miscellaneous projects (e.g. year-end holiday mailing, 2013 budget construction, resource development plan, etc).

One of the projects with which I provide a little assistance is grant writing. I am part of the review team that proofreads, edits and asks questions before any proposal is allowed to go out the door. I am not the only person involved in this agency’s grant writing process . . . there is a grant writer (who is an independent contractor), a program/operations person and a board member. I kind of like the process they’ve designed. It feels comprehensive, responsible and serious.

The other day someone brought another grant opportunity to the team. It was a RFP that would’ve brought $2,000 in the door that wouldn’t have supplemented existing programming . . . it was an “add-on” proposition. Here is a list of questions that the grant writing team started asking itself:

Is this grant opportunity “budget relieving”?
Are the program costs totally off-set by the grant? Or will the $2,000 grant only partially cover the expenses of the add-on programming?
Are there other reasons (e.g. political, relationship building, etc) for the agency to consider writing this proposal?

Somewhere in the middle of this discussion, the board member blurted out the following really good question:

“How many more $2,000 grants are we going to write?”

ROI This question was inspired by a string of two or three grants in a row that this organization had just written. As a businessman, he asked this question because he is accustom to looking at everything through a “return on investment” (ROI) lens. In hindsight, this is what he saw:

The grant writer was putting in three to six hours researching and writing the proposal.
The program/operations person was putting in a few hours pull together outcomes data and proofreading the final proposal to make sure we weren’t over-promising anything.
The board member, who serves on the management team as the agency searches for a new executive director, is investing a few hours in proofreading and asking tough questions to ensure the organization isn’t over-promising and under-delivering. This is essentially the same role that the executive director would play if there was one on the payroll.
I was back stopping the entire process and doing some same.

WOW! It shouldn’t be a surprise after a few small grant writing opportunities he’d ask such a question.

Of course, this touched off an interesting conversation on many different fronts including a discussion about non-profit fundraising policies.

I promised the group that I would blog about this topic and ask the readership of DonorDreams blog for their best possible world-class coaching and advice.

So, I have a holiday season favor to ask each of you this morning:

Would you please take a minute or two out of your busy schedule this morning and use the comment box below to do one of the following two things?

share your agency’s grant writing policy/policies, or
share how your organization makes decisions on when to write or pass on a grant writing opportunity.

Seriously, your feedback this morning will directly help another organization in its pursuit of developing fundraising best practices. Your participation will take all of a minute or two this morning. Please weigh-in. Your collective wisdom is massive and will bring tremendous value to this organization’s discussion. You can consider the few minutes that you invest in responding to this request as your “good turn” this holiday season. Please pay it forward!

Here’s to your health!

Robert Frost’s cautionary words for your non-profit agency

November 23, 2012 erik organizational development, Planning

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.

In a recent post, John deconstructed one of my favorite poems of all time — Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. While many of us read this popular poem and conclude that it is about self-actualization, John helps us see that this is far from the case when he says, “This is far from being about self-actualization and appreciating the immense satisfaction and reward of going our own way. It is about our propensity to rationalize.”

I’ve spent a lot time this morning combing through this post and all of the supporting links, and I buy into all of the analysis about “The Road Not Taken”. I can honestly say that I will never look at this poem in the same way. Additionally, there are all sorts of organizational development lessons to be learned for non-profit agencies embedded in this poem.

For example, the line in the poem that says “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” are big time words of warning about the cause-and-effect nature of the world and the effect of our actions carrying us away so that we don’t typically backtrack to the divergence of those same two paths.

Up to this point, I am buying into everything and there are a number of “AH-HA” moments going off in my head, until I read this . . .

“But here’s the real deal: We can’t possibly know which path is our path before we choose it.”

I have to laugh at myself sometimes because I have wrestled with these words for an hour now. I’ve paced my living room and consumed two cups of coffee trying to process exactly what John is getting at. I struggle with this because I am a planner. I have two degrees in planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I have facilitated countless numbers of plans for non-profit organizations including strategic plans, resource development plans, board development plans, marketing plans, business plans, annual campaign plans, etc etc etc.

I believe “planning” is akin to creating a map for your agency, which means that as you approach those two roads that diverge in a yellow wood you have a map in your hands, you have considered a number of facts, and you’re prepared to make a choice that makes sense for your organization.

So, for the last hour I’ve struggled with John’s words because it feels like an indictment of planning. However, I can feel it in my bones that he isn’t saying that your organization shouldn’t invest time in planning efforts.

Since planning is an engagement activity (e.g. not something a non-profit professional should do in the silence of their office), there is a lot of value in it. Yet, you can have the best plan (aka road map) in the world and you may even know far in advance which of the two roads your agency will take, but you can’t and won’t know if the path you choose is the right path until you actually start walking down it.

Now that is a terrifying revelation for someone like me. LOL Why? Because planning is how I deal with an uncertain and scary future. Planning activities bring me peace of mind because it allows me to bring the uncertain future into the present, and it gives me the a false sense of security that I can exert some control over uncertainty.

Apparently, the Nile (read de-nial) is more than just a river in Egypt.

Did you see that big flash a moment ago? If so, then you probably recognize it as the final “AH-HA” moment and light bulb going off over my head.

Please don’t misunderstand me. As I circle back around to Robert Frost’s poem, I don’t see any mention of the traveler NOT having a map. I still feel strongly that any agency that chooses to do business in today’s rough-and-tumble business world without a plan is doomed to wander the woods lost and will likely starve to death.

So, there are a few different sets of cautionary words that emerge from today’s post:

The cause-and-effect nature of our world has a tendency to sweep us away so that we seldom end up backtracking and approaching the same fork in the road again. One decision begets another decision, we get carried away, and oftentimes look back with regret and unable to unwind a series of decisions. So, be thoughtful and intentional
The woods are confusing and a map (e.g. plan) is necessary so that you can improve your chances of making a good decision as your approach the fork in the road; however, you will never know if you are making the right choice until you choose it.
Don’t let the fact that you have a plan fool you into making blind decisions or prevent you from questioning your decisions along the way.

Well, this “O.D. Friday” certainly involved a lot of deep thinking. I blame last night’s Thanksgiving turkey meal. 😉

What do you think about all of this? Has your agency ever had a plan/roadmap, used it to make a difficult choice, and then regretted making that choice? If so, what happened? Since hindsight is 20/20, would you please help others benefit from your experiences and wisdom? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Does your non-profit agency pass “The Marshmallow Test”?

October 26, 2012 erik Board development, Fundraising, leadership, organizational development, Planning

In a recent post, John talked about something called The Marshmallow Test, which is a real life academic study related to impulse control. You probably know this by other names and expressions such as “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush“.

John poses the question, “What happens when the environment is perceived to shift a bit?” Both he and the academic study conclude, “The promise of a second marshmallow holds no sway, if the promise is perceived as unreliable.”

So, I thought I’d ask a very simple question on this Friday morning . . . Does your non-profit agency pass “The Marshmallow Test”?

Confused? Let me give you a few examples to get you started:

If your organization doesn’t invest in and value professional development (e.g. very little training, no professional development plans embedded in performance management plans, few promotion opportunities, etc), then how does that impact your employees’ behavior in the workplace? Do they still strive for improvement or do they settle into the status quo?
If your organization doesn’t measure the impact of its programming, then how does that impact donor behavior? Does it influence how your fundraising professionals do their jobs?
If your organization doesn’t value the importance of planning and fails to involve board volunteers in strategic planning, then will that have a “disengaging” effect on board members? Does it impact what they’re willing to do on behalf of your mission?

Yes, today was intentionally a short post because John’s Marshmallow Test post really said it all, and I wanted to provoke you to think about your specific non-profit agency rather than share a fun non-profit story from my past.

So, have you given this question any thought? Does your agency pass the test? On what level were you considering this question (e.g. operations, human resources, resource development, etc)? Is your organizational structure designed to engage employees, volunteers and donors and result in them having some impulse control?

Please scroll down and use the comment box to share your answer. If you still don’t have an answer, please weigh-in on any thoughts this might have spurred. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!