planning – Page 7 – The Healthy Non-Profit

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.

Founding Fathers have the answer for today’s non-profit leadership deficit

July 4, 2012 DonorDreams organizational development, Planning

It has been said more than once on this blog as well as in many other places on the internet that non-profit organizations are challenged from an executive leadership perspective. Compensation packages are poor. Boards make bad choices. Evaluation is the exception rather than the rule. Succession planning is more talk than anything else. Let’s face it . . . today’s non-profit executive leadership picture is less than rosy.

However, tomorrow’s executive leadership picture is likely going to get much worse according to The Bridgespan Group who recently carried out a study on executive leadership issues focused on non-profits with revenues greater than $250,000. Click here to read a copy of the executive summary.

The bottom line according to this study is:

The non-profit sector will need 80,000 new leaders in 2016;
Non-profit agencies lack the size and resources to develop its leaders from within;
The non-profit sector lacks robust management-education and executive-search capabilities.

By the way, Happy Fourth of July 2012. I decided writing about this subject today because it feels especially appropriate.

I’ve always looked at what the Founding Fathers did in Philadelphia in 1776 as an exercise in organizational development and leadership, and I’m convinced that non-profits can find lots of answers to their challenges just by studying history.

I can mentally picture George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin sitting around after a tough day at Independence Hall working through issues dealing with how to sustain the country in the long-term.

If I were to guess, the idea of having both a federal government and 13 independent sovereign states bound together into one governance system had a lot to do with checks and balances and not trusting big government. However, I also suspect there was some thought given to how separate governance models at the state level would create a training ground and leadership engine for the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.

Even if this thought never crossed their minds, it still turns out to be genius!

As you go about celebrating Independence Day 2012, I encourage you to chew on the following questions:

Does your non-profit agency have a written succession plan? Is it real orjust something on paper?
What does your training and professional development program and budget look like?
What leadership opportunities are you providing staff members to help them gain the necessary experience to step-up and lead in the future?
Are there places (e.g. structures, committees, groups) inside your organization where people can “cut their teeth” and learn how to be a leader and develop skills?
If not, what does the constitutional convention look like for your agency to make those adjustments? Who is sitting around the table?
Much like the states interact with one another, are there other non-profits in your community who you can collaborate with around issues of succession and leadership?

Here’s to your health! And have a happy and safe Fourth of July!

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 Time Management: Letting Go of It All

June 6, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, leadership, Planning

This week’s “Mondays with Marissa” post was titled “Non-Profit Time Management: Scheduling Social Media Updates“. After reading Marissa’s weekly pearl of wisdom, it got me thinking. During tough economic times, donors are asking non-profits to do more with less, which is leading to longer task lists for both executive directors and fundraising professionals. All of this contributes to a lot of stress in the workplace. In honor of Marissa’s awesome blog post, I am dedicating this week’s posts to the idea of looking more carefully at time-saving tips with regards to managing your agency and implementing your resource development program.

Let’s continue this conversation by looking at David Allen’s Mind-Sweep concept.

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve found myself “under the gun” to produce, I feel like something has a hold over me. I can best describe it as a “gripping feeling” or a “paralysis”. When I feel this way, my productivity falls dramatically. I think this happens because I am concerned about all of the plates that I have spinning. I get too focused on all of the things I need to do and not focused enough on actually doing them.

A few years ago, when things were especially bad, I asked my employer to send me to a time management training that was based on David Allen’s national best-selling book “Getting Things Done” (GTD).

While I still fundamentally consider myself more of a Frankin-Covey guy, there were a number of interesting and effective tactics that I took away from the GTD training. One of those tactics was called the “Mind-Sweep” and here is how it works:

Secure a pen and stack of loose leaf note cards or a small pad of paper.
Search your mind for things that you need to do — both big and small.
Write down one task per note card and put it in your inbox.
Once you’ve cleared everything out of your head — everything from buying a gallon of milk to calling a specific donor — go back through your inbox and prioritize the tasks in their order of importance.

If you think this exercise seems elementary, I wouldn’t argue with you. However, there is something “freeing” about dumping all of the contents of your brain out onto small pieces of paper. Whenever I have done this, my mind seems to focus and that gripping feeling seems to melt away. Essentially, I am no longer consumed with the thought that I may forget to do something, and I am able to spend time “doing” stuff.

While I’ve done this during extremely busy and chaotic times, I’ve also modified this approach and used it to help me in a Moves Management type of way. Simply focus your mind on an individual donor and everything that you think needs to happen to move them from one gift level to another, and dump it all out on one sheet of paper. The contents of that exercise become all of the “moves” (e.g. cultivation activities) that need to occur to position a donor to the next solicitation. Add dates to that list and put it in a spreadsheet (or your donor database Moves Management relationship tab), and TA-DA you have an individual donor plan.

The same approach can be applied to building a project management plan for a special event fundraiser.

The “mind-sweep” is more than just an organizing tactic, it is a time-savings strategy that can help you stop dithering and start doing. “Getting out of neutral” can be one of the best feelings in the world and can make all the difference when it comes to time management.

Have you ever felt gripped by a similar feeling that I described earlier in this blog post? If so, how did you get “unstuck” and moving forward again? Please scroll down and share a quick thought in the comment section. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Can’t change your non-profit ways? That’s just BS!

June 1, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, leadership, 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.

Today, we’re focusing on a post that John titled “The Cow Path“. In that post, he talks about cow paths that started hundreds of years ago and somehow have turned into urban roads we drive on today. Of course, there is a classic organizational development point of view at the middle of John’s post. In a nutshell, his point is threefold:

It is relatively easy for organizations to start new initiatives.
It is very, very easy for organizations to continue doing what they’ve always done.
It is downright difficult to stop doing things your organization (e.g. staff, board members, volunteers, and donors) have become accustom to doing.

If you haven’t done so already, please make sure that you take a moment to click over to John’s post because he does a very nice job of illustrating this point. Heck, he even uses a poem from Samuel Walter Foss in his post to drive home this point.

When I read “The Cow Path,” I had to chuckle because it describes so many small non-profit organizations that understand the need to change their resource development approach but don’t understand the threefold organizational development principle laid about in John’s blog post.

Let’s look at an example of a typical non-profit organization that I’ve worked with since the economic crash of 2008:

Start a resource development or annual campaign planning process (aka start a new initiative)? Responses range from a hesitant maybe to a lukewarm yes.
Stop pursuing more and more government money? Responses range from polite resistance to outright defiance.
Stop running so many special events (and stop trying to add “just one more event)? Responses range from polite resistance to outright defiance.
Stop recruiting board members who don’t want to fundraise and who don’t have any skills and experiences with fundraising? Responses range from polite resistance to outright defiance.
Continue writing grants, chasing government funding, running special events, and recruiting warm bodies to sit in the boardroom? You betcha! Full steam ahead.

Why is status quo normally the victor in 70% of change initiatives? Because “we’ve always done it that way” is the enemy of “OMG, there is an iceberg ahead and we need to change course immediately“.

In John’s post, he talks about an exercise he uses called “Stop-Start-Continue”. I’ve been through a similar exercise facilitate by Noel Tichy called “Rattlesnakes and Pythons”. Click here “to read a short description of it in Tichy’s book titled “The Cycle of Leadership”.

Unfortunately, my experience with “Rattlesnakes and Pythons” was similar to John’s findings with “Stop-Start-Continue”. Even when things were identified as needing to be eliminated or squeezed out, there was great resistance to it and sometimes it didn’t happen.

In the end, John is right. As always! There is only one person to blame when change is allegedly out of reach, and we continue doing the same thing over and over again with an anticipated different result.

What a load of BS! Grab that bull by the horns and make some change happen.

If you took 15 seconds and wrote down a few things that you know need to be eliminated from your non-profit organization’s modus operandi, what would be on your list? What process have you used in the past to identify things that need to change at your agency? How effective where you at eliminating those things? Please use the comment box to share your answers.

Here’s to your health!

Cultivation and stewardship: Who’s on first? What’s on second?

May 30, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, Planning

Yesterday’s post titled “Time in the office versus time with donors” begged more questions than it answered. Today, we’re going to zoom in on one of those questions and examine it more closely.

Should the executive director be more responsible for relationship building than the development director?

I have always advocated that, regardless of how hard they try, a non-profit executive director cannot abdicate their role as their agency’s chief development officer. Even when an organization is lucky enough to have a fully staffed development department with talented fundraising professionals, the executive directors is ultimately the person who needs to provide vision and direction.

I think Harry Truman said it best when he said, “The buck stops here!”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the executive director needs to be the person out on the street cultivating and stewarding relationships with every prospect and donor.

To answer the question posed at the beginning of this post, I believe it is as simple as taking an inventory of who does what well. While I firmly believe that prospects and donors prefer meeting the executive director and developing a relationship with him/her, there may be situations where the executive director doesn’t possess the requisite relationship building skills to cultivate and steward people to the extent necessary for a successful fundraising program. If this is the case, then the answer becomes simple . . . whoever is the natural “people-person” takes on the lion’s share of cultivation and stewardship.

It really can be that simple. Right?

How do you know if someone is a natural relationship builder? Here are a few things I lused to ook for when I interviewed fundraising professionals:

If their network is big, then there is a good likelihood that they are good at building relationships.
Do they keep in contact with their network? If so, then they are most likely someone who intuitively knows how to maintain relationships.
Have they ever “taken advantage of” someone and violated their trust? Trust is a foundational issue in building relationships, and it is something good fundraising professionals know how to navigate.
I always like to learn more about what is being talked about between a relationship builder and the person with whom they are trying to build a relationship. Why? Because good relationship builders are inquisitive and take an interest in the prospect or donor.

Again . . . while I personally prefer that the executive director takes on this role, it doesn’t always work that way and the fundraising professional might need to become the primary cultivation and stewardship person for the agency. It might also become something where certain board volunteers need to help step-in and help. Regardless, the executive director cannot abdicate this role completely and must find places where they are comfortable meeting prospects and donors.

In these circumstances, it is important to clarify roles and responsibilities and the executive director needs to take the initiative in doing this. Off the top of my head, the following are a few tools that can and should be used to achieve clarity:

written annual performance plan
weekly contact reports
written comprehensive resource development plan
weekly in-person checkpoint meetings
written cultivation & stewardship plan
Moves Management program

Doing an inventory of skill sets and assigning and managing roles and responsibilities for cultivation and stewardship activities will keep your agency from sounding like Abbott and Costello in their famous Who’s on First? comedy sketch. It will also likely help you answer the difficult question posed in yesterday’s blog post about how much time needs to be spent outside of the office compared to behind your desk.

Who is the person primarily responsible for cultivating prospects in your agency? Who stewards your donors? What tools and strategies are used to maintain clarity? Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Is your non-profit smarter than a fifth grader?

May 25, 2012 DonorDreams Board development, Fundraising, organizational development, technology

Today, we’re focusing on a post that John titled “The School Bus Won’t Wait“. In that post, he talks about an aging professional who ends up relying on an internet acquaintance to help him with technology challenges. As things turn out, his online friend turns out to be 12-years-old. As always, John’s post has multiple themes and meanings, but the main things I saw pertained to: “Technology. Adapting to change. And possibility.”

These themes are at play throughout society, and they are changing the non-profit sector in ways that couldn’t be predicted. Here are just a few examples that I’ve seen, heard of, or read about:

ePhilanthropy. Donors continue to contribute more via online channels. According to the most recent Blackbaud Index of Online Giving report, “… online giving increased by 9.8 percent for the 3 months ending March 2012 as compared to the same period in 2011.” Believe it or not, this has been the trend for quite some time.
The digital boardroom. Board volunteers are busier at work and the rate of retirement is rising. Time is a premium and some volunteers don’t want to take time out of their day to travel to a physical meeting. Retirees (esp. in colder climates) are splitting their time between their primary residence and a winter residence. Add technology into the mix and now board members are “conference calling” and using “Skype” to conduct board meetings. Documents are being distributed digitally and board members are casting proxy votes via email.
The paperless office? Ha! While that appears to have been a 1980s pipe dream, the reality is that there are tons of electronic tools at a non-profit organization’s disposal now. Donor databases replaced index card donor systems, volunteer files, and membership paper systems. One agency who I am very familiar with is upgrading their network server to include a few terabytes of hard drive space because a few gigs just didn’t hold everything. LOL

With change comes challenges. Isn’t that what life is all about?

Here are two tips that I hope you will take to heart as you read John’s blog post and contemplate “Technology. Adapting to change. And possibility.”:

Education doesn’t end when you receive your certificate or degree. If you want to survive, I encourage you become a “Lifelong Learner”. There are tons of free resource available to you on the internet. Carve one hour out of your schedule every week and visit an online resource like Network for Good’s Learning Center. There are tons of great articles there for you to read. There is even a section of this website where you can access pre-recorded webinars.
Plan to stay current. Technology is always evolving. Do you have a written technology plan in place to keep your systems from getting old? If you need help answering this question, then look at the computer sitting on your desk. How old is it? If it is 3-years-old or older, then you probably don’t have a plan in place or you aren’t funding it appropriately.

How is technology changing your non-profit organization? Are you adding fifth graders to your board development prospect lists? 😉 Please scroll down and share one quick example in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

How can apps help you and your non-profit get more things done?

May 21, 2012 DonorDreams Mondays with Marissa, Planning, technology

In many of my Mondays with Marissa posts, I tend to focus on how non-profits can use social media to spread the word about their mission to build a community of volunteers and donors. This week, I’m looking at how some handy applications can help you better organize your day so that you might have more time to build an awesome website or make the best Facebook page ever.

Evernote

I remember when Evernote first came out. It blew my mind. The basic idea behind Evernote is that it wants to be your external brain. It is a place to put notes, photos, lists, documents, anything. Anything you put in Evernote can be accessed from anywhere through a variety of applications for the desktop, web and smartphone. All of these notes can be organized into various notebooks that can be public, private or shared with co-workers.

What makes Evernote really remarkable is the fact that it can search text in photographs. So, for example, say you were in a special event planning meeting where your team used a whiteboard to capture ideas. Everything was laid out on the whiteboard, but there wasn’t enough time to capture all of those ideas into an email to be shared with everyone later. You could just take photo of the board and put it in one of Evernote’s collaborative notebooks. Later you could use the search function to look for the words “special event,” and if it was in the white board photo, it would show up in your search results.

Evernote is free to use, but for just $5/month or $45/year you can get more storage and more functionality. I could go on and on about the cool things you could do with Evernote, but you should just check out their website for more information.

Google Apps

Google has really tried hard to replace office standards such as Outlook, Word and Excel. I think they have done a pretty good job. With Google Docs, teams can work together on a document in real-time and not have to email large files back and forth. Google Calendar is a robust replacement for the calendar in Outlook. Additionally, if you use Gmail plug-ins, you can easily customize your email to your liking.

Google also has a tasks list built into both GMail and Google Calendar. I find this extremely helpful because I prefer to put my “To Do List” onto a calendar as opposed to just making separate lists. Once you create a task list, the window can stay minimized at the bottom of your window, which allows for convenient access at all times. If you put a due date on your task list, it will show up in a special tasks calendar next time you open Google Calendar. You can also set it up so that it emails you reminders.

Finally, GChat is something that I think many people overlook. As someone who works remotely, GChat is really convenient. It allows me to have conversations with people without having to be in the same room. Beyond the traditional text-based instant messaging conversations, GChat has a great video chat feature included. You can also make phone calls to landlines or mobile phones using GChat. Some of them might even be free!

Click here for a more comprehensive list of Google product. I suspect you will be surprised at all they are offering!

Remember the Milk

This last App is one of the oldest and fully featured to-do list applications out there. Remember the Milk makes list-making easy. You can create lists for all sorts of projects and sync them over all devices and programs. They even have an Outlook plug-in! Remember the Milk has options “up the wazoo” so if you use an organizational system like GTD you’ll find it easy to make your project lists here. What I like most about Remember the Milk is it’s simple design and usability.

Those are just a few of the numerous applications out there that help organize information, remind you to get things done, and find more time to spend on mission-related things for your non-profit organization.

Do you use any of these Apps or are there others that you prefer? Do you have a favorite? Please scroll down to the comment box and share your experiences!

One final note and commercial interruption . . . I wanted to mention that I wrote a guest article on about.com about where to get started with social media. I invite you to check it out and share it with others. Thanks!

What won’t non-profits do to excite their board volunteers?

May 17, 2012 DonorDreams Board development, leadership, organizational development, Planning, volunteers

I ran across an awesome article while “Googling around” the other day. It was titled “Nine Keys for Reinvigorating Board Leadership,” and it was written by Paul Connolly, a Senior Vice President of TCC Group. While digesting this article, my mind first turned to those executive directors who I’ve seen in the last decade that actively try to disengage their board volunteers. After mentally traveling down that road (ugh … and it is an ugly road), I got more positive in my thinking and focused on all of the crazy things I’ve witnessed in the name of “board engagement”.

The following are just a few quick things I’ve seen over the years:

Of course, many organizations have turned to the good old fashion “mission moment” as part of their board meeting agenda.
How many “board retreats” have I seen organized all in the name of “engagement”? Ugh … too many!
One organization I worked with decided that social opportunities such as “Happy Hour” should be a part of their engagement solution.
I’ve heard some boards talk about putting together a mentoring program that hooks new board members up with tenured ones.
One organization I know even rented a trolley, loaded up its board volunteers and donors, and drove it from site-to-site as part of a facilities tour strategy focused on getting key stakeholders re-engaged in mission.
Oh yeah. You can’t forget about the “big conference” strategy where the executive director takes a board member (or a few) to one of those big inspirational conferences. When everyone returns, those board members are asked to “make a presentation” back to their fellow board members about what they learned. Hopefully, sparks of excitement ignite interest and activity.

Oh, the things I’ve seen. I could go on and on and on. I doubt that there isn’t anything an executive director, who actually wants an engaged board, would do to achieve this goal. Of course, when this topic of conversation usually comes up, there is an overwhelming desire to bypass “strategy” and go right to “tactics”

When I read the article by Paul Connolly, I had a moment of clarity because he didn’t go right to tactics. He focused on the following nine strategies:

Encourage board members to tell each other what motivates them to serve.
Educate board members about the organization and their responsibilities.
Hold the board accountable for its own performance and conduct a candid board assessment.
Compel the board to continually plan for the future and focus on results.
Infuse board meetings with more meaning.
Add some new board members and graduate some existing ones.
Nurture future leadership.
Develop a synergistic board-CEO partnership.
Consider alternative models for governance.

Ohhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh! Has your curiosity been piqued? I know mine was. If you are intrigued and want to learn more about more deeply engaging your board volunteers, then I have two suggestions:

First, I strongly urge you to read Paul Connolly’s article “Nine Keys for Reinvigorating Board Leadership“.

Second, circle back here to DonorDreams blog and engage your fellow non-profit professionals in a discussion using the comment box found below. We can all learn from each other, especially if we share examples of what we’re doing and what has worked (or not worked) for us.

So, are you one of those executive directors who focuses on deepening board engagement? If so, why? If not, then why not? What things have you done or seen others do in the name of board engagement? Did Paul Connolly’s article trigger any ideas? If so, please share.

Here’s to your health!

How Can Non-Profit Organizations Use Google Hangouts Effectively?

May 14, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, Mondays with Marissa, Planning, technology

When Google launched their social network, Google+, people were all excited because it was a real alternative to Facebook. People were even saying that Google+ might be a “Facebook Killer”.

Flash forward to today. Facebook is about to about to go live on the stock market this week and is still one of the most used and growing social media sites. Google+ is still alive and well, but mainly with an active tech focused community.

One of the reasons I think Google+ hasn’t died is because of its interactive feature — Google Hangouts. Put simply, Google Hangouts are video chats with up to 10 people. While participating in a Hangout, people can watch the same YouTube video together and discuss it live. People can share presentations using SlideShare or even share their own computer screens.

Google Hangouts can be a powerful tool for nonprofits in a number of ways.

First of all, meetings can be held from anywhere. If you only need to meet with a few people and everyone’s availability is tight, then a Google Hangout might be a perfect solution for you. As long as each person has a computer with internet access and webcam (all of which are pretty standard when it comes to computers these days), your special event planning meeting can take place within a Google Hangout. It used to be that you had to pay a lot of money to use a video conferencing services, but today all you need is a Google account.

In addition, Google Hangouts can help build a sense of community with staff. If you work at an agency where people work from home or different locations, you can have a Google Hangout water cooler session. People could log in and just chat about the news of the day, or the latest happenings around the office.

Google Hangouts makes team-building in a virtual environment possible. This may seem like a small thing, but as someone who used to work from home, I missed the social interactions that would happen in an office. If I were able to set something like this up, it would have helped me feel more connected to my co-workers.

Finally, and perhaps the most exciting thing about Google Hangouts is that they can now be broadcasted to everyone using Google Hangouts On Air. A few months ago, President Obama participated in a Google On Air Hangout where a few people were live in the Hangout with him, but everyone could watch along via YouTube. This same functionality is now available to everyone.

Using Google Hangouts On Air, you can broadcast your special event to people all over the world. Or if your staff is scattered over a large geographic area and you have an important public announcement to make, why not use a Google Hangout On Air to have a mini staff meeting to share that big news? Are you having a guest speaker at one of your events? You could easily share the speech with people who couldn’t make it.

Oh one more thing, Google Hangouts On Air allows you to record your Hangout, which makes it easy to share with others after it is over.

The roll-out for Google Hangouts On Air will be happening over the next few weeks, so make sure you sign into your Google+ account and check it out. For more information, you can watch this video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohlHn6Kt5YM]

What do you think? Do you think Google Hangouts is a viable solution for your organization when it comes to video conferencing? What are your thoughts about the usability of Google Hangouts On Air? Let’s discuss it using the comment section below!

Want to improve your annual campaign pledge drive? Look at “structure” first!

April 13, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, leadership, organizational development

Today we’re focusing on a post that John titled “Fighting the Physics“. In this post, he shares a story about how a paper airplane cannot perform any better in spite of providing the owner more training, encouragement and financial incentive. It isn’t until the actual paper airplane is “structurally re-designed” that performance is improved. He uses this analogy to illustrate how some of us are unrealistic in our expectations when it comes to employee performance and productivity.

When I read John’s post, it made me think of all the non-profit organizations I’ve worked with in the last five years. In many of those engagements, it was my job to either help them:

plan-implement-evaluate a new annual campaign pledge drive, or
improve an existing campaign.

I cannot tell you how many of those engagements sounded EXACTLY like John’s blog post about the paper airplane. Looking back I suspect that I was “Fighting the Physics” more often than not. Too much training and not enough work around structure. <<Sigh>> Hindsight is always 20/20.

So, if your annual campaign is not producing the way you hoped it would, the moral of John’s story is to first look at “structure” before you jump to the conclusion that more training, encouragement or incentives are needed. The following is a short checklist of structural questions you may want to ask yourself:

How are you recruiting your volunteers? What tools are you using? Are they effectively setting expectations and providing clarity for volunteers?
How are you maintaining a sense of “mission-focus” throughout your campaign and helping volunteers focus on the real reason they are asking their friends for money? What tools and strategies are you using? Are they effective?
How are you instilling a sense of accountability and urgency throughout your campaign and helping volunteers keep the tasks they committed to from slipping off of their daily “To Do Lists”? What tools and strategies are you using? Are they effective?
What does “staff support” look like for the campaign? Is staff just organizing meetings and making phone calls to check-in on volunteers? Or are they “rolling up their sleeves” and going on solicitation calls with volunteers? Are staff “directing” or are they “coaching”?

John is so right on target! Before you jump to the conclusion that you need to recruit different volunteers or offer more/different training, look at how you have structured your campaign and look at the following systems:

Volunteer recruitment
Prospect identification
Prospect cultivation
Prospect assignment
Kickoff meeting and training
Reporting tools, systems and meetings
Solicitation tools and techniques
Donor acknowledgement and stewardship systems

In the end, you may conclude that your systems and campaign structure are fine and that you really do have a “people problem”. However, jumping to this conclusion first, before looking at some of the aforementioned issues, might result in you feeling like Bill Murray in this scene from Groundhog Day.

If you haven’t already done so, you really need to click over and read John’s blog post about “Fighting the Physics“. It is really good and it may just make you look at your annual campaign differently.

Have you ever looked carefully at your annual campaign systems, decided to make a change, and found that the structural fix worked? If so, please scroll down and share that example in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!