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Leadership
Congratulations! You’ve limited your meeting attendees to those who need to be there. Now, how are you going to keep from wasting their time? Your valuable volunteers are smart. They can come up with great ideas and engage in really substantive conversations that result in good policy. That only works though, if they’ve been given time to think about the subject. If your attendees have advance time to think about the subject, they come up with more in-depth questions and analyses that will help you come up with a better decision. So, the best way is to prep for the meeting by:
Declare in advance the purpose of the meeting and the subjects that will be dealt with. Your volunteers should know that if the topic is not on the agenda, it will not be entertained. Harsh? Not as harsh as seeing 15 people around a table spending time on subjects they’re unprepared for, and which are really not their purview. More about prepping a meeting, and other ways to Cheat the Meeting Reaper at Sr. Associate Susan Detwiler’s blog, Thoughtful Philanthropist: http://ow.ly/14M3x Susan Detwiler and Vice President Susan Sherk are presenting Cheating the Meeting Reaper: How to Avoid Death by Meeting at the International Association of Fundraising Professionals annual conference in Baltimore, April 11, 2010. Leadership
Article originally published by The News Journal in the author’s column “A Broader Perspective”, October 2009, Delaware, the capital corporation of America and the place where corporate news tend to flow, might also become the place where cross-polinization between the nonprofit and for-profit organizations takes place. The challenge becomes for corporations to find their call for leadership and support causes they believe in. The nonprofit sector could become corporation’s call for leadership and community involvement. There are advantages in collaborations between both sectors. For corporations the list is important. Joseph Galaskiewicz in Collaboration between Corporations and Nonprofit Organizations indicates that companies have realized healthy corporations cannot exist in sick communities, and therefore the importance of physical and societal infrastructure. Thus giving to societal welfare serves firm’s enlightened best interest. He indicates that being part of the solution becomes part of corporate strategy. Nonprofits might become facilitators for corporations and information channels to open up dialogue between them and local communities. It might help them develop connections with minorities who tend to use the services that community organizations provide. Companies are not asked to abandon their mission to maximizing values to its owners, but are called to take a leadership role in solving social and environmental problems, be more transparent, and accountable. The best partnerships between the for-profit and nonprofit sector bring about meaningful institutional changes and even reverse corporate abuses. Florian Pomper from the NPO-Institut, University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna, supports the idea and suggests a shift in managerial philosophy from only giving to the owner’s interests to a broader understanding considering obligations of the company towards employees, customers, and society. Corporate giving is a result of the responsibility of companies for society. Corporations and nonprofits alike need to expand their concept of partnerships particularly in a restrictive funding environment. A Deloitte Survey finds that nonprofits and corporations are missing opportunities to offset decline in giving dollars and are not utilizing pro bono work as a type of exchange. There is a tremendous opportunity for corporations to channel their skilled employees to nonprofits as a means of social investment; for that, corporations need to improve their skilled volunteer support: is not longer about writing checks but getting customers and employees involved in initiatives that consequently speak for the brand. Corporations should not expect to bank on their involvement; nevertheless there is a clear positive correlation between corporate giving and customers’ response. From the nonprofit perspective there are benefits as well. Peter Drucker in Managing the Non-profit Sector defined them as the essence of the American community. He believed many lessons can be learned from successful nonprofits, like the way they spark volunteers’ interest and make them work as unpaid staff because they believe in the mission. A sense of meaning and contribution to the community is fulfilled by contributing to their causes. Margi Prueitt, Executive Director of the Committee of 100 and former Chief Executive Officer of American Red Cross of the Delmarva Peninsula supports the idea: There is no doubt that nonprofits need to adapt businesses best practices, but businesses need to adapt nonprofits best practices as well. They have to learn how to motivate workers to the point that people essentially work for free willingly. They might also learn the passion needed for businesses success. For nonprofits the opportunity to adapt best business practices could be capitalized through partnerships with socially conscious corporations. Galaskiewicz mentions cause-related marketing, licensing names, logos, and patents to corporations, subcontracting with them, and some other collaboration as a means to bring financial viability to nonprofits. There is also the possibility of technology transfer, and for-profit investment in nonprofit infrastructure can significantly strengthen their capacity. The slow adoption on skilled volunteer services from corporations could be due in part to a lack of knowledge to securing pro bono projects. Nonprofits might also learn how to build business cases to make an impact on donor entities showing outcomes where they can objectively see that their social investment is paying off. PRWeek believes that nonprofits realize now the need to have clear identities and to raise their profile with key audiences. Those elements could also be learned through mutual collaboration. Incorporating best businesses practices should not undermine their legitimacy as mission-driven organizations. Affiliations and collaboration between sectors bring competitive advantages for both. Boundaries between sectors are fading away. There is an expansion of interface between nonprofits and businesses and the trend continues. The task to undertake is to find the cause that triggers motivations, beliefs, and actions for corporations. Each one should find their inner call for leadership in causes that resonate with their values. Corporation’s social investment represents a win-win situation where both sectors see return over their investment. To that extent, once the cause or nonprofit is selected, it is important to define a document that outlines responsibilities for both partners and shows mutual accountability. Even these types of collaborations need to define its business case. The cross-polinization between businesses and the nonprofit sector might well be the next brilliant chapter in the state where corporations are established. A new type of community leadership will emerge from these collaborations. Leadership
In Collaboration between Corporations and Nonprofit Organizations, author Joseph Galaskiewicz points out that healthy corporations cannot exist in sick communities, being part of the solution becomes part of a corporate strategy. The call for community leadership to save teens lives and prevent injuries by teaching better decisions driving skills for Delmarva Broadcasting Company President Pete Booker began on February 20, 2004. That evening three young men were driving home from a high school basketball game. One of them was a friend of Pete’s son for many years. He was a passenger in car in which the driver, travelling at about 70 mph in a 35 mph zone in a residential area, decided to pass another vehicle without noticing that it was preparing to turn left. The other car turned into them and forced them into a tree, killing his son’s friend and another teen. About twenty minutes later on the same evening a young woman, a senior in high school, whom Pete knew a little bit, was also killed when she drove her car into a tree while bending over to pick up her cell phone from the floor of her car. Annually, 4,166 teens aged 16-19 die in car crashes, that is 11 fatalities daily. In Delaware twenty three teens were killed in 2004. Grief and disbelief that these kids could be gone became resolve to do something about the needless rash of deaths and injuries caused by teen drivers making really bad decisions due to inexperience and immaturity. Pete and others gathered a large group of public safety and driver education professionals together in March of 2004. The result was the creation of SmartDrive, a teen driver education program operated by the nonprofit SmartDrive Foundation, which started operations in the Fall of 2005. Today, SmartDrive is Delmarva’s way of giving back to the community. The program currently operates in 49 of Delaware’s 54 schools, public and private, and in several schools in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 2008-2009 approximately 4,800 students participated. In January 2010, SmartDrive expanded into the post-secondary sector with the introduction of “SmartDriveU” at Wilmington University’s multiple campuses. SmartDrive is a free on-line program where students complete three monthly “modules” that include objective true and false, multiple choice and essay questions presented in an entertaining and challenging multimedia format. Students accumulate points as they complete the various sections. An essential part of this program is active parental involvement with their young drivers, so it is strongly suggested parents participate, and in doing so their children can earn bonus points toward the incentives. The SmartDrive program is separated into three regions: Northern Delaware, Southern Delaware and a Pennsylvania-Maryland region. The winning student in each region in each school year receives a $4,000 post-secondary scholarship. Other students receive other cash and merchandise prizes. The three schools with the highest percentage of participation in each region will win cash awards to be used for prom-related expenses. SmartDrive is funded primarily through contributions from a variety of government, corporate and private funding organizations at all levels, as well as individual contributions. There is one full-time paid employee, and one part-time, part-year employee. All others work on a volunteer basis on their own or through time granted by their employers. Results speak for themselves; SmartDrive is an acknowledged contributor to a coordinated effort that limited teen driving accidents to seven in both 2008 and 2009. Delmarva’s involvement via in-kind support and employees working as volunteers has had an impact in the community. The SmartDrive Foundation is in the process of becoming self-sustainable, not a small achievement in a restricted funding environment. Delmarva and SmartDrive exemplify a positive and productive interface between nonprofits and businesses as means to giving back to the community; their mission of helping teens make smart driving decisions has already shown positive results. (Delmarva Broadcasting Company owns and operates eleven radio stations serving Delaware, eastern Maryland, and Southern New Jersey among those stations we find; 93.7 WSTW, 93.7-2 G Graffiti, WDEL 1150 AM, Cool 101.3 FM, and La Exitosa 930 AM. Its coverage assures the continuous delivery of the SmartDrive message to a variety of audiences). Leadership
Reposted from the Thoughtful Philanthropist….. Cheating the Meeting Reaper: Avoiding Death by Meeting II
Meeting attendees sit around a table, still doodling on their pads. They’re wondering why they were invited. Is there a diplomatic way to depart? You’ve already planned this as an important meeting, so there must be some other problem. One strong possibility is that you didn’t think about the invitation list. Once you’ve decided that you need a meeting, the next step is to consider who should be there. This is just as important as the agenda. Having the right people at your meeting makes it much more productive, your staff is happier, and your volunteers are more enthusiastic. Time is your most valuable asset. In any service business, and especially nonprofits, payroll is your most costly expense. Every hour a person spends in a meeting is an hour that is not being spent elsewhere. If you ask staff to step away from their work and come to a meeting, it should be worthwhile. Otherwise, you are wasting your agency’s resources. Volunteers are also agency resources. Consider your Board of Directors. Of course, the entire Board should be at full board meetings. But committee meetings and ad hoc meetings are a different story. Inviting an important board member to a meeting to which he has little to contribute is a sure way to diminish his enthusiasm. Caring about the mission may not change, but if he sits there wondering if it is worth his time, he may think twice about coming to the next meeting. Make sure that every person invited to a meeting is invited for a reason, and you know what that reason is. Decisionmaker – someone who has to be fully informed to make a good decision on behalf of your agency I’ve been in organizations where everyone was invited to every meeting. Needless to say, after a while, they started coming late or leaving early….if they came at all. It’s like crying “WOLF!” Sooner or later the villagers stop coming to the aid of the little shepherd, and even the people who should be at your meetings will not be there. You’ve lost your willing workers. Who should be at a meeting? People who will have to make a decision based on the discussion, and people who have information to contribute to the discussion.That’s it. Don’t leave out someone with extensive front line experience just because he’s a lowly staff member. Conversely, don’t invite someone just because she believes she should be there. There may be extenuating circumstances, but carefully consider the pros and cons. True, an important board member may be offended not to be invited to a committee meeting; yet that same board member may stifle discussion, have the reputation of not being discrete, or have a hard time thinking beyond personal self-interest. Not inviting him may create ill will, even if the discussion is more robust. Similarly, inviting a really great person but whose input is minimal is also wasteful. Inviting a valuable board member to a meeting where she will have minimal input risks losing her enthusiasm. In these cases, finesse the situation. Plan the meeting with the people you need, and if these upper echelon individuals might be offended to not be included, take them into your confidence. Let them know that you are having this meeting, but didn’t want to waste their time since there are other things that only they can do. They may still want to come, but at least they are the ones who made that decision. Good luck! As a leader, you have to husband the resources of the organizations, and use them wisely. When it comes to attendees at a meeting, the most important thing to remember is that extraneous people is wasteful of time and talent. In the words of Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men go aft agley” Since plans can and do go awry, you still have a few more tools available. Timed agendas and meeting management techniques will help corral overbearing speakers and keep the meeting moving. More on these in subsequent posts. Note – My colleague, Susan Sherk, and I will be presenting Cheating the Meeting Reaper at the 47th annual international conference of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, April 2010. Join us! Leadership
Everyone is talking about collaboration between nonprofits. The report, “Philanthropy in the First State: Dealware’s Nonprofits, Individual Donors and Grantmaking Organizations” points out that 1/3 of Delaware nonprofits are operating in the red. Those who are writing about the ramifications of this report are talking about the need for more collaboration or mergers among nonprofits that share the same mission space. But these writers are not going far enough. If 1/3 are operating in the red, then many more organizations are also cutting back on their internal infrastructure in order to make ends meet. I have worked in business, on boards of nonprofit organizations, as an Executive Director of agencies, and now as a consultant to nonprofits; what I see is that it is easy to be directive and say “Do this,” and much harder to implement. Forging synergistic alliances requires leadership from board chairs and clear strategic visions to see where there is mission compatibility. The nonprofit that already has one part-time person doing two full-time jobs does not have anyone with the time to consider finding synergy with other organizations; they are worrying about providing this week’s services. Boards chairs must take a break from figuring out where next to cut, and spend substantive time looking for others who are in their same mission space and could be potential partners. Meaningful collaboration is an intricate process. Yet while everyone seems to agree that nonprofits should collaborate, there seems to be little effort toward offering guidance on how. In her perspective piece in the Wilmington News Journal, Michelle Taylor of United Way said, “true collaboration is hard and requires stepping outside of the comfort zone.” Describing the partnership between United Way of Delaware and the Food Bank of Delaware, she probably understated the culture shock of two organizations first learning to work together. Nonprofits may need a guide or facilitator who can walk them through the process and help them find and then implement those synergies. If United Way, the Delaware Philanthropy Forum, the government or other organizations really want to help the nonprofit sector come to grips with overlapping nonprofits, I challenge them to also provide the means to do it. There are people and organizations who can facilitate the collaboration, work with boards to study the mission space, find and approach partners, and guide the organizations into asking the important questions as they move forward with their plans. A nonprofit that is running on a shoestring — both in time and in money — cannot do it alone. It will need more than the directive to “Just Do It.” It will need help. Leadership
We all have the experience: Sitting in a meeting, wondering when it will end, and too polite to just up and leave. Meanwhile, we’re screaming inside, “Get me out of here!” Of course, this never happens in your organization. But if this experience is so common, why does it still happen? I contend it’s because no one has given the leader — or the participants — the right tools! They’ve never learned meeting management. Meeting management includes purpose, participants, agendas, timing, follow-up…a lot of topics. But before working on meeting management, the first step is determining if this meeting is even necessary. Think about it — figure out the hourly rate of all the participants, and add them up. If the meeting doesn’t move the organization forward, then that’s how much you’ve wasted. So why meet? There are 3 main reasons for holding a meeting:
That’s Inform the people — a somewhat controversial reason for meeting; Discuss an issue — sometimes done to death; and Make a Decision — sometimes done without adequate preparation. There’s more on this subject (540 words, to be exact) at Thoughtful Philanthropist, in a continuing series of blogs on the topic. Or, if you’re interested in a hands-on workshop on meeting management, Susan Sherk, and I will be presenting Cheating the Meeting Reaper at the 47th annual international conference of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, April 2010. Join us! And may all your meetings be productive! Donors
While I agree the economy has presented challenges for nonprofit organizations, I think it has become a convenient “excuse” for some nonprofit organizations as well as donors. The donors are easy so I’ll start with them. For many people, their income is the same as it was one year ago, even if their savings/investments have declined, which for many people is money they’ll recover between now and the time they intended to use the money For most donors, contribution decisions are based on current income, at least for annual campaigns which are typically the lifeline for an organization’s operating budget. Let’s also keep in mind there are people whose financial lives have improved because of our down economy. Certain businesses by virtue of the services they provide or the products they sell are poised to make more money when others are hurting. We also know there are some donors who are most likely to step up and stretch their giving when the chips are down … becoming a “hero” in a down economy can be quite compelling for certain donors. For some nonprofit organziations, I think too many of their challenges are being attributed to the tough economy. Perhaps our tough economy should be considered a “wake up call” for many nonprofit organizations about their operations which donors may be scrutinizing now more than ever. I was disturbed to read an article recently in The Jewish Daily Forward an article titled “The Perfect Storm’ for Day Schools” (http://www.forward.com/articles/112003/) in which I frankly feel the economy was used as a scapegoat to avoid perhaps some of the more difficult realities. While I’m not arguing the economy is not a factor. I can’t help but wonder if the school has done any kind of self-evaluation of their program to determine the perception of it among potential families shopping around. Perhaps their facility isn’t well maintained, perhaps their leaders aren’t equipped to be effective good will ambassadors, perhaps their marketing efforts are misdirected, etc. If donations are down, it could also be a reflection of weak relationships maintained by the school with their donors who are directing their support to the organizations that have done a better job of stewarding the relationship and ensuring ongoing support. My personal feeling is that one reason why the economy is “so bad” is because the perception of the economy is “so bad.” I believe leaders in nonprofit organizations an opportunity – and responsibility – to ensure vital services continue and one thing we can all do to help is to stop talking doom and gloom, commit ourselves to “going the distance.” This may include challenging ourselves to take an honest assessment of our organizations and do what we know we’re supposed to do or what we say we do. Perhaps now, better than ever. I welcome your opinion. Seth Bloom * “It’s the economy, stupid” was a phrase in American politics widely used during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It’s_the_economy, stupid Leadership
In an earlier post, I wrote about why an Interim Executive Director may be a good decision while you look for a permanent replacement. Once you have an Interim….or even when the new permanent person starts…there are a few steps that can make the transition easier. This post, continued at Thoughtful Philanthropist, gives you 6 steps to a successful start… Interim Executive, Acting Exec, Temporary Exec…whatever you call us, we have this in common. We’re not expected to be here very long, and we have a lot to do in that time. If all you need is a placeholder, you wouldn’t spend the dollars for a professional. So it’s on the Interim Executive’s shoulders to make a difference quickly. Your mileage may vary, but I find there are a few initial steps that have to happen to launch a successful interim situation. Keep Reading: |
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