Nonprofit Strategy in Six Words (none of which are curses)

When I was in elementary school we were taught how to write a newspaper article by using the 5 Ws: where, what, why, who and when. Nonprofit strategy isn’t much different, though we do add a how.  In both cases you’re painting a picture and telling a story. Our story is about how we change the world. 

Where are we going? How are we going to conduct ourselves along the way? Who do we serve? What are we doing? Why?

If you subscribe to the Simon Sinek theory of why –  and I do – you know that no one cares about the what or the how; they care about the why.  In his amazing and highly recommended Ted Talk, How great leaders inspire action, he says “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.” Which begs the question:  What is it that you believe?

Nonprofit strategy is born from what you believe.

That’s why I always start with values.  Values are the how.  How do you conduct yourself?  How do you talk to and about your clients? What do you value as an organization? How does that impact the culture and the work?

Your mission statement is the why. It’s why your organization exists.

Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s mission is to “enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.”

Local Matters’ mission – I was honored to facilitate the discussion when it was drafted – is “to create healthy communities through food education, access and advocacy.”

Speaking of Local Matters, they illustrated for me the need for organizations to have both a utopian vision and a 3 year vision.  As they explained it to me, and as I now explain it to others “The utopian vision is the reason you get up every morning.”  It’s the long term where.

The 3 year vision is the more immediate where. It answers where you are going, now. It set the path for your future.

Who? It seems like such an easy question. Who do we serve? As I learned when facilitating Columbus’ theory of change for Opportunity Youth, setting the who is not easy at all. In case you are not aware, Opportunity Youth are 16-24 year olds who are not in school and are not working.  And just to be clear, we’re not talking about your friend’s kid who’s backpacking across Europe. We’re talking about the young people who got thrown out, aged out, were abused or left out. It’s an enormous number of young people and you’d think that deciding who belongs in that group would be easy, but it’s not. 

Who is also about inclusion. How do you include those you serve in your plans? We should never be doing for communities without communities.

The final who is who is doing the work? All good strategies have metrics. Metrics are managed by the more immediate who, when and what. When will it be done? How will you know?

Any strategy that doesn’t have metrics is a wish list. Don’t create those and don’t accept them. I also recommend you try to keep plans relatively short. I tend to believe that the longer a plan is, the less likely it is to get completed. 

Finally, strategy setting is a role of the Board. It should not be done by the Executive leader alone in their office.  It should be done by the entire Board or a subset of the Board that is informing and getting buy in from the full Board along the way. As I tell my students and my clients, any plan you write alone in your office you will execute alone in your office.

That’s it! Five Ws, one H. No cursing. Throw in an environmental scan, a SWOT analysis and an issue exercise and you’ve got yourself a strategy to help you align the work of your organization.

What’s your experience with strategy setting? What would you add, or delete? As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience. Please offer your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button to enter your email. A rising tide raises all boats.

Are Your Organization’s Stories Dishonoring the Families You Serve?

This article, by Dani Robbins, was originally published on Blue Avocado.

Please indulge me the time to paint a picture of the backdrop against which many of us work but don’t often acknowledge. I will then use that backdrop to illustrate the challenge of discussing work that is funded by one group (donors), executed by another group (staff), on behalf of a third group (families) and how that discussion has the potential to harm the people it is intended to help.

We have a problem in this country with the idea of a class system. We like to pretend we don’t have such a system, except for when we want to describe groups, especially groups served by agencies that work for justice. We have a philanthropic class that supports agencies that serve families in lower socioeconomic income groups, or other marginalized groups typically characterized as some version of disadvantaged, living below the poverty level, poor, minority, minoritized, or _____ (insert your favorite pejorative adjective here).

Our boards and our leaders often don’t look like or have the same experiences as the people our agencies serve. The American philanthropic sector is one where, as Burton and Barnes so eloquently put it in “Shifting Philanthropy from Charity to Justice,” “often well-intentioned people make decisions for communities they do not come from, may not understand, rarely interact with, and almost never set foot in.”

Let me layer on top of that troubling foundation two theories, and even though you’ve heard of these, you may not be aware they are actual theories, taught in schools and reinforced… everywhere. I’m speaking of the Bootstrap Theory and the Theory of the Deserving Poor and the Undeserving Poor.

The bootstrap theory is baked into our country’s history. It is the foundation of the American Dream: Anyone from anywhere can come to America and pull themselves up by their bootstraps to make a better life.

Is it true that the bootstrap theory is real for many families? Yes! Do I hear some of you yelling at your screens that your grandparents did just that? I hear you and I believe they did. Mine did too. Yet the American Dream is inextricably interwoven with its less appreciated counterpart: privilege. Unfortunately, this term is often taken out of context and inaccurately understood as meaning “freedom from struggle.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Every family has struggled, and most people work hard. The distinction of privilege is the breaks you get or don’t get along the way because of things that have nothing to do with you, your dreams, or your abilities, and have everything to do with what other people see and perceive about you. The distinction is the obstacles placed or removed from your path and the chances and choices other people will give you or take away based on things they believe about you that have nothing to do with you at all.

Let’s layer on top of that of this country’s acceptance of the sharp delineation between the “undeserving” poor and the “deserving” poor. That delineation is the basis for much of our public policy. It’s what underlies the decision regarding whether the homeless veteran with a history of addiction and crime gets housing or whether the family who just got evicted because of medical bills does. It’s why we have a shelter and transitional housing system instead of a robust and available permanent housing system. It is less expensive to create affordable housing than a three-layer system of shelters, transitional housing, and affordable housing, each layer staffed by paid staff working to move people into permanent housing.

Why don’t we just start with permanent housing? I submit we’re unwilling to defend housing for the long-term homeless addicted veteran over the newly evicted family, even as the Coalition for the Homeless notes, “numerous research studies have consistently confirmed that long-term housing assistance not only successfully reduces homelessness—it is also less expensive than shelter and other institutional care.”

Lest you think that’s all the delineation between the deserving and underserving poor entails, it’s also the idea of creating an extensive (and expensive) bureaucracy to make sure that the poor don’t take advantage of a system ostensibly designed to help them, even though this overladen structure costs multiples more than it would to fund what the people actually need, which we’re still funding in part but with fewer resources and much less dignity. Most services for those in need are set up on the assumption that people cheat. To combat that assumption, we have entire bureaucracies dedicated to make people prove they need assistance. We insist people prostrate themselves to defend their needs and jump through arbitrary hoops to get assistance. I submit a subset of the population will find a way to take advantage of any system that is created. That doesn’t mean we need to build systems that alienate the many to protect against the few. We could, and I believe should, set up systems to mitigate cheating while affirming dignity.

“Deserving” and “undeserving” is about blame. (Cue the bootstrap theory.) The policies that follow in the wake of these two theories set up the families we serve to receive pity but not empathy. Help but not respect. Services but not dignity.

Are there groups who are more deserving and groups who are less? Should that determine who gets services and who doesn’t? Does it impact who gets that house and who doesn’t? As I tell my classes, it always comes down to “What’s the goal?” and “Who decides?”

These two ways of framing the world also set agencies up to tell unflattering stories about the deficits of our families—or worse, exploitive ones to pull at the heartstrings of donors, to make them feel good about their magnanimity while illustrating that donors and recipients are not the same. There are people you can help, but they’re obviously not your people. They’re fundamentally different. There’s them, and there’s us. Us who have worked hard, who deserve where we landed and can now give back to those who… well… didn’t.

It’s an inaccurate story.

Lest you think I’m exaggerating to make a point, I received a letter recently from an organization saying that the children they serve “have no role models in the house.” Does that honor the dignity of their families? Is it even true? It doesn’t, and it’s not.

This letter is not an anomaly: I receive lots of similar letters from a variety of service providers. I might have even written some of them before I understood and could articulate the difference between honoring the families we serve, and not. I bet you have too. Nor is this attitude limited to donor outreach. Many years ago, I received a call from a woman who wanted to bring her kids down to my organization so they could see how “other people” live. I said no. Now you may think I missed an opportunity to engage someone, and you would be right. But I didn’t miss a teachable moment to share that a trip to another community is not a trip to the zoo. (Those might have been the words I used; I’d figured it out by then.)

Taking your kids to see how “other people” (read: not us) live sends a message both to your kids and to the people living in that community. Saying that kids “don’t have good role models” is disrespectful. Many families are doing the best they can for their kids and would be appalled if they saw that letter or met someone who was only there to see how “other people” live.

If you wouldn’t want your families to see what you allow in an appeal letter or what you’d say to a visitor or allow the visitor to do—and that should be one of your lenses—then don’t say it, and don’t do it. Moreover, the chances of such a letter alienating some of your donors (me, for one) is high. We all know that disengaged donors are not going to call us to explain; they’re just going to stop supporting us. After receiving the letter about “role models,” I did call.

If you who are in leadership positions are of a different faith, gender, or race than the majority of the families your agency serves—or if you are joining our sector from the business or government sector—I implore you to tread carefully. We ought never to be perceived as exploiting the people our organizations exist to serve. It’s disrespectful to them; it’s destructive to our agencies.

I invite you to read “How Can Nonprofits Move from Exploitative Storytelling to Justice-Oriented Storytelling?” by Dr. Debra Jenkins. We cannot, we should not—and please join me in saying—we will not exploit our families to engage our donors. It’s not acceptable. It’s not reasonable. It’s not necessary. It complicates our ability as social justice and nonprofit leaders to honor the people in our community and their lives. It is critically important that the messaging you use does not reinforce either the bootstrap theory or the theory of the deserving and the undeserving poor.

Finally, I will share that I worry that our focus on donors sometimes comes at the expense of our families. That’s not the intent, but it may be the result. Our agencies do not exist to serve donors. We should embrace our donors and invite them to partner with us to make our communities better, but we can never forget that nonprofits exist to improve our communities. The mission and those we serve must always be our primary focus.

Those of us who work for social justice can never contribute to the narrative that there are the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. We cannot reinforce the bootstrap theory. We can talk with our donors about the difference between theory and reality and about how to build on the assets our communities already have. We can hold those assets up as being worthy and deserving. To do anything less is unjust. We must tell stories that honor the dignity of our families and embrace our donors, as we work together toward creating a more equitable and just world for all.

What’s your experience with deficit or asset based story telling? What would you add, or delete? As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience. Please offer your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button to enter your email. A rising tide raises all boats.

Ten Years of Change, Growth and Nonprofit Evolution

Last October marked ten years for my company.  It was a transformational decade for me professionally, for our sector and our work. 

Professionally, I had the opportunity to

• build a semi successful consulting firm
• co-write a leadership book (Thank you Maureen Metcalf!)
• become a nonprofit thought leader (Thank you readers of my book and blog!)
• teach at the college level (Thank you Rob Greenbaum and OSU’s Glenn College!)
• Fall in love with teaching (Thank you students!)
• Get my dream job (Thank you Anne Kugler and John Carroll University!)

I’ve taught over 250 college and graduate students and had the honor to mentor, coach, encourage and support dozens of nonprofit leaders.

Our sector is facing immense opportunities, unprecedented challenges, old issues and emerging threats. We will have to come to consensus on how we respond to:

• The loss of charitable deductions, and the gifts that go with them
• The impact of Donor Advised Funds
• The possible loss of the Johnson Amendment
• Big philanthropy
• Immigration
• Climate change
• Hate
• Guns
• Violence against women
• Systemic racism
• #MeToo
• Voting rights
• All of the above and much more

There are multiple and competing issues that challenge our democracy, our souls and our future. In honor of each person who reads this blog, and the hundreds of people and myriad issues for which you get up every day ready once again to take up the fight, I offer the most popular and poignant posts from the last decade:

Strong Boards beget strong agencies which beget strong communities. Here’s how to build your board, support them in doing their work and do your own:

An Open Letter to Board Members I Have Known and Loved is the most popular post I have ever written, by thousands.  I wrote it to honor several of my Board members, especially Bud Rogers, officially Bruce W. Rogers of Akron Ohio.  He is, for me, the quintessential board member. He is my ideal. I learned more from his grace, his leadership and his generosity that I can ever explain. May he rest in peace.

The Role of the Board “Every time I speak on issues related to nonprofits, someone asks “What is the role of the Board?” “The Board is responsible for governance, which includes setting the Mission, Vision and Strategic Direction; Hiring, Supporting and Evaluating the Executive Director; acting as the Fiduciary Responsible Agent, setting Policy and Raising Money. Everything else is done in concert with the Executive Director or by the Executive Director.” The question that follows or should follow is “What is The Role of the Nonprofit CEO? “Leading an organization is a big job that looks much easier than it is. In fact, like all leadership done well, it looks like nothing.”

While we’re at it, here’s one on Becoming a new Board President, the fist in the series Governance the Work of the Board and the most important, exciting and engaging opportunity for Board leadership: Generative Governance.

“If your Board is not fund raising the way you want them to, I submit you do not have a fund raising issue; you have an engagement issue and possibly a Board Development issue.” Not Fundraising? Not Engaged. Alternatively, or additionally, if they are not fulfilling their role, it may be because you’re doing their work. If you are, stop. Here’s how: Five Thing to Stop Doing Right Now and Three More Things to Stop Doing.

For my students, young people everywhere and all of our daughters:

Advice for Graduating Students Joining the Workforce

An Open Letter to College Bound Daughters, including My Own

Discretion and Discernment: A Call to Action on Behalf of Our Young People

Finally, the three posts that are closest to my philosophy of leadership and what I believe about how we can move forward social justice:

Does Your Agency Aspire to Social Justice or Charity?

Agreements, Vibrancy and Abundance

Reflecting on my Pursuit of Social Justice

Thank you for reading. Thank you for your leadership, advocacy and activism.  May you and may I still be standing, still fighting, and still inspired to change the world throughout this new decade. Lead on!

The Intersection of Mission, Vision and Values

I had the privilege to present at John Carroll University’s Community Forum last week on the difference between mission, vision and values. It’s a topic that has come up repeatedly in the last few weeks in a variety of arenas.

My analogy is this: the values are the guardrails, the vision is the destination, and the car is the mission, because it drives everything.

Here’s another way to frame it: In elementary school, we were taught how to write newspaper articles by using the 5 Ws: where, what, why, who and when.  Nonprofit strategy isn’t much different, though we do add how.  In both cases you’re painting a picture and telling a story. 

Our story is about how we change the world. 

Where are we going?  How are we going to conduct ourselves along the way? Who do we serve?  What are we doing? Why?

If you subscribe to the Simon Sinek theory of why – and I do – you know that no one cares about the what or the how, they care about the why.  In his amazing and highly recommended Ted Talk, How great leaders inspire action, he says “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.” Which begs the question:  What is it that you believe?

Nonprofit strategy is born from what you believe.

Why:

Your mission statement is the why. It’s why your organization exists.

JCU’s mission is “As a Jesuit Catholic university, John Carroll inspires individuals to excel in learning, leadership, and service in the region and in the world.”

Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s mission is to “enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.”

Local Matters’ mission, which I was honored to be in the room when it was drafted, is “to create healthy communities through food education, access and advocacy.”

You may have noticed none of the mission statements above, or most in the field, talk about programs. Mission statements are not about what you do, they’re about why you exist. We exist to do X. Programs are how you get there; programs are your theory of change. But they’re not why you exist.

You may also have noticed that I put in quotations the mission statements. Anytime you copy in a mission or a vision statement, it should be in quotations. Both statements are precise and exact. They should not be paraphrased. 

You exist to inspire, to enable, to educate, to lead…to do something.  Programs are not something; programs are the path to get to your something.  Programs are how you test your theory of change. 

How:

Values are the how.  How do you conduct yourself?  How do you talk to and about your clients, students or staff? What do you value as an organization? How does that play out?

Values, when used in the field, primarily refer to organizational values. I usually explain them as the ideas that are valued by the staff and Board of an organization. That could be communication, collaboration or individual accomplishments (not usually both), honesty, high ethical standards, or a whole host of other things. Organizational values are not necessarily things you’d include when listing your personal values, though of course they might be. This is not to say that your personal values do not need to be aligned with your organization’s values, because they do. It is intended to mean that we all might not list the same things that our organizational values include. (Ethics, Values and Integrity) When I was interviewing at JCU, I went through their (now our) values one by one, out loud and confirmed that I could and wanted to honor each one. In fact, I remember saying “I can get behind that!”

Core values are the way you conduct yourself on the path.

Where:

The vision statement is the direction you are going. It’s time-limited or utopian, and aspirational.

Local Matters illustrated for me the need to have both a utopian vision and a three-year vision.  As they explained to me, and as I now explain to others, “The utopian vision is the reason you get up every morning.”  It’s the impact you aspire make.

BGCA’s vision is to “Provide a world-class Club Experience that assures success is within reach of every young person who enters our doors, with all members on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, demonstrating good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle.”

The three-year vision is also the where. It answers where you are going, now.  It sets the path for your future.

Local Matters’ where: “By 2020 we will have created systemic, food-related change across diverse populations and community settings.”

Local Matters’ long term utopian where: “Equitable access to a sustainable food system and a world free of food- related chronic disease.”

You may have noticed neither of the vision statements above, or most in the field, talk about programs. Vision statements are where you are going.

What:

Programs are the what. What is the path? What will you do to get to the where and address the why?

In the nonprofit world, your theory of change is the path to your goal. What is the desired goal? What path will get you to it? Strategy is the selected theory of change; it’s the high-level plan to meet a goal. Anne E Casey defines it in their manual, which if you haven’t read I highly recommend: “A theory of change (TOC) outlines how to create that change. It is an essential part of a successful community transformation effort. This manual, created for the Casey Foundation’s Making Connections initiative, defines theory of change using Casey’s impact, influence and leverage platform, and shows community advocates how to create their own TOC by showing the relationships between outcomes, assumptions, strategies and results.”

Who:

Who? It seems like such an easy question. Who do we serve? As I learned the hard way when I facilitated the Franklin County Opportunity Youth Initiative, setting the who is not easy at all. In case you are not aware, Opportunity Youth are 16-24 year olds who are not in school and are not working. And just to be clear, we’re not talking about your friend’s kid who’s backpacking across Europe. We’re talking about the kids who got thrown out, aged out, opted out, or who were left out. It’s an enormous number of kids and you’d think that deciding who belongs in that group would be easy, but it’s not.

When I do strategic planning with agencies we start with mission, vision and values, move to high level goals to get to the vision, set strategies to meet to the goals and metrics, assignments and due dates to make sure it gets done. All good strategies have metrics. Any plan that does not have metrics, assignments and due dates is a wish list.

What do you think of my analogy? How do you talk about the intersection of values, mission and vision? As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience. Please offer your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button to enter your email. A rising tide raises all boats.

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What Can You and Your Nonprofit Do in These Uncertain Times?

I have been watching and worrying, wringing my hands, furiously reading and posting articles, vacillating between being terrified and sick to my stomach, and occasionally screaming about the current status of our country’s leadership and the crash course we seem to be on toward becoming all of our worst fears. As that is only so productive for so long, I am electing to make a list of things I can do, and our field can do, to affect change. I invite you to join me.

Give

I can give to a cause I believe is working for justice. I am already a member of the ACLU and both of my local NPR stations (why we have two is a post for another time, and another blogger) After reading How to Make Fun of Nazis about a town in Germany in which people pledge to donate to social justice for every step made by neo-Nazis, I made a donation to one of my favorite charities.  After the Kavenaugh hearings, I sent money to a rape crisis center. Today, the morning after the Tree Of Life massacre, I sent money to the Democratic house candidate in my district.

Nonprofits, you can promote your work addressing these issues.  You can engage donors to rally around you. You can engage people to fight hatred in all forms. You can protect your clients, members and community. You can solicit donations to execute (the non candidate related suggestions) listed below, assuming they are aligned with your mission and in concert with your programming and your Board. If not, I encourage you to support your partner agencies in doing so.

Call

I can call my elected officials.  I (personally) have called Senator Portman’s office so often, I’m on a first name basis with some of the staff. (Hi Eric and Kevin!) If you’re going to call, be clear on what you want. Is it that a vote should be put off, or an FBI investigation be requested? Is it to vote no? Is it impeachment?  Is it that protestors should not be allowed to carry guns? Is it to enhance prayer with action and legislation? Is it to protect and defend minority groups? Statements are nice but legislative or judicial action is the only way we’re going to ensure our values are upheld. While it’s true that our personal values aren’t all the same, our country’s values are pretty clear; even as we haven’t always or often lived up the them. This is one more opportunity to be who we wish we were.

Nonprofits, if you’re not already doing so, you can send out posts informing people how to engage elected officials. If you want to encourage a specific view point or recommend a letter be used, depending on the topic, you may have to follow different rules based on your IRS status.  If you’re unsure, check your status before you do.  The rules are different for 501 c 3s and a 501 c 4s.  Both can lobby, but 3s can only do so to a point and cannot support candidates. I also recommend you check with your Board before you set down this path.

Join

I can join together with like-minded partners.  I can join a current group; there are many.  Or I can start my own.  One person is just that. Three is a group. Ten is a coalition. 100 is movement. We can stand together to fight hatred and promote peace.

Nonprofits, we are all stronger together. If there’s a collation you can build or join with your partner agencies to promote an agenda of peace, I encourage you to consider it.  Ten agencies standing together to promote their city as a sanctuary city sends a strong message.  Ten agencies partnering to train people to protect their neighbors does as well.  Again, bring your Board along with you.

Protest

I can, live and in person, go to a protest and put my life and my body on the line to stand up for my beliefs.  It is my right and my choice. Yours, too. The only way to be heard sometimes is to also be seen.

Nonprofits, many of our strongest and oldest agencies were birthed in protest.  You can bus people to marches. You can train them on the law and their rights. You can ensure your clients have a political voice and know how to use it. You can also take out an ad in the local paper, write an op-ed piece or post a letter on your website.

Speak Up and Speak Out

Speak out not only to the elected officials or on your computer, but to your family, friends, and neighbors when they say something disrespectful, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim or just plain stupid, wrong or ignorant. Silence is acquiescence. There are no sidelines and, no (!) both sides do not have equal validity. There’s right and there’s wrong.  Where do you stand?

Nonprofits, you can train people on how to do this.  It’s hard and sometimes it’s dangerous. You can give people tools.

Vote, Support a Candidate or Run for Office

I can vote, as I have done and will continue to do. I can support, financially and with my time, candidates that I believe in.  I can also run for office. So can you.

Nonprofits can and are training people on how to run, register to vote and support others.  We can encourage them. We can support them. We can teach them how to raise money, file the paperwork and campaign.  Many of you are already doing it.  The rest of us can promote your work.

Heal

We have never healed the wounds of our history. We have never reconciled the hell of slavery.  The history of women as chattel. The cost Native Americans paid. The scars of internment. The vestiges of WWII on its survivors and the families of those who weren’t as lucky. Our past is haunting us. We have some hard questions to face and some difficult conversation to have. Let’s have them. Let’s talk.

If all we have are words and war, I’d prefer words.

Nonprofits, we are already poised to hold these conversations.  We can set ground rules, start the dialogue and begin the healing process.

What I can’t do, you can’t do and we can’t do is nothing.  Our silence will not protect us.

What more can I do?  What have you done?  What else can our field do? I welcome your insight, your answers and your comments, with the understanding that hate will (still) not be perpetuated here.

Does Your Agency Aspire to Social Justice or Charity?

The two questions I repeat the most, in both my classes and in my practice, are these: What’s the goal?  Who decides?

What’s the goal?

Is your agency’s goal to be the best food pantry (or any other service providing/safety net charity)? Or is it to address the underlying issues related to food scarcity (or any other complicated, multi-layered critical issue)?  If it’s the former, that’s charity.  If it’s the latter, that’s social justice.

Social Justice is working to change systemic issues. Charity is responding to immediate needs.  As anyone who has ever taken my class or worked in our field will tell you, we need both.  We’re not going to ignore the hungry child in front of us to work for social justice. Yet, we can’t only get food for those who are hungry, because the root causes are what’s causing food scarcity.

Every person who serves a nonprofit has to decide where to plug in. Every staff member. Every researcher. Every leader. Every volunteer. Every donor.

What’s the goal?

Do we keep fishing cats out of the river, or look upstream and deal with whatever or whoever is causing the cats to be in the river? What’s the goal? (It’s a handy question.)

Nonprofit Boards, in concert with their CEO, set the goal. The goal sets the path. (This could be a great generative conversation for a future Board meeting.)

If the goal is to be the best food pantry, and there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be the best food pantry –  unless your goal is social justice, and then you’re on the wrong path. The path supports the work toward the goal.

Maybe you want both?  I always did. I wanted to run the best agency I could, doing good work, meeting our mission, with a well trained, dedicated and talented Board and staff, serving our clients with dignity AND I want to work with my community partners to eliminate the need for my agency.

That means dual goals with dual paths. You can be the best food pantry and also work with community partners to eliminate food scarcity.  Food scarcity, and all systemic issues, is a big scary multi layered bucket of issues that include privilege, implicit bias, legal and policy challenges, poverty elimination, racism, sexism, classism, housing, school funding imbalances, and lots of other things that are hard to tease out and even harder to solve.

Being the best is a go it alone, we have the answers, and we’ll get it done model. It’s a bit more territorial and a lot less collaborative, but it’s not ineffective and sometimes the circumstances call for it.

Am I competing against my partner agencies for funding?  Sometimes I am. Does that mean I can’t also work with them to address the underlying issues in our community. Some will tell you it does.  I’m here to tell you it doesn’t.  Where you sit always determines where you stand.

It’s why your values have to match your agency’s policies and its aspirations?  As I mentioned in Reflecting on my Pursuit of Social Justice “saying you value one thing but actually doing another sends a very inconsistent and confusing message. If we want our teams to live our values, then we have to live them and our policies and systems have to reflect them.”

Who Decides?

You do, collectively and individually. You decide at the agency level.  You decide at the community level. You decide at your leadership level- on your team, in your neighborhood.  Every day.  With every decision. Every donation. Every allocation. Every choice.

There was a great piece on NPR this morning  In Some Rural Counties, Hunger Is Rising, But Food Donations Aren’t looking at just this issue. It’s not just SW Virginia.  There are communities across the country that are discussing systemic issues and setting goals for change in their community.  I’m proud to tell you that several of those cities are in Ohio; Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus have been and continue to have these conversations.

I’m hoping it’s a national trend. Even if it’s not yet a trend that has come to your community, you can still move toward social justice.

We each get to decide if we run our agencies to be the best organization alone or if we work together to eliminate the need for all of our agencies, because we addressed the systemic issue requiring our agencies.  How?

By deciding to be less territorial and more collaborative. Call your partners and other leaders in your community who work on like issues and invite them to discuss the options. Are you ready to set a Theory of Change for your community?  If so, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has a great manual on how.

Before you do, you might have to stop being afraid of scarcity and start embracing abundance.  If you’re currently looking at the world and your ability to impact change as a zero sum game –  and it’s how many of us have been trained to think –  I invite you to read Agreements, Vibrancy and Abundance.

We can change our corner of the world alone at our desks or we can do it together.  If our goal is social justice, together will get us farther, faster.

What’s your experience standing in the breech between social justice and charity.  Where did you elect to stand? As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience. Please offer your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button to enter your email. A rising tide raises all boats.

Things Nonprofit Boards of Directors Can Do, But Shouldn’t

Serving on the Board of Directors of a nonprofit is an honor and a privilege as well as a job and a liability.  As with any job, there are things that you cannot do because they’re illegal and things that you should not do because they’re inappropriate and/or unethical.

Here is a list of things Board members shouldn’t do, even though, technically, they can.

Pay Yourselves

I had the privilege of co-facilitating a training recently and no less than five representatives of different agencies stood up and asked us follow up questions when we said Board members shouldn’t get paid.

Here are a few of the questions:

“Can we pay them a stipend?”

“Can we give them a gift card?”

“We really can’t pay them?”

Um…no.

It is not illegal to pay Board members, but it is widely considered to be inappropriate in a charitable institution that is soliciting donations from its community. The one exception is when the (paid) executive director has an ex-officio seat on the Board. Other than that, staff shouldn’t be on the Board and the Board shouldn’t be paid.

You can pay mileage to and from the Board meeting and reimburse expenses when Board members are on agency business. You can, but you really shouldn’t, pay Board members for doing the work of the Board of a community agency.

Assign Work to Staff, other than the CEO

Boards have one employee, the CEO.  Every other employee works for that CEO.  The CEO’s role is to lead the staff, support the Board, manage the day to day operations and serve as the face of the organization in the community. It is the CEO’s role to execute the strategic plan in support of the mission and vision of the organization.

It is hard to sit in a Board committee meeting that is staffed by a senior yet non-executive leader of the agency and not assign work to that staff member. Work often gets assigned in such meetings and it likely there is a process in place for the staff member to go back to the CEO and update her on the results of the meeting. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is the Chair of the committee or of the Board directly assigning work to a staff member, outside of a committee or Board meeting and unbeknownst to the CEO.

When Boards choose to not honor the “one employee” rule, and assign work to staff, it quickly becomes very confusing whose instructions take precedence and whom will be held to account. It also plants a seed that challenges the CEO’s legitimacy.  That seed (of dissent) grows and eventually it becomes difficult for the CEO to maintain his or her position, either because they quit, or challenge the Board’s overstep and are fired.

Hire Staff

Since we’re already here, let’s keep going. The only staff Boards should hire is their CEO. All other staff should be hired by that CEO. There will come a time when you do not have a CEO and also have other positions open. It will seem reasonable to try to hire some of those positions in the interim. Resist!

You don’t know what skills your new CEO will have, so it is unlikely you will be able to hire someone to complement those skills. Unless you have organizational values that you will expect your CEO to honor (which you should also be asking about in the CEO search process), you won’t know which values are important to your new CEO and won’t be able to see if the person you want to hire is a match. It is as likely that whomever you hire will not be a good fit for the team already in place and since you know them but don’t directly work with them, you might not be able to assess that.  You want the CEO to build their own team. That may mean you have to let them.

If you must, hire someone as a temporary with the option to stay at the discretion of the new CEO. That sets the tone for both the new person and the new CEO that the Board understands the difference in roles.

Avoid Fund Raising

Boards are tasked with securing the resources of the organization. I’ve heard consultants say that Board don’t have to fund raise, but it is very rarely true. Fund raising is a group effort, led by the leaders.

The CEO cannot raise money alone. The Development Director cannot raise money alone. Fund raising works best in a culture of philanthropy when both the staff and the Board are working together.

The Board’s role is to set the fund raising goal, financially support the agency themselves, embark on the campaign, open doors, introduce staff, “make the ask” when appropriate, pick up the tab for lunch when possible, and thank the donor.

The staff is responsible for training the Board, coordinating the assignments, preparing the askers with relevant donor information, drafting and supplying whatever written information will be left with the donor, including a letter asking for a specific dollar amount, attending the meetings as necessary and documenting the meeting in the database as well as writing the formal thank you note, and then creating a plan to steward the donor.

Unless you are getting all of your money from program fees, and if you are you may have issues with the public support test, fund raising is one of the five roles of the Board.

Do Business with the Agency you Serve

The law allows Board members to “do business” with the agency they serve if it is at “fair market value.” Do not be fooled. This is a case of the law allowing something that it’s likely public opinion will not support. Just because something is allowed does not make it right. It is an enormous conflict of interest and a quick way to get a spot on the front page of the paper for all the wrong reasons.  If you are on the Board, do not do business with the agency you serve.

What things have you seen Boards do that they shouldn’t?  Any advice to share? As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience. Please offer your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button. A rising tide raises all boats.

The Case for Major Donor Cultivation Plans

The Giving USA 2015 numbers are out! $373.3 billion was given to charities in 2015, up 4% from last year. 80 percent of that money was given by individuals or individuals who recently died by way of their bequests. That percentage hasn’t changed as long as I’ve been paying attention to this statistic. “Individual gifts and bequests, on average, equal slightly more than 80% of the charitable donations given in this country each year. Just less than 20% is given by corporations and foundations.

Do organizations take advantage of that knowledge? Some do better than others.” Culture of Philanthropy or Fund Raising

If you do not currently have a robust individual giving program, I hope you will consider these statistics and introduce one. A robust giving program includes an intentional plan to develop donors at all levels of giving. Perhaps you are currently doing an annual appeal letter. If so, consider adding in person asks of your top donors and calls to your mid level donors. Perhaps you accept donations but aren’t sure how to solicit them. Perhaps you do not currently have 100% Board giving. Perhaps you have some large donors but aren’t sure how to engage them. If any of these apply to your organization, opportunity is knocking!

Major gifts are defined as the top 10% of gifts to an organization and often include gifts from several if not all Board members. It doesn’t matter if your top 10% give $50 or $50,000. If you are a 501 (c) 3 and would like to increase the charitable gifts you receive, a major donor cultivation plan for each of your major donors and every Board member could help. Please click over to read more about how to move a prospect to a donor and how to steward that donor.

Please also note that it is very hard to raise money in any community without the financial support of 100% of the Board. If you do not currently have 100% Board giving, that is the place to start. It is critical to your success. Board members should be cultivated and stewarded like the donors they are, or should be.

Major gifts (from major donors) are one part of a robust resource development planning process.  Resource Development, as a term, is a bit broader than fund raising as it encompasses fund raising, plus friend raising, plus in-kind gifts and the need for each of us to have ambassadors in the community helping us move forward our missions.

Your resource development plan may include events, grants (government, corporate and foundation – remember the latter two are only 20% of national giving), planned as well individual giving in all its forms, including annual campaigns in the form of letters, calls and in person asks of Major Donors, Board and Staff.

I recommend a plan for each Major Donor. I like plans. They allow us to do the work, rather than think about the work. So, write a plan for each of your major donors that maps out your giving request for the year. You don’t want to go to them five times to ask for different stuff, or if you do, you want them to know you’re coming. This is most easily accomplished by asking for what you want on whatever schedule is most comfortable for them, which is likely to be (but may not be) an ask meeting once annually and periodic stewardship check in meetings or calls throughout the year. Donorcentric is the goal. It may not be what is most comfortable for you. (If it was, we’d all get all our money in January and then focus on other things all year, but alas……)

Putting together a major donor cultivation plan will, of course, require you to know your donors, their family, history of giving to your agency and possibly other agencies if you can find it; what they’re passionate about; and your aspirations for their giving, which should be based on their level of engagement and capacity as well as who the right person is to send to ask. In other words, just because someone can give you $50,000, if they have a history of giving you $100, it’s unlikely they’re going to give you $50,000 – unless you greatly increase their level of engagement. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen because of course it does. It’s the difference between a wish and a plan. Both are useful but the latter is more actionable. Bring people into your community, engage them in your work, involve them on a committee, invite them to volunteer in a program: build your relationships! Build a plan for each of them too. Consider this template:

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Name:  Dani Robbins

Spouse/partners and children’s name and salient details:  Dani elected not to share this publicly.

Occupation and passions: Consultant with the goal of making nonprofits stronger; passionate about women and kids, the disadvantaged, diversity, inclusion and parity, and all underdogs, everywhere.

Giving History: increasing mid-level donations of $100-200 annually for the past three years; occasional attendance at events; also supports the Boys & Girls Clubs, Local Matters, City Year, Dress for Success, and other social service/social justice agencies.

Recent Touch Points: coffee March 2016, call November 2015, lunch July 2015.

Remainder of 2016 plan to check in: weekly e-blasts, lunch in summer, fall coffee, Thanksgiving card, invitation to Holiday (no ask) VIP party

Communication and ask preferences: Dani prefers to be asked for her gifts once a year and likes quarterly check ins and to receive our mailings.  She also follows us on Twitter, can be counted upon to share our news with her network and is connected to several of our staff and Board on LinkedIn.

2016-2017 Engagement Plan: We are planning to ask Dani to teach one of our team members how to write a grant. We also occasionally call her for advice and may ask if she’d like to serve on a committee.

2017 Gift Request: We plan to ask Dani for $250 as follows:  $125 as a year-end gift for general operating, $125 to support summer programming.

Who is the right person to ask Dani (regardless of ego, you always send the person who will get a yes):  Dani is very close to our CEO and Board Members Q, N and R. Any two are likely to be well received.

Future engagement opportunities: We may ascertain Dani’s interest in Board service, once our current Board governance person rolls off. She is also a prospect for our capital campaign and possibly for a planned gift.  As she continues as a donor we hope to grow her gift as she grows her practice, possibly to a legacy society level.

————————————————————————————-

This template is one option among many. I made this up. Use mine. Make up your own. There is no right template. There is only right for you.

Whether you’re a seasoned fund raiser or a new Executive Director, creating plans for your donors is a great way to put all the information in one spot, put the plan in the hands of your development staff or volunteers and get to it!

What’s your experience with major donor cultivation plans? Do you have a template you like and can share?  As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience.  Please share your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button to enter your email.  A rising tide raises all boats.

Creating Board Buy-In

I have found myself uttering this statement more than a few times in the last month: “If you include your team- board or staff- in the direction setting process, they will be more willing and likely to execute the strategies needed to accomplish the goal.” The only way to get buy in on a plan is to create it and the only way to create it is to involve people in the process, and then continue to engage them in the execution.

I know dozens of nonprofit CEOs, maybe hundreds. Each and every one of them gets up every day to do what they believe is best for their organization. Yet, they don’t always build the buy-in to accomplish the goals. Then they get frustrated because the board doesn’t participate. Or the board gets frustrated because they believe their time is not being valued or their input is not being sought. Or the staff gets frustrated because they’re being instructed on what to do without being told why, or sometimes how.

Why is this happening so consistently in our sector? Because many of our leaders have been trained on a premise that is inaccurate. The premise is that it is the CEO’s role to set the strategic direction and everyone else will fall in line. That is just not the case. It may be the case in the for profit field and because our field reflects so much of that field it gets very confusing. In the nonprofit field, one of the 5 roles of the Board is to set the Mission, Vision and Strategic Direction of an agency. That is not a role that can be farmed out to the Executive Director.

Here is some evidence of the faulty premise based on actual statements I have heard people say over the last 10 years, paraphrased and possibly softened or hardened over time and repetition. (I could go back further, but why?)

I Don’t Want to Bother Them

“My board is busy.” “My board is powerful” “They don’t have time for this.” All of which may be true. That is probably what attracted them to you and you to them, but they have the job. They have been appointed to govern your agency. This is governance.

I Don’t Trust Them

“This is my agency; it’s my baby.” “They may choose to go a different direction than the direction I want to go.”

One of the hardest pills to swallow for founders and executives who didn’t come up through our field is this one, very large, point: We are professional nonprofit leaders working for a Board that may not be as well versed in nonprofit law, the issue our agency exists to impact or Board process.

That Board has collectively been appointed to govern our agency. They speak with one voice and with that voice can fire us, the agency’s leader, change the agency’s mission and do whole lot of other things, some of which has the potential to be damaging, and not only to us.

It’s why building and training the board is so important. It’s why professional development for you and your team is so valuable. It’s why setting a strategy that everyone has bought into is critical.

Without each, there is the very real potential for chaos.

Why is my Board not more involved?

“Why don’t the committees meet?” “What are they not helping me raise money?” “I don’t have time have to stop what I’m doing to help them do it.” “Shouldn’t they already know this stuff?”

You’ve heard me say it before: You will be subject to whomever trained your board members before they came to you, which may be no one. If you want your Board to speak with one voice, to understand their role and the expectations of that role, to understand your role, and the responsibilities within each, you will have to train them.

Board work is primarily done by committees. Executive Directors support, which sometimes means encourages the Board to adopt, a committee structure. Once they have, you will then have to support them in fulfilling their expanded role AND- this a big and – go back to doing your job and stop doing theirs. (This is much harder that it sounds!) For more information on how to do that, please click here to see the last point in this post.

Creating Board buy in is the difference between a plan that gets written by you in your office or in a room in which everyone is proud to be. It’s the difference between the final product sitting on a shelf or getting executed. It’s the difference between your agency moving forward or spinning in circles. Build the buy-in. Create the plan. Move your mission forward!

What have you done to build Board buy-in? What are some faulty premises that you’ve seen? As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience. Please offer your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button to enter your email. A rising tide raises all boats.

Wishes for 2016 for the Nonprofit Field

If you’ve been reading for a while – and if you have, thank you – you know that there are a few things that I find continually, unnecessarily, and routinely crazy making. As such, here are my wishes for our field for this New Year, in the hopes that next year, we can stop doing this stuff and dedicate more time to moving forward our missions and improving our communities.

1. I wish people would have higher expectations of us. There is an underlying sentiment, usually accompanied by a shrug, of “It’s just a nonprofit.” “Just nonprofits” serve the most disadvantaged among us. I wish, want and need the community to have higher expectations. Not silly jump through hoops expectations that make us crazy but don’t make us stronger. I want real and serious high expectations that our leaders will rise to meet and our field will be stronger for their doing so.

2. I wish people would stop professing that businesses are better run. Jim Collins said “Social sector leaders are not less decisive than business leaders; they only appear that way to those who fail to grasp the complex governance and diffuse power structure.” In a business the leader can make a unilateral decision and everyone gets in line. Nonprofit leaders don’t have that luxury. In the nonprofit world we have to create buy in and take our Boards, senior staff and sometimes funders along with us on our journey toward greatness. As such, it’s harder. Please, the next time you find yourself about to tell a nonprofit leader why businesses are better run, resist the temptation and remember: different isn’t necessarily better and, more accurately, it’s likely not true.

3. I wish agencies would spend more time and resources developing their people and their organizations. It’s critical to address our communities’ issues, yet it’s much easier when you have the right people in the right jobs with the right infrastructure, and the right plans under the right leadership. Imagine what you could accomplish if you had clear goals. Imagine if you had Human Resource systems that supported your organizational values, which were set in your strategic plan and are upheld at every level of your organization. Imagine if that plan was supported by a Board Development plan, another plan for raising contributed income and one for developing each member of your team, all of which is coupled with excellent operational policies and processes that protect your agency, serve your clients and impact your community. The combination of each will help you accomplish your true potential. The absence of most or all may mean you’re not only not meeting that potential you may be hurting the people you exist to help.

4. I wish the people that start a new organization would learn everything they need to know about running one, before they introduce it. I wish they would learn the law as it pertains to their agency, our field and the requirements of both. I wish they would learn everything they can about the issue they hope to impact, the community and its leaders. I wish they would learn how to build a board and attract and keep donors and staff. We all learn as we go, yet and still, I wish the founders of new nonprofits would learn enough to start strong.

5. I wish each nonprofit executive could see the benefits of collaboration and also the cost of territorialism. If my goal is to make our communities stronger – and it is – then you not sharing information or best practices is at cross purposes with that goal. Now your goal may not be aligned with my goal, but it should be, because your mission certainly is. I believe any process that is in conflict with our goal is a bad process. I once modeled in a vintage fashion show for the local Goodwill. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who said to me some version of “Why are you helping another agency?!” I also routinely took (and still take) phone calls from the leadership of sister agencies who needed capacity building assistance and other leaders took my calls when I needed it. My agency will be stronger when yours is stronger, and we, together, will be that much closer to impacting our collective issues. The opposite is also true, if I only serve to move forward my agency, I am negatively impacting the field I purport to serve.

This list is just a start. I have many more aspirations for our field and the important work we each do to make our world a better place. If we were more strategic, if our goals were better formulated and our systems were better developed, our field would be stronger, and in turn, our communities and our world would be as well.

I believe that anytime you present a problem it is also imperative to present a solution. Since every New Year provides the opportunity to make resolutions, I resolve to continue to work to make our field stronger. I will also – and this is new for me and has the added benefit of making my husband happy to no longer have to listen to how much I miss social justice work – stop turning down interviews and consider going back in the field so I can practice what I have been preaching. Until then (then being defined as the perfect job for me), I will continue to speak, write, teach, train and coach and join with colleagues around the nation and the world to make our field stronger and our reach farther.

What are your wishes for our field and also your resolutions to make them happen? As always, I welcome your insight, feedback and experience. Please share your ideas or suggestions for blog topics and consider hitting the follow button to enter your email. A rising tide raises all boats.