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Dear Nonprofiteer, Who quit and made me president?

November 4, 2010

Dear Nonprofiteer:

Recently I started serving on a board of a small social service organization.  In the last six months our board president has slowly retreated from his leadership duties due to a variety of personal issues that he’s facing and I find that I’m essentially left driving the bus.  What resources are there that you would recommend for those seemingly newly anointed to oversee a nonprofit?

Signed,Nickeynewguy and Lost

Dear Nickey,

Of course the best resource is the Nonprofiteer it/herself–the site has no search function, I’m sorry to say, but if you just keep trolling backwards you’ll find numerous bits of advice for Board presidents.  But here’s the central thing to remember: even if you’re suddenly the Board PRESIDENT, you’re not suddenly the whole Board.

So the first thing to do is call a meeting of the Board (with the Executive Director in the room—s/he will be your most valuable partner) and say, “Well, I appear to have become president by default.  This wasn’t your choice and it certainly wasn’t mine; so let’s figure out what has to be done and divide up the tasks.”  In other words, make it clear from the word Go that you’re not going to be in this alone.

Second, if you’re the sort of person who ends up leading by default, that means you’re a natural leader in one way or another.  I’m going to proceed on the assumption that your leadership flows from quiet competence rather than noisy charisma (otherwise you’d have been Board president to begin with).  So use that quiet competence to help the Executive Director and your fellow Board members think through:

  • What do we have to do that’s urgent?
  • What do we have to do that’s important?
  • Are we letting the urgent get in the way of the important?
  • If so, is the urgent really so urgent?
  • If so, do we need more people to address things, urgent and important alike?
  • If so, who will lead a brainstorming session to identify and recruit prospective new Board members?

Note that I’m not suggesting you do the recruiting, though you may be the most motivated to do so, having suddenly awakened to a whole set of unasked-for responsibilities. Nor should the Executive Director do it—s/he’s got plenty to do already.   But the only way you can do your job is to make sure other Board members do theirs, and the best way to get them activated is to give them the fun job, namely, thinking about who else would just love the work you’re doing if only they knew about it, and then talking to those people with great enthusiasm about what you do.

Any Board member who can’t run, or at least participate whole-heartedly in, a recruitment campaign should be given some essential but boring task like reviewing budget vs. actual expenses or assuring compliance with the Federal and state filing requirements.  That person should have to report at the next Board meeting, as will the recruiters.  As soon as you’re having Board meetings where Board members talk to each other (instead of sulking, or reporting to the Executive Director or to you as though you were the only responsible parties in the room), you’ve got this presidency stuff down pat.

For more detailed guidance, the Nonprofiteer strongly suggests checking out any of the sites on the blogroll (in the right margin), as well as going to boardsource.org, which as its name suggests specializes in making Board service as straightforward and resource-rich as possible.  The Boardsource “Knowledge Center” is chock-a-block with guidelines, forms and checklists to help you make sure the essential bases are being covered—even in the center fielder’s absence.

And as further questions arise, please feel free to write again!

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Social Service Agencies, Strategic Planning (and the tactical kind, too), Volunteers/Volunteerism | 2 Comments »

The 5 Ws of Individual-Gifts Fundraising

November 1, 2010

As all budding journalists know, every story can be told through judicious use of the 5 Ws: Who? What? When? Where? Why?  Here the Nonprofiteer employs this efficient system to tell the story of how reluctant volunteers can become enthusiastic and successful individual-gifts fundraisers.

For most small- and medium-sized organizations, everything about this story is a blank.  So here’s a primer on how to fill in that blank.

WHO to ask?: Only two types of people should be asked individually for gifts: people who’ve given to your group before, and friends of your Board members.  With anyone else, it’s sheer impertinence: “Hi, nice to meet you, open your wallet.”  Ask friends (of the agency and the Board), and ye shall receive.

What to do when your Board members say, “I don’t want to ask my friends for money”?  Reply: “You don’t have to ask your friends.  Just ask each other’s friends!”  So Angela asks John’s friend, and John asks Angela’s.  All they ask of their own friends is to come to a meeting, and all they have to do at that meeting is wax enthusiastic about the group and listen while the other one solicits the gift.

WHAT to ask for?: If they’ve given to the agency before, you’re asking for more.  You have to make the leap of imagination (from $250 last year to $1000 this year) before the prospective donor can think about making it.

Don’t worry about being too ambitious in your monetary goal.  Very few prospective donors are offended by being mistaken for rich people.  (Women, though, are more likely to be taken aback than men, so ask for slightly less from women.  They’re more likely to say ‘yes,’ so it all evens out.)

If you’re asking a Board member’s friend, ask for slightly less than the Board member gives him/herself, because the first thing the prospect will do is turn to his Board friend and say, “What do you give?”  If the Board member doesn’t think the agency’s worth $500, the friend is unlikely to think it’s worth anything.

What if your Board member’s friend is a gazillionaire?  (We should all have this problem.)  Then prime the Board member to say, “I give $200, because that’s what I can afford.  We’re hoping you’ll likewise consider a gift based on your capacity.”  Again, few people mind being suspected of success, so if your Board member is prepared to say, “Listen, I know you made a killing last year when you sold your Google stock . . .”  his friend is unlikely to want to correct him!

WHEN to ask: The Nonprofiteer is a prompt—some might say premature—fundraiser.  As a cautionary tale, she offers the story of how her alma mater took her out for coffee repeatedly to soften her up for an ask, despite her saying, “Guys, I’m a fundraiser.  I know what we’re doing here.  Just ask me for the money!”  By the time they were ready to ask her, she’d been reminded that the school’s investment philosophy would have permitted owning shares in slave-ships, and did permit investing in companies propping up genocidal regimes; and therefore she declined to give, though she wouldn’t have reneged on a preexisting pledge.  So don’t delay; get the yes!

“What about cultivation?” you ask.  The Nonprofiteer believes that lots of what passes for “cultivation” in individual-gifts fundraising is nothing more than stalling.  Don’t hold “cultivation” events and plan to ask for money later; if you hold an event, either get contributions through the ticket price or ask forcefully that night.

All you need to do to “cultivate”  people is to demonstrate that you’re thinking about them on a regular basis, and you can do that by forwarding something you think they’d like to read.  Better yet, send them invitations to your activities, whether performances or client graduations or river cleanups.  People give where they feel they belong, so be on the lookout for “belonging” opportunities.  For this purpose, the less special the event, the better.    If you do something special for a donor, make it an ask.

One word of caution about WHEN: don’t ask too soon after the last gift.  May and June may be two separate fiscal years to you, but your donors probably think (and give) on a calendar-year basis.  So they’ll think you bizarre and ungrateful if you respond to their May gift with a June ask.

WHERE?: Over breakfast, lunch or dinner (or possibly bedtime snack).  The Nonprofiteer is a firm believer in the power of food to facilitate fundraising.  In any case, the advantage of a meal is that it requires the prospective donor to sit still for about an hour, during which time you can a) learn about her; b) educate her; and c) ask her.

WHY?: Why bother with individual gifts?  Why not just write some more grants?  (asks your Board.)  Three reasons:

  • Because grants come and go.  Institutional funders have the attention span of fruit-flies: this year they’re interested in AIDS but next year it will be architecture.  If you’re not the fad, you’re out of luck.
  • Because even if they continue to embrace your work, very few foundations or corporate giving offices will give money to support your operations.  They want to support programs, the newer the better, often leading agencies to elaborate their programming beyond what their infrastructure can sustain.  If you need to pay your light bill—or your employees—you need individual gifts.
  • And finally, even if they love you to pieces, most institutional funders want to sustain you while you find broader support.  They’re not interested in being your permanent sugar daddy.

By contrast, most individuals give because they’re asked, and what they’re asked for is support for a cause or an agency (not a single program), and once they’ve agreed they keep giving out of habit.  So you have to actively offend them before they stop.

So that’s the story of successful individual giving.  And if who-what-when-where-why merely piques your interest, you can learn how right here.

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Posted in corporate giving, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Volunteers/Volunteerism, Women's Issues | Leave a Comment »

An oldie but a goodie

October 27, 2010

A recent publication in Contributions Magazine of the Nonprofiteer’s rant “Board Members are not Hypothetical Constructs” produced the following helpful comment from Pamela Hawley of Universal Giving:

I recently read your article on board members, reposted in Guidestar.  What a helpful post to nonprofits, encouraging them to find board members who can both fundraise and be passionate about the mission. I’d also add a key criteria is strategy, and, integrity/values. We’ve had people try to give us millions of dollars and join our board, but the ethical fit was not right.  Money coming from not the right source could derail your organization for years, if not permanently.

Patience, too, is helpful. One board member stated he wouldn’t be fundraising. His motives, track record and relationships were so strong, it was more than worth it to have him engaged.  And five years later, he just made a huge introduction to a high networth donor.  So, it might be all right to have some board members join without fundraising at the beginning.

Thank you again for such a helpful article.

Ms. Hawley is absolutely right about patience, a quality the Nonprofiteer notoriously lacks.  It’s always worth remembering that “Board development” is a phrase encompassing the effort of fostering the Board members you have as well as that of attracting excellent outsiders.

And thanks to Ms. Hawley for reminding us all that the real essential for a good blog is smart readers.

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Volunteers/Volunteerism | Leave a Comment »

Whether women are more generous than men, and whether it matters

October 26, 2010

The Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy has just released a study showing that at all income levels women give more than men—both more frequently and more generously when controlled for income.

This study’s headline is that across nearly all income levels women 1) are more likely to give and 2) on average give more than men.

Specifically, women who make $23,509 or less (Q1) are 28% more likely to give than men; women who make $23,509 – $43,500 (Q2) are 32% more likely to give; women who make $43,5000 – $67,532 (Q3) are 49% more likely to give than men; women who make $67,532 – $103,000 (Q4) are 43% more likely to give than men; and women who make +$103,000 (Q5) are 26% more likely to give than men.

In every income group except for Q2, women give more than men. In Q1, women give 92% more (or almost twice as much) than men; in Q3, women give 95% more (or almost twice as much) than men; in Q4, women give almost 45% more (or almost one and a half times more) than men; and in Q5, women give 94% more (or almost twice as much) than men.

The study’s authors resist the temptation to make bold claims about why this is the case, though they note that generosity tends to increase with education and that women now earn more than half of all bachelor’s degrees.  Generosity also increases with income, and more women are employed now, and therefore earning their own income, than ever before.  But even controlling for income, education and wealth, in what principal investigator Debra Mesch calls “pure terms,” women are the more generous half of the population.

[Digression: Women now make 80 cents for each male dollar.  This represents an increase from 62 cents in 1979, at which rate we'll achieve wage parity in 2043.  Only the most ridiculously strident feminists regard this as a problem.]

What’s the source of women’s greater generosity?  When prompted, Mesch is willing to indulge in a bit of speculation:

Women are socialized to take care of their families and their communities, and because of that socialization process we see the motives of empathy and caring.  We’ve done another study that looks at difference in motives for giving, and women score much higher on empathy and principle of care.

Her new study’s results comport with the trend to focus international aid on women because they’re more likely than men to spend surplus income on their families instead of themselves.  Mesch is unsurprised: “I think that’s an international phenomenon, that women are the caregivers and nurturers; they have more of those prosocial behaviors.”

So what difference does any of this make, except the sheer giggle value of demonstrating female superiority to the male of the species?  Mesch is the Queen of Tact on the subject:

I think what we need to understand is that one is not better than the other,  just different.  Women give for different reasons, give differently, are much more egalitarian in their approach.  As girls, we’re taught to be nice and share.  Men have been taught to be much more competitive, and to communicate status.  Men are strategic and women want to be equalizers.

[Oh, right, of course: no one's better, we're just different.  But the Nonprofiteer defies anyone to offer an example of how "less generous" can be better than, or even equal to, "more generous."]

If we’re lucky, the study will help eliminate the prejudice afflicting most professional fundraisers: that women are timid askers and chintzy givers who never donate without asking someone’s permission.  Not only will cultivating a female donor be more likely to yield a “yes” than comparable effort spent on a man, but women’s giving will increase faster than men’s relative to their economic power.  You’re betting on a stock that’s going up.

But you can’t treat your female donors like men in drag.  As Mesch notes,
If you’re a fundraiser, you have to communicate with women in a different way than with men.  You need to involve and engage them, because if you feel involved as a woman, you contribute not only your money but your time.

Thus the study suggests a lot more than it claims: that today’s efforts to find meaningful work for female volunteers will produce tomorrow’s major gifts.  That achieving equal pay is essential not just to women but to the charities we support (so, a little help here, guys?).  That female-headed households can be a resource to be tapped and not just a problem to be solved.  That the future of philanthropy rests in women’s hands.

What makes this more than a parlor game is the extent to which it reveals the role of empathy in giving.  Just as poor people give a greater proportion of their income to charity than rich people—presumably because they know how it feels to be on the needing side of the give-and-need equation—so women may give more generously because we know what it’s like to be dependent.  Women are less likely to imagine that having been born on third base means we hit a triple; and the feminist mantra that every woman is one divorce away from welfare makes most of us acutely aware that there but for the grace of God go I.

Part II of the study, scheduled to be released in December or January, will address gender differences in the kind of charities supported: secular or religious?  Large or small?  Do women’s gifts go to operating expenses, while men’s go to bricks and mortar on which they can carve their names?  Says Mesch,

What I can tell you is from the previous research, men and women do give to different causes.  We find women seem to give more to the social service areas, to helping the needy.  Plus women seem to spread their giving out [among multiple charities] and men are much more strategic.

The results of her research leave Mesch hopeful.

My ideal wish is that at some point, we won’t have a need to study women’s philanthropy.  It would be wonderful if philanthropy is just philanthropy, and we understand that women have caught up in terms of their income and education and wealth.

We can really change the world––women are at the tipping point.  It’s going to be a huge movement where women can really see themselves as making an impact and being philanthropists.

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Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Finances, Fundraising, International, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Volunteers/Volunteerism, Women's Issues | 3 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, How many roles does it take to screw up an organization?

October 21, 2010

Dear Nonprofiteer,

Several friends and I have started a new musical arts ensemble and are seeking to incorporate as a non-profit.  There are 8 artists in the ensemble, so we are a very small organization.  Since starting the ensemble was my idea, I have been serving as “Artistic Director,” choosing music, organizing rehearsals and performances, etc., as well as being an Artist in the ensemble.

We are currently working on our Bylaws and so have been thinking about how to structure our Board.  We have decided to have all the usual positions (President, VP, Secy, Treas) plus an Artist Representative, and a variable number of at-large Board members (no more than 5).  We have a provision in our (in-process-of-being-written) Bylaws where the Board can only select or remove the Artistic Director with a 2/3 consensus of the Artists.

At this point, all of our Artists will serve on the Board in some capacity (either as Officers or as at-large members), though we want to allow for a future time when the Artists get to be just Artists and let other people run the business side of things.  The other Artists want me to have a say-so in the running of the organization since the group was formed by my “vision”.

So my question is this:  Is it legal, ethical, practical, etc., for me to serve as both President AND Artistic Director (and an Artist in the ensemble)?  Or should one of the other Artists serve as President and I (as Art Dir) be only ex-officio with no vote?

I should also mention that my husband is also an Artist in the Ensemble, and so would also sit on the Board (for now).

Thank you very much for any advice you can give.  Signed,

Wearing Many Hats

Dear Hats:

Last issue first: it is never a good idea to have a married couple on the Board of a nonprofit, nor is it a good idea for one-half of the couple to serve on the Board while the other is employed by the agency.  (I gather you’re not getting paid as Artistic Director, but if you can be selected or fired by the Board, you’re an employee.)  A husband and wife on the Board stacks the voting since more often than not they will vote together, and the more important the issue the more likely they will march in lockstep.  Majority or not, they constitute a bloc, and blocs or factions create trouble on any Board.

And if your husband’s on the Board and you’re the Artistic Director, you’ve stacked the deck in your own favor on every issue while at the same time guaranteeing the maximum damage to the Board (your husband’s resignation) in case of any disagreement.  Don’t start out your nonprofit life with a built-in conflict of interest.

Further, as you seem to realize, no staff member (including the Artistic Director) should serve on the Board at all (whether President or not) except in an ex officio, non-voting capacity.

But let me suggest that you pause here to consider why you want to create a nonprofit structure at all.  Don’t become a nonprofit because “all arts groups are nonprofit;” the Nonprofiteer did that for a client once and it was a disaster.  As soon as there’s any money involved, you’ll find yourself fighting with the Board over whether those dollars should go directly to you, as Artistic Director; to the artists, in some proportionate way; or back into the institution.  So imagine yourself confronting that question now, and build the structure that will get you the answer that you want.

It’s fine to fill your Board with ensemble members and thus guarantee complete artistic and financial control of the agency by its artists.  But if you do, an “ensemble representative” would be redundant and should be omitted from your bylaws.

You might further consider that if you’re entirely ensemble-governed, you’re missing the opportunity to use the Board for its central purpose, which is to connect the group to the wider community (and, yes, raise money from that wider community to support the work you do).   You do your art for people; perhaps some of them should be represented on the Board—not just to do “the business stuff” but to help you maintain perspective about the relationship of your work to its audience.

In other words, as the Nonprofiteer has said in other contexts: nonprofit and 501c3 status are not mere legal trivialities to permit you to collect donations tax-free.  They’re statements about the kind of organization you are, namely, one answerable to the community through its Board.  You’re trading a certain amount of freedom for a certain amount of stability.  If you’re not ready to do that, skip nonprofit status and live hand-to-mouth til you’re ready to be a full-blown community institution–or until you figure out how to support your art entirely at the box office.

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Posted in Arts Organizations, Boards of Directors, Conflict of Interest, Earned income, Executive Directors, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Volunteers/Volunteerism, Women's Issues | 8 Comments »

A new publication about Board recruitment

July 26, 2010

The Nonprofiteer has a piece in the new issue of Contributions Magazine.

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 2 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, How do I turn Board generosity into Board requests for generosity?

May 26, 2010

Dear Nonprofiteer,

I’m the ED of a growing nonprofit doing bridge-building work on a highly divisive social issue. Our work is getting rave reviews. Our Board, however, is really struggling with its role in fundraising.

All of the nonprofit literature I’ve read says that the Board of Directors is largely responsible for raising funds for the organization, and that they typically do this through their own individual contacts and influence. But everyone on our Board was chosen for their commitment to our cause and understanding of the sensitive nature of our work, not for their contacts or influence. They’re wonderful, passionate people, but they have no fundraising experience and no wealthy or influential contacts to speak of, and they’re all geographically separate from one another. When fundraising comes up in Board meetings, everyone agrees that it must be done, but no one is sure what exactly they can do.

Our Board does have a “give or get” clause, and our Board members meet and surpass that requirement by giving generously of their own money. There’s no question of their devotion! But I’m concerned that relying too heavily on our Board members’ personal finances rather than external fundraising is a dangerous long-term proposition, and I feel like we could be doing so much more if we had a real fundraising strategy. (We have been raising other funds, but those projects have been primarily overseen by our staff.)

What say you? Are there situations where a nonprofit Board shouldn’t focus on fundraising? Or do we need to rethink things?

Signed,

Empty Pockets

Dear Empty,

Of course the people you recruited to your Board were chosen for their passionate commitment to your cause–who else would you choose for such a task? That doesn’t mean they can’t raise funds; in fact, it means they’re the people best positioned to raise money for the group, because they understand it so profoundly and can speak about it with such depth and conviction.

And they’re going to be especially wonderful fundraisers because they’re so generous themselves. Many agencies struggle with fundraising because the Board thinks someone else should put money on the line while its own members fail to do so.

But Board members have to take on the fundraising task, and there are no exceptions–not for particular kinds of organizations, nor for particular Board members whom others may think can’t afford to be involved. There’s a misconception floating around the nonprofit world that fundraising can only be done by certain kinds of people, ones with those mysterious “contacts” and “influence;” when in fact, everyone can identify prospective donors, everyone can ask, and everyone can thank.

Here’s how you get started: bring to the next Board meeting a list of five prospects whom the staff has identified through your fundraising activities to date–the people you think are most likely to be convertible into serious major donors alongside your Board members. Then divide your Board into pairs and get each pair to contact one of these small-givers-who-are-big-givers-in-waiting. The pair should take the prospect out to lunch and ask him/her for money.

How? Please see the Nonprofiteer’s never-fail luncheon ask. And, because everyone you’re dealing with is so new to this activity, spend the rest of this Board meeting practicing the never-fail ask, doing in 10 or 20 minutes what in the real world you’ll do in 60. You practice by dividing the Board into groups of three, and then having two people ask the third; the second time, you have the prospect join the asking team.

Stay on your Board members between Board meetings to assure they actually take the prospects out and ask them for money, and then have them report back at the next Board meeting. Also tell everyone to come to that next Board meeting with the name of one–one!–person they know whom they can persuade to come to lunch to talk about your agency. Reassure them that they’re not going to be required to ask their friends for money–they’re going to ask EACH OTHER’S friends for money. You can practice that at this second Board meeting.

Then keep noodging and supporting them, but let there be no doubt that this is the main thing with which they should occupy themselves now. No matter how passionate–for that matter, no matter how rich!–no Board is able to support its agency single-handedly through its personal wealth. Fundraising is essential; it’s the job of the Board; and if the people you’ve got now refuse to do it (which the Nonprofiteer doubts), go get some people who will.

And if the guidance the Nonprofiteer has just molded into a brick and thrown at your head seems daunting, hire a Board development consultant [like, say, the Nonprofiteer; but plenty of people do this] to come in and train your Board–and read the fundraising Riot Act to its members, if need be. Often Boards will hear from a consultant what they won’t hear from their employee/Executive Director, namely, that they have a clearly-defined job; that the name of the job is “fundraising;” and that they have to do it.

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Posted in Advocacy, Advocacy groups, Benefit events, Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Finances, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Relations with funders, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 2 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, Can a Board member become interim Executive Director?

May 4, 2010

Dear Nonprofiteer:

Our small organization recently terminated our Executive Director.  There is one board member, Martha, who has been working long-term in the office to review books, grant applications, etc, who was instrumental in documenting our previous ED’s administrative mismanagement.  Now that the ED is gone, the organization is in dire need of someone who can fill in, and Martha is offering to work in the capacity of Interim Executive Director for a monthly stipend.

I feel like this is a potential conflict of interest. Even if Martha resigns from the board in order to take this interim position, she was instrumental in the ED’s termination and will now benefit personally by taking money to fill the position, no matter the financial amount or length of the term.

Is it legal for a board member to take an interim staff role?  Is it ethical?

Signed, Is Something Rotten in Denmark?

Dear Denmark:

It’s certainly legal for a Board member to take on an interim staff role, and in fact it’s quite common, because so few agencies have access to trained assistance at the very instant they need it.  But your sense of the situation seems to me absolutely correct: neither Martha nor anyone else on the Board should benefit personally from actions taken as a Board member, and in this case she would be profiting from having blackened (however justly) the reputation of someone holding the job she apparently wanted for herself.

Your colleagues on the Board will doubtless say that there’s no one better qualified–maybe no one else qualified at all–to take on the Executive Director role; but that’s why Boards should have clear conflict-of-interest policies in place in advance: because there’s always a good reason to look the other way about a conflict of interest.

And Martha’s leaving the Board now wouldn’t cure the conflict, any more than her recusing herself from the decision to appoint her.  It would simply make it more likely that she’d ask next to be appointed permanent Executive Director, thus magnifying the conflict to impossible levels.

What is to be done?  If she’s really the best-qualified person to do the work of Executive Director temporarily, ask her to do it as a volunteer, in which case it’s just a natural extension of the volunteer time she’s already putting in as a Board member.  This is, of course, a huge thing to ask of any Board member–making it likely that Martha and the rest of the Board will move expeditiously to find a permanent replacement, which is what this company needs if it’s going to survive the kind of trauma you’ve described.

Or–even better–if your city, like Chicago, has a program to train Interim Executive Directors, contact the agency that provides the training and ask for the names of program graduates who might be available to take on this task.  The real benefit of having an interim ED at any nonprofit is not to have the day-to-day tasks taken care of but to have old problems and dead wood swept away by someone who isn’t a candidate for the permanent position and therefore needn’t fear offending any person or clique.  Even if Martha is willing to become ED for free, she will inevitably carry with her some baggage from the organization’s past, which is just what it doesn’t need right now.

Don’t let convenience–”She’s right here, and she already knows the books!”–trump either ethics or the opportunity to set a troubled company on a new healthy path.  Stick by your guns and keep Martha on the Board where she belongs.

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Conflict of Interest, Executive Directors, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 6 Comments »

Making the most of high-skill volunteers: initial thoughts

April 8, 2010

What are high-skill volunteers good for?

  • None of us sits in our strategic planning sessions and says, we want to stuff more envelopes, but that’s what we give our volunteers to do–instead of using them on major projects.
  • Many organizations are used to giving high-level work to interns and trainees and law clerks; why is it harder to do that with adults? Because/but–
  • Volunteer coordinator has a hammer so everyone looks like a nail–whereas interns are  assigned directly to substantive staff.  The coordinator’s job is often defined as “find volunteers to accomplish these menial tasks none of us want to do” and/or “keep the volunteers out of our hair.”  It needs redefining to recognize she’s the gateway to your most valuable resource.
  • Instead use them for projects for which you’re understaffed: if you need a part-time coordinator of major gifts solicitations, use a volunteer; if you need more marketing outreach, use a volunteer; etc.  Note: do NOT use volunteers for grant-writing except in exceptional cases, e.g. an experienced grant-writer and/or foundation program officer is your volunteer.  Explain clearly to the mere writers among your volunteers that, no matter how skilled they are at writing, grant-writing is more a matter of button-pushing and buzzphrase-using, and their skills actually disqualify them from doing it well!

How to identify major projects:

  • Essential: to identify discrete projects on which volunteers can work.  If you have a strategic plan, take a look at what needs doing under it but isn’t getting done.  Particularly suitable for relatively small groups of volunteers, pairs or individuals: research.  If your strategic plan says, “Find new space,” send volunteers out to case the neighborhood, establish prices, do your capital campaign feasibility study.  If it says, “Expand into day-care,” send your volunteers to talk to other day-care centers about what they charge, their costs and cashflow; and so on.  One of the most satisfactory volunteer experiences I ever had was at the Lakeview YMCA, where the Exec Dir looked at my resume and offered me a project directly relevant to my expertise: “Oh, you’ve been a real-estate lawyer; we’re trying to figure out why our residence isn’t filled.”  I did the research, reported to the Board, and they 1) acted on it and 2) put me on the Board.  This is a hole in one in the world of high-skills volunteering.
  • Important: to identify projects on which high-skill volunteers can work independently–independently from you, that is.  The reason so many of us end up assigning busywork to volunteers is that we don’t know how to integrate someone who hired herself into our day-to-day work.  That’s not because “They might leave” or “it’s confidential” or any of the other excuses we give: it’s because we’ve organized ourselves to get our day-to-day work done, and we don’t want to risk having it taken away from us by a volunteer and thus losing our jobs.
  • High-skill volunteers are pretty indigestible in most ongoing projects precisely because they’re not interns or trainees or law clerks–they’re people with significant experience and leadership ability.  So the best way to deploy them is to give them an opportunity to lead.  This, by the way, is why the long-term “Ladies who lunch” model worked so well: the volunteers were told, “Plan the annual event” and off they went.  It was up to them if it took 2 minutes or 2 hours to decide on the color of the tablecloths, and it was up to them to break the larger project into constituent parts and assign them around.  Doubtless you already use largely-unsupervised volunteers for your annual benefit event, though if you think of it they’re not necessarily better qualified to choose table arrangements than to assess spreadsheets.  So come up with those discrete projects.

How to integrate volunteers into those projects

  • Obviously, not everyone can be a leader; but if you find a volunteer leader–and this requires reading his/her resume, taking seriously the experiences shown thereon, and talking to the person to assure yourself of his/her abilities–the best thing to say is, “We need someone to create ____; can you take that on for us?”  Then let the person write plans, recruit other volunteers, set schedules, solve problems; and have either the volunteer coordinator or the substantive area leader supervise the leader, rather than the whole cadre.
  • The reason so many volunteers are turned away is that no organization has extra supervisory capacity, and volunteers require supervising–so let one supervise others, and then instead of having 30 people to manage you’ll have one.  [This is the theory of the Taproot Foundation model, where an “account manager” assembles a team of volunteer professionals to do a project previously identified by the nonprofit.  The account manager’s ass is on the line to produce, and that requires figuring out how to herd the cats she’s dealt herself.  Sorry about mixed metaphors!]
  • The leader, of course, will be happy because s/he’s got The Big MAC –
  1. Meaningful work;
  2. Autonomy; and
  3. Collegiality/community
  • His/her followers will be happy because things a volunteer won’t hear from a staff member (“This is all we’ve got for you to do”) s/he’ll hear from a fellow volunteer–and also, a fellow volunteer is more likely to be able to break off chunks of responsibility and hand them to other volunteers, precisely because s/he isn’t a full-time staff member with turf to protect.

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Posted in Benefit events, Management Advice Day tip, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Strategic Planning (and the tactical kind, too), Volunteers/Volunteerism | 9 Comments »

On the care and feeding of high-skill volunteers

March 26, 2010

The Nonprofiteer is preparing her April 6 presentation at Chicago’s Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management, the euphoniously-titled “They’re Not a Frill if You’re Using Them Right: How to Save Money and Get More Done Using High-Skill Volunteers.”

It should be simple: skilled and experienced people walk into nonprofits; nonprofits use them for their skills and experience.  But everyone in the sector knows that it rarely works that way, unless there happens to be a space for the person on the Board of Directors.  When there isn’t, lawyers and accountants find themselves stuffing envelopes, and soon nonprofits find themselves with ex-volunteers.  And in nonprofits as elsewhere, someone who’s happy with an experience tells one person; someone who’s unhappy tells ten.  So why do we keep creating unhappiness and misusing this resource?

Because she’s hopelessly addicted to acronyms, the Nonprofiteer has come up with the Big MAC approach for deploying high-skill volunteers; and if you want to know what that is, as we used to say at the end of our grammar-school book reports, “You’ll have to read the book”–or, in this case, come to the program.

So come spend a morning (9 a.m. to noon) with the Nonprofiteer at the Axelson Center at  North Park College; there’s still time to register at northpark.edu/axelson.  See you there!

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Posted in Executive Directors, Management Advice Day tip, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 2 Comments »

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