Who Do You Really Work for?

December 15, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Edie Rasell - UCC Justice and Witness Ministries

Most nonprofit professionals (even nonprofit consultants) have someone to answer to when it comes time to get paid. Technically, you work for whomever signs your checks.

On paper, you work for an organization. The board. A supervisor or department head.

But when you think about it . . . that’s not who you really work for, is it?

If you went to work just to please The Big Cheese, your nonprofit job wouldn’t have much meaning, would it?

Of course, it’s easy to be able to say, “that’s not my job” or “I just do what they tell me” or “I’m just the intern” if you view yourself as working simply to fulfill a job description or organizational position.

But I’m willing to bet there’s a 99.9% chance you didn’t take the nonprofit gig you have now just so you could work for your supervisor (as awesome as she may be).

You took it because you thought it would be a good place filled with good people that would allow you to do good work.

But good work for who?

Who does your work impact on a daily basis?

Who will it impact 20 years from now?

That’s who you really work for.

Filed Under: Leadership, Nonprofit Management ·

There is No Such Thing as a Diverse Candidate

December 12, 2011 by · 3 Comments


A new article from the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group reminds us to be careful how we use language in the business of nonprofit management. Words matter. And if you participate in hiring or recruiting staff, volunteers or board members for your organization, you NEED to read this.

From Rhetoric to Practice: Recruiting Strategies to Make Diversity More Meaningful in your Organization

One thing that stuck out for me in the article is that, as search consultants themselves, the authors take a practical view of diversity (not just a moral one). A big takeaway comes when they point out the all-important point that nonprofit hiring managers (and even search committees) often miss.

Ready?

There is no such thing as a diverse candidate. 

As the article clarifies:

It is common to hear non-profit executives and human resources personnel refer to “diverse hires,” candidates with “diverse backgrounds,” and the like. The implication is that the person in question – because of his or her gender, race, ethnicity, age, experience, or some other factor – embodies diversity; she or he is diverse. However, individuals are not diverse; groups are diverse. To use an analogy, we can assemble apples, oranges, pears and plums to compose a diverse bowl of fruit, but no single piece of fruit is “diverse” in itself. Diversity is possible, and possibly meaningful, only in the context of the group. Using this framework, it becomes clear that there is no such thing as a “diverse candidate.”

Again, there is no such thing as a diverse candidate. 

You might wanna put this on a t-shirt. Or just chant it over and over at the beginning of your hiring team meetings with a stick of incense burning in the middle of the table. Whatever works.

So, if nonprofits aren’t supposed to be looking for “diverse candidates” or “diverse hires,” what should they be seeking instead?

. . . in the hiring context, the intent must be to identify candidates whose attributes, experiences and perspectives complement and enhance the strengths, needs, values and composition of the work group in ways that will advance the organization’s mission and objectives. It is also important to be honest and explicit about what would NOT be a good fit for a team. Some backgrounds and, especially, belief systems, can challenge the organizational culture in counter-productive ways at certain stages of an organization?s evolution.

Read the rest here.

The authors also outline some key action steps to take if you’re in the midst of hiring or recruiting for a new position right now. It’s good stuff. Print it out and give it to your HR director.

Further reading:

Filed Under: Diversity, Nonprofit Management · Tagged With: , ,

#NP808 Roundup: Updates from Second Annual Conference of Nonprofit Communities of Hawaii

December 2, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

This is me! In Hawaii! Earlier this week, me and my co-author Trista Harris had the opportunity to speak at the second annual Conference of Nonprofit Communities of Hawai`i. Our morning plenary on the second day of the conference was on “Cultivating Nonprofit Leadership Across Generations.” It was our first time presenting a keynote session together and we were so nervous about how we were going to navigate both of us being on stage at the same time presenting one set of material. (Our solution was to put two chairs on stage and present informally to the audience.) I think it went well, as lots of people took away new ways to apply the ideas we shared about how to approach nonprofit leadership. We also presented a few breakout sessions during the conference on next generation issues in philanthropy as well as nonprofit career advancement.

Mahalo (the Hawaiian word for thank you) to the entire conference planning committee for having us! Very special thanks to Anne Swayne, Lisa Maruyama, Jennifer Creed, Sandra Gibson, Alan Tang, Ruth Limtiaco and Cara Mazzei for bringing us to Hawaii and making our stay so pleasant. Last but not least, much love to everyone who bought their very own copy of our book, How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar!

Here is our slide deck to give you an idea of what we were talking about in our plenary session.

Cultivating Leadership Across Generations

Blog Post Roundup

Here are all the blog posts I wrote about the conference. Hope they give you a sense of the amazing speakers and passionate nonprofit leaders in Hawaii.

There were a lot more sessions with great speakers, but these are the ones where I attended and took notes. You can find more insights on Twitter!

Follow the #np808 conversation on Twitter

There’s lots of great nuggets from the conference that were shared on Twitter this week. Check them out by searching the hashtag #np808 on Twitter.

Watch Pierre Omidyar’s luncheon keynote on philanthropy

There. It’s almost like you were at the conference with me. Hope the updates were useful to you!

Filed Under: Leadership, Nonprofit Management, Where's Rosetta · Tagged With:

Jeanne Bell: Ideas for Leading a Sustainable Nonprofit

November 30, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Jeanne Bell is the closing keynote at the second annual Conference of Nonprofit Communities of Hawai`i. Jeanne is the CEO at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and the co-author of Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability.

Here are a few thoughts that Jeanne shared in her presentation on nonprofit sustainability.

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Sustainability is an orientation, not a destination.

Nonprofits have dual bottom-line business models. Your business model is your hypothesis about what impacts will incite which users/payers to pay. Sometimes the people who benefit from the services are the ones who pay. Sometimes the cost of services are subsidized. Sometimes the funders are the ones who pay for the services but don’t get the direct benefit.

There is inherently broken logic to the idea that nonprofits should spend exactly what they bring in every year. A lot of boards and funders think nonprofits should just break even and not have any “rainy day fund” or additional money to support the growth of the organization. But you have to think about your business model statement vs. your mission statement. Your business model statement should go beyond the mission to explain how your work is financed. What are clients/funders “buying” from you? Then be ready to adjust and experiment with it. There are problems with the old frames of nonprofit management – the nine-month strategic plan process given the shifting landscape, led by the board who aren’t the most knowledgable about the organization’s business model, that gets implemented over the next five years.

Strategic planning the old way: planning and implementation

Strategic planning the new way: periodic planning, ongoing decisionmaking, execution and learning

Deferred decision-making costs nonprofits money, morale and impact. Keeping someone in the wrong job for a year can cause a drop in morale in addition to costing the organization money. There’s never a time when there’s not a personnel issue going on.

Sustainability involves both financial and program sustainability. One impacts the other.

Every time you write a grant proposal, you’re setting a price for your impact. Our systems tell us that we break even, but nothing ever really breaks even.

Everything looks like a money tree when there is a grant to cover it. A good example is special events – if you don’t track your staff’s time, it looks like  it was successful. But if you tracked your staff’s time, it would be a money-loser. You need to have a way to track whether your programs are covered or not.

At any given moment. our organizations are better at some things than others. There’s a lot of reasons not do something, even if it’s on mission. Just because the community or your population needs your services doesn’t mean you’re good at it.

Jeanne introduced the concept of the sustainability matrix (explained quite well on the Greenlights for Nonprofit Success blog). Your mission statement is a bad way to approach decisions. You may be holding onto “stop signs” in your organizations.

Shrinking can be good – think about what impact you want to have in the next few years. Then build your new business model around that. It could mean having a smaller budget, less staff, a shorter lease, fewer programs, etc.

***

Learn more about Jeanne’s book here.

Filed Under: Nonprofit Management · Tagged With: , , ,

Nonprofit, Business and Philanthropy Leaders Discuss the Culture of Innovation in Hawaii

November 29, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Today is the first day of the second annual Conference of Nonprofit Communities of Hawai`i. This morning, I attended a fantastic panel on innovation, which was a great lead in to the theme of the conference: Delivering Innovation: The Future is Not What it Used to Be and actually fit really well with the plenary that Trista and I will be presenting tomorrow, “Cultivating Leadership Across Generations.” The moderated panel offered perspectives from business, nonprofit and philanthropy on encouraging a culture innovation in Hawai‘i’s social sector.

Here are my notes with some of the best insights from the speakers! Hope you can take something useful from the conversation. I know I did.

Panel Discussion: Culture of Innovation in Hawaii

Kelvin Taketa, President and CEO of Hawaii Community Foundation

Hank Wuh, Founder and CEO of Skai Ventures

David Derauf, Co-Executive Director of Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services and Board Member at Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations.

Kilikina Mahi, Senior Program Officer at Hawaii Community Foundation (Moderator)

Kelvin Taketa on Passion and Keeping Your Nose Up

Innovation is hard work. We’re not so much taking about invention, but the sensemaking. Pattern recognition. Each one of you is working like a dog every day – your nose down focused on the spreadsheets, hard to look up and see what else is out there. What is the solution for our sector is to put things together that already exist. Steal ideas from other organizations. Keep our noses up.

You need passion to give you a sense of the mission that makes you want to change things and come up with different ideas to do the work. Need a sense of urgency to make it through the change process – this starts in organizations to implement.

If you look at everything as having a possibility of risk, you can become risk-averse. Think of failure as a learning opportunity instead.

The key word around boards is support. There are a lot of important roles a board plays in an organization, but there needs to be a balance between the mundance and the generative. Have conversations with board and staff – this is the way innovative ideas start to emerge. If your meetings are all committee reports, you don’t have an environment that supports innovation. You need room to ask the question WHY.

Biggest barrier to innovation is time, then money. Where do you get money from foundations to do something different that’s  not best practice? If it’s not been proven yet, it’s not best practice – and most funders are not supporting it. In our sector, the capital is not rational – there is no rational marketplace for capital.  Perfect example – how many people donate to church? How many of you give because your church has a high Charity Navigator rating?

Foundations are often more concerned about their own insitutional innovation versus the innovation of the sector. We need to think about giving “patient capital” – when you stick with organizations in the long haul and give them the license to innovate.

Hank Wuh on Young People, Competitiveness and the Importance of Recognition

Trust your instincts. Don’t ask for permission. Just do it! It’s about purpose – we need to use innovation to solve problems that need to be solved. Do you know the average age of the engineers who built Apollo 13 that took us to the moon? 26. Young people are so free and unstructured in their thinking – very little baggage. They are free to explore. Listen to young people – their thinking is unobstructed – sometimes they can see a direct path to something you cant see.

The nonprofit marketplace is competitive – - so many organizations competing for limited dollars. Attention will go to the organizations who are most visible. If you believe innovation is key to competitiveness in the marketplace, you must steer your organization to become more innovative.

Recognition is important. If someone tried something different, they need to be recognized for their effort, so they will be more likely to do it again a second and third time.

David Derauf on Capacity, Community and Collaboration

Innovation is about restoration and renewal. Part of the hard work is reaching out and reaching across, expanding your network to different sectors. It’s easy to imagine that the problems we have will be solved by someone else “out there” or a panel of experts, but each one of us has a role to play. The solutions for the community will come from the community.

The hallmark of community is capacity – but we’ve lost that feeling. Look at “positive deviance” as an approach to social change. There are deviants in a positive way. People who come up with innovation solutions, despite the challenges to implementing them and getting them to communities who need them.

Ideaas are important. What if we woke up asking ourselves “what can I fail at today?” Work with people in the community – they not only know about the problems the community faces, but also the assets the community already has. They can tap into their rich networks.  Try to hire from within the community – value diversity in your staff. We value language diversity in our organization.

The easiest thing to do is to default to our own zone of comfort – you need board members who will push the envelope a bit, to question everything the organization is doing.

Be mindful of the staff who are doing the work. They deserve ample amounts of praise. Don’t get so caught up in innovation that you forget about the need for high performance in the day to day work.

Problems can’t be solved in a one-year funding cycle. Need a long-term strategy since problems are multi-generational.

Kilikina Mahi on the Culture of Innovation

We keep hearing about the need to do more with less. But we think it’s time to do different with less. Highlighted Hawaii Community Foundation’s Island Innovation Fund.

Kilikina also shared the Inc Magazine article about seven steps to a culture of innovation. (The Inc piece is a must-read and complements my series on the four kinds of nonprofit leaders we need now.)

  1. Fuel passion
  2. Celebrate ideas
  3. Foster autonomy
  4. Encourage courage
  5. Fail forward
  6. Think small
  7. Maximize diversity
What are the challenges to innovation that you face in your nonprofit work?
Filed Under: Leadership, Nonprofit Management · Tagged With: , ,
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