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In my consulting business I get calls from people who say, “I found your name through a search for fundraising consultants. Could you tell me your experience with managing a special event, capital campaign, or ________ (fill in the blank).”  At which time I get to distinguish the concept of sustainability planning from the concept of fundraising planning.   With such potential clients, I try to cut to the chase, saying something like “If you are looking for someone to help you tactically pull off a silent auction or help you move 100 “prospects” up the ladder of engagement, let me refer you to one or two of my colleagues.  However, if you are looking for someone to help you think more deeply about organizational sustainability and resource development planning, then let’s talk a little more.”  While I have written a few other posts on this topic, specifically here, here, and arguably here, in this post I want to help nonprofits to think beyond fundraising and to consider sustainability planning as a potentially more powerful management tool.

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As we get started, I want to be up front and provide my working definition of sustainability.  “Sustainability is the systemic and systematic development of program and agency capacity that produces measurable outcomes, successfully navigates change, and demonstrates rational growth over time.” Sustainability planning therefore is based on four cornerstone concepts:

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Systemic and Systematic Development: Sustainability planning is inherently based on a systems view of the nonprofit agency and the local “ecosystem” in which the agency operates.  Most effective when intentional and thematic, sustainability planning must address the development of the whole organizational ecology. In other words, the external ecology (i.e., local economy, grant-maker funding patterns, the political landscape) and the internal ecology (i.e., employee compensation, technology infrastructure and marketing/communications) directly effect an agency’s ability to design strategies that ensure financial resources needed for program success.

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Measurable Outcomes: A basic premise of sustainability is that the agency and its programs must produce outcomes that are documented, quantifiable, and worth continuing.  Social impact matters and impact alone is the basis for sustainability.  If an agency can’t measure and demonstrate the worth of its programs and services, then it is directly or indirectly violating the trust of these investing in your programs and services.

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Navigating Change:  The pace of change in this new economic “normal” demands that nonprofit agencies’ have the agility to navigate change both in response to and in anticipation of the ongoing and rapid realignment of community resources.  “Demand is up and revenues are stretched taunt” will remain the dominate reality for some time to come. Flexibility and adaptation build on the foundation of strategy is a critical component of sustainability.  Rather than “locking down” a static revenue development strategy, an organization needs to strategically understand  its larger funding model and, within that model, invest in rapid cycle testing (external link) of new resource development strategies.

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Demonstrating Rational Growth: Sustainability is only tenable when the pace of growth can be assimilated by the organization.  Growing too fast or conversely too slow can be detrimental to the health of a nonprofit.  Finding a growth pattern that can be managed in the context and culture of the organization is also important to sustainability.

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In other words,  these four principles that define sustainability move an agency beyond mapping out fundraising activities for the coming year. Sustainability planning is the larger strategic conversation that considers not only revenue projections but also the underlying framework and strategy for maintaining and managing organizational growth.    Unfortunately many nonprofit organizations uncouple organizational strategic planning and fundraising planning –facilitating a separate process for each.  However, it is increasingly less tenable to think about revenues apart from strategy.  Nonprofit leaders must excel at systems thinking and integration.  This challenges the traditional thinking that there are three separate but related processes: strategic planning, operational planning and fundraising calendar development.  Strategic, operational and fundraising planning need to fuse into a single hybrid planning process.  This process sets a clear vision that is supported by integrated outcome driven strategies for program and service delivery; capacity development; and revenue development (fundraising).  Such a plan must be intentional about opportunity management and create the necessary degrees of freedom required for adapting to the changing economic and programmatic landscape.

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In the context of sustainability planning, the facilitation and process leadership that is required is led by a strategy focus and is supported and complemented by tactical fundraising skills. Planning for events, building donor databases, and writing grants are important  fundraising strategies but fundraising strategies should not be confused with sustainability planning.  Rather than such formula-driven metrics as donor conversion or event “return on investment,” a facilitation process for sustainability planning is strategy driven and anchored to the longterm success of the agency. Forward thinking nonprofit agencies are increasingly investing their limited time and resources thinking beyond fundraising to models of sustainability.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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This post is one in an occasional series to help guide those looking to hire a facilitator.  Other posts in this series can be found here.  If your questions about facilitation are not answered, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will be glad to help!

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On more that once occasion in my consulting practice I have been called into projects somewhere in the middle of the process.  At such times, I feel like the relief pitcher being called in when the arm of the first pitcher is failing.  In these situations,  clients often talking about the first facilitator’s wild pitches, consecutive walks or even the occasion “grand slam” error.  The challenge of walking into a project in mid-process is that the psyche of the team is often shaken and the progress to date ranges from “behind schedule” to “disarray.”   While this post does not present an exhaustive discussion of why facilitation fails, I would like to suggest four facilitator archetypes that can help guide the the hiring of a facilitator and prevent facilitation failure.

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At the outset, let us be very clear.  Facilitation is a totally unregulated discipline.  No training, degree or certification is required for a person to consider him/herself a facilitator.  Indeed, of the training and certification programs that do exist, many can be misleading as they often are bought for a price, have a nominal process of vetting of skills and are perpetuated by the mere payment of annual dues and/or training fees.  Further, what actually constitutes strong facilitation skills is not very well defined. As a result, many portray themselves as a facilitator because they have dry erase markers and three books on their shelf.  One book focuses on ice-breaker activities, the second focuses on team-building activities, and the third focuses on running effective meetings.  In this context the due diligence for preventing facilitation failure becomes critical.  One way to think about assessing potential facilitators is to consider the dimensions of Breadth of Skills and Depth of Experience.

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Breadth of Skills: When interviewing potential facilitators it is important to ask candidates to describe their breadth of skills.  Be cautious of facilitators who have trouble with this question.  There are many facilitators who get stuck using one or two strategies.  In these cases, the facilitator is like a carpenter who only has  a hammer is in his/her toolbox.  After a while of just carrying a hammer then everything starts looking like a nail.  Facilitators should be able to describe with confidence a broad array of facilitation methods and models and connect their knowledge with actual clients.

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Depth of Expertise: The second dimension in the vetting process is to explore the experience and expertise of the facilitator. Not all facilitation is equal. The complexity and the content of a facilitation process should drive the selection of a facilitator.  The conventional wisdom is that facilitation is impartial and agnostic, however, it is my experience, that failure to account for the content expertise and technical knowledge of a facilitator can lead to mediocre outcomes –if not outright facilitation failure.

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A useful way to think about these to dimensions is to place on a horizontal axis of low to high the dimension of Breath of Skills and on a vertical axis of low to high the dimension of Depth of Experience & Expertise.  In this way, you create a two by two matrix.  Each of the four matrix quadrants represents a different facilitation archetype that can be defined as follows:

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Entrant (Low Expertise – Low Breadth of Skills):  At face value one might ask themselves why they would ever consider hiring a facilitator in this quadrant.  However, when the outcomes of the facilitation process have lower consequence or value and/or the facilitation process is predefined or routine, it might make sense to utilize a facilitator in this quadrant.  For example, for routine team or staff meetings and agency might use inexperienced internal facilitators as a way to build the  facilitation skills of staff or team members.  Or in cases where the “stakes are low” but an impartial/outside facilitator is required to give some neutrality to the process, an agency might be able to hire an entrant at a lower consulting rate.

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Generalist (Low Expertise – Higher Breadth of Skills): When meeting process and the accuracy of the proceedings are important outcomes then an agency might consider a generalist facilitator.  A generalist can employ a variety of facilitation methods and tools to ensure a well managed meeting.  Noncontroversial community dialogues, focus group facilitation, and operational planning staff retreats, might be examples of facilitation processes that require strong generalist facilitation skills to ensure process and narrative outcomes that are meaningful. Facilitators in this category should be able to substantiate experience in  a range of facilitation techniques that represent inclusive and participatory facilitation processes as well as strong post facilitation documentation.

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Specialist (Higher Expertise – Lower Breadth of Skills): While content expertise may not matter in the lower tier of the matrix, there are times when knowledge and content do matter.  For examples, technology planning, executive transitions, implementing a capital campaign are facilitation processes that require more than an impartial facilitator.  Such specialized facilitation requires knowledge and judgment in addition to basic facilitation skills.  Hiring a facilitator in this quadrant values his/her specialized knowledge more than a broad range of facilitation skills.  A highly customized and tailored facilitation process might be sacrificed for the application of knowledge and content to a more generic facilitation process.

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Sector Expert (Higher Expertise – Higher Breadth of Skills): The final cell in the matrix is the combination of high expertise coupled with the deep breadth of facilitation skills.  In my view the sector expert differs from the specialist in that the sector expert has cross disciplinary content expertise in addition to a deep range of facilitation skills.   The sector expert has a handle on the facilitation tools and processes required to create a customized and tailored approach to facilitation.  In addition, the sector expert has deep cross-sectional knowledge that can shape the content and knowledge base of the assignment.  A sector expert brings expertise to such complex processes as strategic planning, public policy change, or partnerships and mergers.

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These four facilitation archetypes are by no means complete or definitive but rather the the archetypes provide useful heuristics when considering a process of hiring a facilitator.  While the “cost of hiring a facilitator” is a Google search term that drives a lot traffic to a couple of posts that I wrote on that topic (post 1 & post 2), it is my belief that considering the cost of a facilitator as a primary determinant is short-sighted.  More critical to hiring a facilitator is the matching of facilitation skills, process, and content depth to the task at hand.  To this end, considering the four facilitator archetypes is a useful frame for facilitator hiring success.

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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For the last couple of decades, technology has been advancing at a breakneck speed, with each generation of technology continuing to reinvent, if not make obsolete, the previous generation.  At the personal level we now enjoy expanded communications, near real time sharing of our lives though social media, and digital tools that allow us to be both consumers and producers.  At the organizational level, the dizzying speed of change makes long-term strategic planning and short-term operational planning more complicated.  For nonprofits, who are often constrained by artificially low operating costs, the strategic challenge of technology use is even greater. The proliferation of new media tools expands communication, program and collaboration opportunities that can strengthen donor and volunteer involvement and engagement.  Additionally, new technology tools and platforms can increase organizational efficiency across the areas of financial, human resource, donor and volunteer management. The pressure of operating on razor thin budgets makes challenging for nonprofits to understand how they can capitalize on such tools with fear that the wrong “technology bet” will drain vital resources.  Indeed, the technology advances, “back in the day” of the mid 1990’s led me to pursue a Master’s degree in Educational Technology to help me understand the role of technology in education and nonprofit organizational performance.  My purpose of studying educational technology was to better equip me to help nonprofits navigate the challenges of technology integration.  In this post, I want to outline some facilitation principles and strategies to help teams discuss and manage the process of technology adoption.

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Function Drives Technology: The first and foremost principle of technology is that function drives technology decisions.  In facilitating conversations about technology the starting point is not technology but “technology for what purpose?”  I recently sat through an orientation to the Apple iPad with a team considering adopting the new technology as a way to enhance team productivity.  The person facilitating the orientation began by asking what functionality was being sought by the team.  There was clearly some vagueness to the purposes expressed by the team.  “I’m looking for a document reader” was most common functionality followed by some notions of calendaring and communicating.  Eventually the group discussed editing documents.  The pivotal gestalt of conversation was when the trainer acknowledged that the iPad was a “consumption” tool rather than a “creative” tool.  In essence, the trainer suggested that, at this point, the functionality of the IPad was about media interaction, reading, communicating and less about document creation and sharing. There is no ending to this story, rather, it serves as a useful metaphor for this facilitation principle.  A clearly understanding of function should always drive change and adoption.

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Technology is the Media and not the Message:  As long as technology has been used as a tool for improving educational and organizational performance, there had been a debate about technology being the “cause” of improvement.  Many studies have demonstrated that technology rarely (if ever) is the cause of change but rather technology can, at times,  be an efficient (or the most efficient) media/tool to deliver the organizational change. The classic metaphor that is used to describe the relationship between technology and performance change is that of  a farmer growing tomatoes.  A farmer can get tomatoes to the market through u-pick, can deliver the tomatoes to the market by walking, horse and cart or truck.  The point is that while there may be  differences in delivery vehicles, the vehicle does not change the tomatoes.  Likewise, while social media tools like Twitter and Facebook can expand the communication reach of a nonprofit agency and online donations might improve administrative efficiency but  cultivating audiences and helping them become supporters of an agency requires the application of relationship-building principles that have been employed for decades.  Likewise successful online advocacy employs the same principles of community organizing that has always been the foundation advocacy.

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Choose Any Two:  The third facilitation principle is to consider the concepts of “fast, cheap, done” correctly process.  There is the old software development saying (at least that is where I first heard it) that goes “fast, cheap, done correctly, choose any two.”  The principle, while a bit snarky sounding has much face validity.  If the anchor is “done correctly” then an organizations investment of resources in technology is proportional to  time.  By implication, the faster you want the change to happen more resources (money & staffing) will need to be invested in the project.

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Trend Watching is Imprtant:  The fourth facilitation principle is to ensure that someone involved in your planning process is a “trend watcher” Technology is rapidly proliferating and for nonprofits with limited budgets it is important to consider the larger trends that shape nonprofit use of technology.  A few good resources for trend watching in the nonprofit world include Tech Soup (external link), Groundwire (external link), and the Pew Internet & American Life Project (external link).  As you move into planning, it will be important for your team to consider the trends that will most likely influence your community and stakeholders.  So for example, an agency with a mix of activist volunteers and donors might assess the salient trends as early technology adoption, open-source orientation, participatory use of technology, and heavy social media use. The trends among your clients and supporters should shape your technology platforms for outreach.  Internally,  trends of “cloud computing” or outsourcing back offices functions may also influence your operational technology decisions.

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With these four principles a team is prepared to facilitate a technology planning process. Whether it is the development of a social media strategy to augment community outreach or whether it is considering moving from an in-house technology network to “cloud-based” network, the facilitation becomes a four step process.

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1.  Get clear about the why:  As suggested earlier, the discussion of what you are trying to accomplish is the first and foremost consideration of technology planning.  Having clear goals and objectives are important to define the technology context.

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2.  Inventory what your currently have:  With clear goals and objectives, the next step in the facilitation process is to inventory the what and how of your reality today.  If social media is the strategy being considered to increase your community of supporters, consider how are you currently reaching out to your supporters?  What technology platforms are you currently using to grow and manage your community of supporters?  What additional functionality do you need to help you grow your community?

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3.  Build a picture of the gap and evaluate the alternatives:  As a performance improvement process, the next step to to place your goals and objectives on one side of the dry erase board or wall space and the existing inventory on the opposite.  The space between your inventory of “where you are now” and the goals and objectives of “where you want to be” is the gap that you are seeking to fill.  In the white space in between the team then needs to explore alternative strategies to close the gap.  Exploring alternatives requires some homework and likely more than one meeting.  So, for example, if a team is looking to use technology to increase connection with potential donors, alternative strategies might include publishing an enewsletter, building a social media community, hosting conference calls, or webinars, creating a dynamic content blog, or a combination of strategies.  Each strategy carries with it time, staffing and monetary costs that need to be weighed against the potential return and the mission fit.

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4.  Create and Opportunity Matrix:  Once potential strategies are developed a team can then use an opportunity matrix to weigh the relative merits of the alternatives. While each team will create unique evaluation criteria to meet their needs, the general process is that a team needs to be able to compare alternatives and make decisions based on the resources and priorities of the agency.  In essence evaluating opportunities answers the questions of which alternative: 1) Is most feasible with your resources (time, money and talent)? and 2) Is most compatible with your mission, vision and values?  Your opportunity matrix should also include how the alternative compares against your trends.

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5.  Create your Operational Plan:  Once you have explored opportunities, alternatives and decided on the alternative(s), the next phase of facilitation is to develop and implementation or operational plan.  Describing operational planning is beyond the scope of this post but a simple search on the internet can provide you with dozens of operational planning models and templates.  In the past I outlined in 3 posts to frame the workplan development process that can also be a useful starting place.

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Following a facilitation process, a team can move from a universe of options through a thoughtful narrowing process to finally arrive at a strategic decision.  In my experience and practice, I have found that many nonprofit teams are nearly paralyzed by technology planning.  Often with weak (or completely absent) technology support, small to mid-sized nonprofits have reservations about investing in technology despite the potential organizational improvements that can result from such investments.  However, for those nonprofits that start with “function” and work backwards to technology through a thoughtful assessment of alternatives to realize the benefits that technology can bring to the agency operations and program management.

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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This post is one of a continuing series on strategic planning and is based on my work facilitating strategic planning with nonprofit agencies. In strategic planning one of my initial conversations with an agency executive director will invariably include a discussion about the use of the strategic plan following its development.  The savvy executive director will describe the concrete ways in which the plan will be used to support agency governance.  S/he will describe the use of performance measures connected to the plan goals and strategies and the specific tools that help the board and staff manage their progress on implementing the plan.  More common however, the the executive director that laments how the exercise of strategic planning rarely impacts the agency in a deep and substantive way.  In this scenario, I am often asked, “how can this strategic planning process be different?”  In this post, I wanted to review the fundamentals of how use the process of strategic planning to increase organizational capacity.

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The obvious direct impact of strategic planning is the written strategy that is created.  At its most basic level in creation of a strategic plan is the DNA of capacity development.  Done well, a strategic plan offers a roadmap for the growth and  development of an organization. With intentional effort to keep the plan present and alive using simple performance monitoring tools, (like a dashboard or scorecard) an agency directly benefits from its investment in strategic planning.  However, I believe the face value of a strategic plan is only the beginning of the use of a strategic plan. Some other layers of using strategic planning to build capacity include the following:

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Board, Staff and Stakeholder Development: While textbook strategic planning can be a very pedestrian process of assessing the current internal and external environment, developing priorities and strategies, and writing a document, I believe the potential of strategic planning is to use the process to develop the energy, passion, skills and knowledge of board, staff and stakeholders.   Strategic planning is about engagement and focus of people and not just about data.  In planning a strategic planning effort, one of the framing questions should be “at the end of this process, how will out staff, board and stakeholders be different?” If this question is pursued intentionally then strategic planning offers and agency to develop the understanding, passion, and commitment of board, staff and stakeholders.  In this context, the planning process can and should include empowerment and learning community approaches. Indeed, a strategic planning process is successful to the degree that it creates a deeper understanding of the role and function of the agency in solving compelling social needs.

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Strategic Dialogue:  Having facilitated the development of numerous strategic plans, I find some of the greatest energy in the process comes as I work with an organization to gather “outside” perspectives.  While not commonly done, I am a strong believer that  organizations benefit from seeking advice and perspective from outside of the agency.  Insights coming from other agencies working on the same issue, from funders, donors, community partners and even agency clients, yield not only valuable strategic planning insights but often begins the process of dialogue.  Once the strategic plan is developed, I encourage agencies to continue the conversation with their funders, donors, community partners, and clients by sharing the strategic directions of the plan.  Some agencies bristle at the concept of sharing such sensitive, internal knowledge and reference the for profit sector’s contention that strategy is proprietary and needs to be guarded. I would counter that being transparent about strategy is actually strategic in the social sector.  Sharing knowledge about strategy makes explicit the position, direction and focus of an agency and can be used to define a larger community or regional agenda.  Engaging in such a dialogue with partners, funders, donors, clients and the community at large fosters collaboration and increases the potential of creating a network of strategies that can improve the collective social impact of all stakeholders.

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Field Building: Paired with the concept of strategic dialogue, a third use of a strategic plan is that it holds the potential to improve the field of practice.  Strategic Planning offers a unique and compressed exercise in evaluation, innovation and system design.  When strategic planning is resourced, well-designed and not simply a rote exercise it is a laboratory experience that has both internal and external dimensions.  Too often a strategic planning process is myopically inward content with asking the question, “how do we succeed in fulfilling our mission?”  While there is no denying that strategic planning is designed to create an organizational future, strategic planning also influences the collective future of the field of practice in which the agency operates.  In addition to how does the organizational “we” succeed there is also a dimension of how does the collective “we” succeed.  One outcome of strategic planning could be the free sharing of lessons learned.  By giving away your knowledge, you enable the the social sector to collectively enhance the knowledge base and field of practice.

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Taken together, strategic planning becomes a layered process of developing capacity.  Clearly and unequivocally the foundation of strategic planning is the creation of an organizational pathway to the future.  However, if layers of “human capital” development, strategic dialogue, and field building are added to the foundation of strategy, a strategic plan becomes a powerful tool to expand agency capacity. Facilitating a strategic planning process is more than following one of any number of strategic planning textbooks.  Strategic planning is large, shaping and capacity-building and it is the responsibility of facilitators to “bring life” to a strategic planning process.  I believe, it is only through this larger lens of capacity development do nonprofits build meaningful strategic plans.

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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The role of assessing the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT ) in nonprofit strategic planning is often misunderstood and misused. At the most extreme a SWOT analysis is confused with the strategic planning process with an organization believing that a SWOT is the sum total of strategic planning. More common is that a team creates a SWOT matrix, (completing the four quadrants), and then are not sure what to do next or the team gets “stuck” processing results. Often the difficulty of processing a SWOT analysis arises around either a team a)  perseverating over the negative screens of weaknesses and threats or b) putting the SWOT variables in a matrix and then not being sure how to integrate the various “quadrants” of the matrix into a whole. In this post I want to outline a facilitation process designed to assist teams work through a SWOT analysis.

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Acknowledge but don’t feed the Weaknesses and Threats: In my experience, one risk of a SWOT analysis is that a team that is processing weaknesses and threats can inadvertently pull the conversation down towards pessimism and defensiveness. The resulting strategies from such conversations can focus on “defending the gains” rather then “expanding opportunities.” One way to avoid “planning from deficits” is to rethink the framework. Elsewhere I have written about appreciative inquiry as a facilitation process and I have often used a related framework of Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results (SOAR) as an alternative to a SWOT. A good contrast between SWOT and SOAR can be found here – (external link).

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However, if a team is committed to a SWOT analysis, it is critical that there is a shared understanding of the purpose in looking the variables, especially, the Weaknesses and Threats. The assessment of weaknesses is the chance to a team to identify and reflect on internal operations and capacity that are the “rate limiters” in moving forward. The assessment of threats is looking at the external environment that could negatively effect the organizations success. Often, the threatening forces that can impact and agency but might be beyond the control of the organization. Combined, the purpose of looking at weaknesses and threats is to give an organization a realistic understanding context in which they are operating. However, strategic plans should rarely be developed in relationship to weaknesses and threats.

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My bias has been a source of many conversations with clients over the meaning and power of words. In suggesting that weaknesses and threats are not the foundation of strategy, I am not suggesting that an an organization deny the reality of either. Weaknesses and threats exist and need to be accommodated in the planning process, however, in the planning process, they equally  should not be “fed” by giving them inordinate power.  In the end, all strategy should reflect an understanding of the environment but be focused and be framed in the context of the opportunities ahead.

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Collapse the Quadrants: It is my belief that a SWOT analysis is most useful to a team as a broad surveillance tool rather than a planning tool. A completed SWOT matrix allows a team to view the scope of possibilities. As weaknesses and threats are identified a team should then turn them upside-down. Weaknesses and threats are the flip side of opportunities and should be viewed as such. In other words, as a SWOT analysis is completed, the traditional four quadrants of the SWOT matrix should be collapsed into opportunities. If a team is clear on this point, then it will prevent them from getting lost in simply “defending gains” rather than engaging in strategic planning. Again, Strategic planning occurs when a team distills the SWOT data into opportunities. So, for example, the threat of “pending budget cuts” becomes the opportunity of thinking differently about revenue diversification or the opportunity to advocate for policy change around funding. A facilitator working with a team on a SWOT analysis should help the team move towards the opportunity quadrant. Again, the purpose if not to ignore weaknesses and threats but to help a team channel the potential and energy into creating aspirational strategies and goals.

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Create Scenario Screens: A third way to assist a planning team move through a SWOT analysis is to help the team create “scenario screens.” In short a scenario screen acknowledges that the variables identified in a SWOT are not static and often only partially understood in the planning process. To help a team plan for the changing landscape (incompletely captured in a SWOT) a scenario screen creates a way to teams to measure opportunities in the context of the organizational mission and vision. Others have referred to the scenario screen process as an “opportunity matrix” or “strategy screen.”  A simple web search of any of these concepts will yield a number of relevant example of such tools.

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A scenario screen is a way to evaluate and prioritize opportunities. Typically a scenario screen lists criteria that need to be met as an opportunity is assessed. For example, some potential criteria might be that the opportunity is a) compatible with the organizational mission, b) meets one or more strategic priority, c) has a reasonable timeframe, d) has acceptable costs, and e) there is capacity to execute. A scenario screen may also “rank” or “weigh” variables (such as low fit, medium fit, or high fit) to create a a more multidimensional assessment of the opportunity.

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Again, while some conflate a SWOT exercise with strategic planning, it is important to recognize that a SWOT analysis is only one tool or exercise in the strategic planning process. However, when facilitating a SWOT exercise as part of the strategic planning process, it is useful to connect the three steps as a process. This facilitation process includes: 1) the broad study and recognition of the SWOT forces internal and external to the organization, 2) the narrower focusing of the conversation around the “unpacked” implicit and explicit strategies and opportunities that emerge from the SWOT, and 3) the creation of scenario screens that help the team manages the shifting dynamics of the SWOT variables, strategies, and opportunities over time.

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I believe that strategic planning in the nonprofit setting does not lend itself to the direct application of corporate for-profit strategic planning models. Nonprofit business models are more complex than defending or advancing market share. A SWOT analysis for nonprofits run the twin dangers of either oversimplifying strategy or narrowing strategy into the four unnaturally parsed quadrants. To create a robust strategic plan, facilitating a nonprofit SWOT analysis needs to move beyond the four quadrants and provide an organization with a strategic understanding of the environment, its opportunities, and more importantly the tools to manage the opportunities of the environment over time. Facilitated well, a SWOT exercise can strengthens a nonprofit strategic planning process.

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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Over the last few months, I have posted a series of articles on strategic planning for  nonprofit and social sector agencies. Not surprising, a number of potential client calls are from folks  looking for facilitation and process support for strategic planning.  Indeed in this anemic economy, many nonprofit agencies find themselves refocusing on strategy.  Many initial conversations with clients fall into one of three groups.  The  first group are those agencies who have been through strategic planning “dutifully” every 3-5 years as “every good nonprofit agency does” and now it that time when the planning cycle has looped around.  The second group are those agencies that have read one or more books on strategic planning or have participated in an onerous planing process and feel daunted by the process.  The third group are agencies who may have been severely impacted by the recent economic downturn and are truly looking for fresh ways to think about how to move forward. While all three groups may have different motivations and perspectives related to  strategic planning, all  share in common a desire to improve the social impact of their organizations.

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Based on literally dozens of conversations with nonprofit leaders, I find that many organizations are looking for a simpler framework for strategic planning.  In this post, I want to outline a strategic planning process that is versatile enough to guide an organization or team as they seek to engage in the thoughtful work of strategy.   In summary, the framework that I most often follow, is the process of 1) establishing the critical social need, 2) creating a compelling vision of how your agency can create a positive social impact by addressing that social need, 3) developing a relevant organizational mission, 4) developing system’s focused program strategies, and 5) creating measures and  outcomes to guide the plan implementation.

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Establishing the Critical Social Need:  Every nonprofit should exist only in response to an unmet critical social need.  Unlike the private sector where the market may support companies selling consumables that may have little value, no value, or even a negative value, the nonprofit sector can only afford to support organizations that are positively impacting compelling social needs.  As a result, strategic planning begins by defining the unmet social need.  Such a community needs assessment can be based on existing data, expert opinion, surveys, a systematic environmental scan, or ideally some combination of these data points.

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Creating a Compelling Vision of Tomorrow:  I have written before about the relationship between vision & mission and critical social needs.  Within the nonprofit sector and the philanthropy community that supports the nonprofit sector, there is an increasing trend towards defining and working towards a compelling social impact.  The focus on social impact makes it  increasingly less tenable for agencies to simply run “good programs” without creating social change. In this context of strategic planning,agencies should ask themselves, “what is the better, more just, and equitable tomorrow we are tying to create?”  A vision, in essence is the BIG WHY that defines the reason for the existence of an organization.

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Developing a Relevant Mission:  An agency’s mission statement should represent a the “tactical  orientation of the organization that is closer to the social need being addressed address.   The questions that get to the heart of an agency mission might include ones such as: What programs and services is our agency trying to excel at?  What qualities of culture and community are we seeking to create?  How do we want to be known in the community? If folks seek us out, what are they seeking us out for?  By creating a clear mission you are answering the fundamental questions of the “What and How”  of the agency.

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Designing System’s Level Strategies:  In between your vision of tomorrow and the mission you declare today is the “white space” of programs and services.  Strategic plans are not intended to the entirely fill the white space by fully designing programs  but rather is the space where an organization declares its commitment to strategies designed to create its vision of tomorrow.   The strategy “challenge” is to think systematically and systemically about the opportunities to foster change at the individual, community, and policy level to create a synergistic effect that magnifies the benefits of each individual program. It is also important for an agency to develop capacity strategies that will grow the organization’s ability to create a larger social impact.  For many organizations that implement “programs” the shift to thinking about community impact and public policy can be an exciting process of discovering new potential.    Indeed, the creative energy of designing solutions to compelling social needs has the potential of giving renewed inspiration and aspiration to an organization.

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Creating Performance and Outcome  Measures:  It is only worth the time and energy to create a strategic plan if an agency is willing to ensure that the document is living, breathing and is used as the organizational compass guiding and anchoring decisions.  Ideally, as program strategies are created, the organization also takes time to establish  corresponding performance and outcome measures.   Answering the question of how an agency will monitor progress toward the objectives should be integral to strategic planning.  Similar to developing program strategies, the purpose at this level is not to create the actual performance measurement system (i.e., dashboard or report card) but to establish the benchmarks that will help provide assurance that the agency activities will stay focused on the strategic design. Later you can fully develop programs and outcome measurement more precisely based on further study and design.

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I purposefully presented in this post a simplified strategic planning process. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, I have seen (and heard from frustrated potential clients) how an overly complex process of strategic planning gets in the way of successful strategic planning.  Too often the textbook approach to strategic planning is cumbersome and emphasizes precise sequential steps, prescribed analysis measures (i.e., SWOT), meaningless revenue projection exercises and other artificial exercises that constrain thinking.

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Don’t get me wrong, I believe that strategic planning is a process that requires intentionality, reflection and analysis –none of which are easy. However, I am a firm believe that social sector strategic planning requires a simpler more aspirational framework as represented by the five slightly imprecise and  iterative steps identified above.  Unlike a standardized corporate strategic planning approach Nonprofit and social sector agencies requires a social impact planning model that can dynamically address a wide range of social needs and accommodate a variety of organizational cultures.

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A strategic plan that reflects the process from need to to vision and offers specific strategies and measures to guide implementation, will establish a framework to help an agency achieve success.  To be useful in creating such a strategic plan, a facilitator needs to, as Simon Sinek (external link), so clearly articulates create a compelling why, a disciplined how and a consistent what.  Applied to a strategic planning framework it suggests that a simplified approach to strategic planning coupled with a systemic facilitation process can assist nonprofit agencies to improve the social impact of their organizations.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Typically, my posts try to capture original thoughts related to facilitation and process.  This week, however, has been one of rich discovery and learning from the words of others.  In this post, I am lacing together the knowledge of others in a synthesis of ideas to reinforce my practice foundation of process design and facilitation.  I hope you enjoy the related links embedded in this post. –m

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This week I had the privilege of attending a community lecture for regional Arts organizations by Michael Kaiser, President of the Kennedy Center.  His topic was the economic challenges being faced by arts organizations and framed the lecture as the Arts in Crisis.  I went into the packed theatre expecting to hear the fairly familiar terrain that corporate donations are down, retaining major donors is more important than ever, diversifying your funding base is critical, and board involvement is key.   Some of that familiar ground was covered but Kaiser left the road and rose like a kite into the air. He first caught the gentle breeze and higher up leaped onto the mighty winds.  While he never directly said it, his is message was clear.  The crisis in Arts Organizations is not an economic crisis but it is a “crisis in thinking” and leadership.  He argued that strength and stability during these challenging economic times comes through transformative creativity and not through cutting budgets (For an awesome summary of the entire presentation check out Lisa Radon’s excellent blog).

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As a performance improvement facilitator who works with a wide range of nonprofit agencies, I have seen this “crisis in thinking” over and again. Many nonprofit agencies are in their second and third consecutive years of budget cuts. Increasingly stressed staff (who can vaguely remember the concept of pay raises or benefit increases) are being asked to do more and more with the proverbial less and less. The gap between service costs and traditional revenues continues to widen and the compounding effects of sequential years of consecutive 3, 4 or 5% budget cuts are fracturing the integrity of many organizations.  Senior management and Boards of Directors in these organizations are becoming equally fatigued by constantly responding to an anemic resource environment.  So it is understandably challenging to walk into an organization and say, “stop trying to defend the gains you have made and start thinking using transformative creativity.” Yet this is the critical message for the nonprofit sector today.  Trying to reduce your way fiscal health undermines the organizational core and is the equivalent of burning your furniture to keep warm.  Unless you have lots and lots of furniture, in the end, you will be both cold and have nothing to sit on.

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At the same time, I am not suggesting that conservative management of expenses is imprudent.  Indeed, I have seen innovative nonprofit agencies, gain efficiencies by renegotiating leases on space and/or equipment, outsourcing back office functions, and redesigning technology expenses at a considerable savings.  However, there comes a time and place where program effectiveness and, more importantly, the larger social impact of an agency is undermined by a myopic and relentless focus on reduction.  A theme that continues to serve my clients well is that success looks beyond the crisis at hand and stakes out ground in the future social impact of the organization. As I have written before, envisioning social impact requires intentional design of the “tomorrow” that an agency wants to create.

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Helping nonprofit organizations get beyond the “crisis in thinking” requires a facilitator to work with teams across several domains that include the following:

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Focus on Participatory Leadership:  My guess is that is that if I searched the web for the term participatory leadership, I would find that some consulting group has probably trademarked the concept.  However, what I refer to is not something out of a box or training program but is a the commitment to the ongoing study of leadership from the perspectives of vision, equity, culture.  Transformative creativity (or getting beyond the crisis) requires a compact between the layers of an organization where there is cooperative ownership, participatory systems and a learning culture.  I was recently reading a study by McKinsey & Company on successful transformations that described the critical role of balancing top down leadership with a culture of participation, equity and ownership across the staff and board.  Such cultures need to be seeded as a “big idea” and then cultivated by skill development and supporting systems. Indeed, I have facilitated more than one board-staff retreat where the primary outcome was to begin the development of a participatory culture.

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Focus on Outcomes:  One of the revolutions within the nonprofit sector and philanthropy is a growing discontent with producing good results.  Philanthropists and leading nonprofit organizations want to make a larger social difference.  The coming wave of change (that will swell to a tsunami) is an increasingly myopic focus on social impact and outcomes rather than program impact.  This week I read a fantastic article by the Board Chair of Venture Philanthropy Partners (this article is the third article in a series he has been writing). In this article he minced no small words as he wrote: “Let me say this as bluntly as I can to nonprofits and funders alike: The challenge of managing to outcomes has little to do with systems, processes, or technology. The real challenge is that organizations cannot hope to manage to outcomes unless they have in place an engaged board; leadership with conviction; clarity of purpose; and a conducive, supportive performance culture.” The organizations of tomorrow are those who are focusing on creating social change that is larger than the results generated by programs.  A focus on outcomes asks, “How can we create a sum that is greater than the total of our parts?”

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Focus on Mission, Vision and Margin: In my last post, I detailed the concept of mission and vision in strategic planning and in creating social impact models.  The point that I was making in that post was was underscored in an article on the Acumen Fund’s blog that discussed the role of mission, margin and mandate as levers to scale interventions and create social impact.  If you want a much lengthier discussion on the relationships of these concepts, I highly recommend the study of the book Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy by Peter Frumkin.  While I will warn you that Frumkin’s book is over 400 pages, it provides a depth of understanding about social impact and is a must read for any organization serious about transformative creativity. By focusing on the larger vision and placing mission and mandate in the context of a clear vision, organizations will, by default, move into strategic thinking rather than crisis thinking.

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Organizations in the social sector face unique challenges in this lackluster economy.  Agencies that are focusing on defending their core also need to make room to think about how to increase capacity and effectiveness.  In seeking to navigate the twin challenges of maintaining and being strategic, facilitators need to realize that leadership, outcomes and the design process (in between the leadership and outcomes) comprise the foundation for transformative creativity.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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As a facilitator I work with a range of social sector organizations on strategic and business planning processes. In my work, I often encounter ambiguity about the difference between a vision and mission statement.  In some cases, I will hear an executive director or board chair say something like, “Our vision and mission are so closely related we don’t distinguish between the two.”  On one occasion an executive quipped, “to create our vision statement we just randomly removed words from our mission statement until we had a vague sounding lofty goal.”  While a quick search of the web will reference dozens of blog posts and websites offering the conceptual differences between vision and mission, there is often little discussion of the practical difference between mission and vision. As I see it, the problem is that in a typical planning process the mission and vision (along with values) are lumped together as a first step in plan.  It is almost as if they are a hurdle to surmount before a team or agency can “get to work on what needs to be done.”  In this post, I want to describe why the differentiation between vision and mission is important and how the two concepts need to be uncoupled in the planning process.

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At the risk of over generalizing, many references and books discussing vision and mission have the tendency to describe the two concepts as if they were distinguishing between goals and objectives.  I have written about the differences between goals and objectives and suggested that a goal is the “upstream activities” necessary to create “change that matters” and that an objective is the work in front of you that gets you to start moving towards your goal. While there is a parallel short-term and long-term thinking associated with the discussion of vision and mission, it would be a mistake to use the paired concepts interchangeably.

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There was a time when a vision might have been thought of as nothing more than a lofty goal.  In the business sector such a mission might have been something like, “We want to be the first choice for luxury cars purchased in America,” or in the social service sector such a vision/goal might have been, “We strive to be the preeminent substance abuse treatment provider in the region.”  However, I firmly believe that equating a vision with a lofty goal is inadequate to clearly define the aspirations of an organization today.  In the private sector “vision” is increasingly framed in the language of a triple bottom line, “people, profits and planet.” In the nonprofit and social service sectors, a vision of organizational success must give way to the larger “upstream” thinking that boldly proclaims the deep social impact created by the agency.

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As a result, a facilitator needs to assist the organization of today in identifying a clear and compelling vision statement.  Such a vision is the response to the social need and context in which an agency operates.  For example, if an agency is working to decrease the “youth violence” then a vision statement is about more than providing youth diversion activities because the prevention of youth violence inherently is not only about youth “behavior.”  In addition to behavior, youth violence is also about many socio-economic and geopolitical disparities which also need to be within the organization’s “field of vision.” I have written previously about strategies for facilitating the development of a social impact model, but the point applicable here is that  a compelling vision starts with a current and urgent social need and tells the story of how the social need of tomorrow will be different than it is today.

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So if the function of an organizational vision is to declare the future social impact of the organization, what purpose is served by the organizational mission?  A mission is also connected to the social need but is the proximal response the changing landscape.  While the core of a strong mission is grounded in the principles and values of the organization, it also references the strategies that are used to confront the compelling social needs. A mission statement is the head and the heart of an organization and serves as the lens through which organizational programs and strategies are viewed.  As such, a mission statement should be closer to the social need rather than the visionary social impact.   A mission statement evolves as the social need evolves while also remaining anchored to the vision. In this context, a facilitator also has a role for helping an organization understand its mission as well as its vision. This need to clearly define and differentiate between the concepts of vision and mission becomes apparent when one introduces program strategies.

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In between the mission and vision, is the “white space” where the organization builds its program strategies.  The following illustration creates the linear process:

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Social Need ==> Mission ==> Programs/Strategies ==> Vision of Social Impact.

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While a bit oversimplified (there are feedback loops and outcomes in the model), the point that I wanted to make is that there is conceptual “distance” between a vision and mission.  For those engaged in strategic and business planning, this spatial relationship is entirely practical.  By situating the mission close to the social need and anchoring the vision to the social impact, a facilitator has the room to help an agency orient its programs and services more strategically. The program strategies become the link between the organizational mission and the organizational vision.  By placing program strategies between mission and vision, the strategies can be more effectively assessed relative to how they well they serve as a the causal link between two. In other words, it is only if you are clear about the social need, the mission and the vision, can one assess the appropriateness of the program strategies.

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Again, as I scanned some of the blogs and websites that discussed the differences between Vision and Mission I was struck by how often the differentiation between the concepts was ignored or oversimplified. I have contended in many of my posts that the highly effective nonprofit organizations think systemically and strategically. Facilitating meaningful differences between Vision and Mission is a critical dimension of a systemic and strategic facilitation process. Mission, supported by strategic programming moves an organization towards their true vision and, in the end, such movement is the core of a strong facilitation process.

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As always your feedback is welcome.

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I have been using Twitter in my practice for about six months now.  My account @facilitationpro is primarily a place where I promote and cultivate the practice of information scanning and knowledge management. To stay current in the fields of performance improvement, nonprofit management and trends in philanthropy, I scan numerous websites and other online resources and as I encounter useful tools and documents, I post them  as “resources of the day.”  I also use the tool to keep abreast of the local nonprofit community (at least those using Twitter).  As virtually everyone knows by now, Twitter (and similar services) are communication platforms that limit messages to 140 characters. Of course, in trying to micro-abbreviate words, there is a hazard that the meaning of the message can be obscured or even lost entirely. However, done correctly, measuring communication to 140 characters forces one to parse down words to simplicity and clarity.   The transference of this concept to facilitation is important.  Indeed, next to creating movement, simplicity and clarity are the co-equal meta-competencies of facilitation.  While I have written before about core competencies of facilitation, I thought it might be useful to discuss the concepts of clarity and simplicity as a facilitation skill.

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In thinking about this topic, I was reminded of a time when I was called in following one of a series of meetings being conducted by a board/staff subcommittee of a mid-sized nonprofit organization.  The team had been meeting intensely for several weeks trying to create a board proposal.  I was asked, as a favor, to come in to a meeting to help assess and troubleshoot the development process of the board proposal.  The words of a frustrated staffer were something like, “The document has gone back-and-forth and round-and-round so many times that I think we are completely lost.”  Given that the team spent little time creating a facilitation process for the proposal development, such an outcome could have been predicted.  During this meeting, I spent a good hour asking simple, open-ended questions and listening a lot.  As I jotted down notes (in categories) it became clear that there was an underlying framework that the team had been developing but failed to name it and bring it to the surface.  As I sketched the framework and labeled the “moving parts” it was easily to see the layers of confusion being peeled away.  While the end of the meeting did not clarify everything, it did set the team in the right direction and when I was looped back into the conversation a while later, the proposal had much more clarity and simplicity.  So what are the principles of clarity and simplicity?

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Think about the System: Simplicity and clarity happen when a team can identify the system operating around the content at hand.  The team, referenced above, were intently focused on the concepts and words of the proposal before them.  By helping the group to step back and identifying the system, I, as the facilitator, was able to help the team rediscover not only the system but also the central core of that system.  This central core was critical because it served as the organizing “gravitational pull” of the proposal, around which all of the other pieces of the proposal orbited. In this way, the core of the system held the proposal in place and became the unifying, simple, and clear theme.

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Cut Twice then Measure Once. A second principle in finding clarity and simplicity is to take the Twitter model of 140 characters, cut it in half and then in half again. Then fit the concept to that micro space.  Going back to my illustration above, I spent most of my time with the team in listening mode.  As I listened I strained to hear the recurring words that became category headers. When words like leverage, impact, and scale became the most relevant “35 characters” of the conversation, the gravitational center became a clearer discussion of social impact.

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Think Visually: Clarity and simplicity can also come by changing the medium.  When three of four pages of dense text create complexity, it is helpful to abandon words and think visually.  Elsewhere I have written in more detail about the use of visuals in facilitation and here it is suffice to say that when used well, tools like concept mapping, metaphors and even visual sorting exercises can all help be powerful simplifiers.  Note the emphasis on “used well” as I have seen more than once, visual tools be used as magnifiers of complexity. Visual thinking should be about simplicity and clarity.

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Think Like a Designer:  While facilitators do not need to be pretend “graphic designers” it is helpful for the facilitator to explore concepts of design and design thinking as an adjunctive tool in the clarity and simplicity process.  Concepts like alignment; proximity; contrast; and white space can all be used to help move a process from complexity to simplicity.  Coming back to the nonprofit presenting their board proposal, the challenge was that the final proposal remained four pages in length and the team needed the consent of the board to move forward.  As a result, the board presentation had to become graphic, emphasizing powerful words, visuals and story to serve as a translation of the document.

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As I premised at the outset, clarity and simplicity are meta-facilitation skills that are not optional to a facilitation process.  A facilitator needs to have in his or her toolbox a range methods to help group get to the core of clarity and simplicity.  Gone are the days when agencies could use complex schematics and service delivery models to explain business operations.  The task of organizations seeking to improve performance and accelerate growth is to reduce the “noise” in order to create clarity and simplicity.  The task of facilitation is to create a process that brings clarity and simplicity to help organizations achieve success.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Recently, I have been working on several different projects that involve nonprofit board development issues ranging from staffing a board, to recruiting board members, and improving the effectiveness of boards.  My recent work has led me to filter my experience through a review of the literature on the characteristics of an effective boards and  strengthening  nonprofit board performance.  So this post is one more installment of my occasional series on nonprofit board development.

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As I have written previously, a functional board is comprised of members capable of serving four functions that include 1) governance, 2) capacity support, 3) content expertise, and 4) resource development.  This is a critical framework to understand as it serves as the foundation of a functional board. However, a high performing board requires a different level of operating. High performing boards are based on “the highest and best use” of the talents and skills of board members.  Most nonprofit organizations seek to recruit board members who are talented individuals who are often business leaders, critical thinkers, and community activists. Unfortunately, more often than we would like to admit, the use of such  talented board members is limited to review of policies and procedures, looking over budget reports for accuracy and assisting in fundraising events. While such board activities might define some of the duties of a functional board, a high performing board is defined by engagement in ongoing strategic thinking and strategic action. Reviewing meeting minutes, agency financial reports, and blessing changes in HR policy are necessary duties of a Board but if the balance of board meetings is consumed with such pedestrian administrative tasks, then the “highest and best use of board talent “is likely missed.

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A classic Harvard Business Review article published over a decade ago, suggests that high functioning boards, discover, focus and organize around “what matters” (External Link).  According to this article, what matters is “harnessing the collective efforts of accomplished individuals to advance the institution’s mission and long-term welfare.”  It goes on further to suggest that the board’s contribution is meant to be strategic, “the joint product of talented people brought together to apply their knowledge and expertise to the major challenges (and I would add, opportunities) facing the institution.”  So, if this is the description of a high performing board, what does it take to create such a board?  From my experience and a review of the literature, I would suggest five starting points.

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Assess where you are and define where you want to be.  The first task of developing a high performing board is to figure out where are the gaps in performance.  A Google Search will unearth several board self-assessment tools that range from overly simplistic to overly complicated. Such tools might be useful to help a board think about its governance functions, member commitments, or help identify “holes” in a board’s operating structure.  Such a self-assessment can be a good place to benchmark the strengths of your board operation but many of these assessments do not have a strong strategic intent.  An alternative assessment would be to benchmark practices against the variables presented in the Grant Thornton 2009 National Board Governance Survey for Not-for-Profit Organizations (External Link).  In my opinion, this survey offers a timely and more strategic perspective on board operations. A third approach to assessment is to shift away from a narrow assessment of the board and conduct a larger capacity assessment.  I have written elsewhere about capacity assessments and in that article I linked to a useful assessment spreadsheet (External Link).  A capacity assessment would help the board not only reflect in its strengths and opportunities but would also be useful in discovering the “what matters.”  Whichever route you take, knowing where the board is now will help identify the performance gap related to where you want to be.

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Build the Board’s Skills:  I have argued before that board development starts at a board orientation but continues as an ongoing process of raising the skills and competencies of board members.  The reality is that board members become effective as they engage their heads, hearts and hands in the work of the organization.  To me, this calls for a meaningful development agenda that includes a) ongoing board training on topics related to governance and strategy, b) opportunities for boards to get their “hands dirty” in the work of the organization, and c) learning about the larger service context in which the nonprofit agency works.  Building board skills is a strategic and long-term process that is not segregated into an annual or semi-annual training event.  Ideally, participating in a strategic agenda for board skills building should be built into board practices and be built into the expectations of board service.

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Engage Strategically:  A simple yet useful exercise to help gauge the strategy of a board is to do a quick content analysis of two sources.  First, examine the pre-meeting packets sent out to board members for the last three or four months and sort the contents into the two piles of administrative and strategic.  Second, review the meeting minutes for the same time period and highlight everything that is strategic in yellow.  The balance of the piles and the presence or absence of yellow highlights will give a board a good indication of how much of the board’s time is spent in administrative review and how much of the time is spent engaged in strategy.  The second part of the exercise is to ask the question, how much of the historic content was actually dependent upon face to face meeting?  For example, could board members review and approve fiscal statements and other administrative approvals after a simple review of emailed documents?  The answer is likely to be yes.  I am not suggesting that boards should conduct business by email rather I wanted to create a perspective of time.  If board members can read and approve by reviewing email attachments, then the time allotted at board meetings should be proportional. Simple administrative review should be done in advance of meetings and, when there are no concerns about the subject matter, such tasks should take relatively little time at a board meeting. Unfortunately, too many boards are conditioned to process the nuances of organizational administration, mistaking such administrative processing for strategy.  Board meetings need to be oriented around strategy and board members engaged in the work of solving big challenges of the agency and thinking strategically two and three years out.   Performance of boards would improve dramatically if administrative review were limited to a tightly narrated quarter or a third of a total board meeting time.

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Measure Performance:  Another starting point for improving board effectiveness is to measure performance.  Too often a board will measure the performance of the agency and neglect measuring their own performance. At best, many boards’ self-performance evaluation is limited to evaluating the start and end time of meetings or the quality of the takeout food served at the event.  High performing boards create meaningful measures of board performance. While it might be tempting to measure performance by attendance, percent of board members donating to the agency, and the on-time completion of the executive director performance evaluation, these are fairly un-strategic measures. Strategic measures go further and might track such benchmarks as the regularity and content of executive or planning sessions, engagement of members outside of board meetings, or the percent of meeting time spent in strategy versus administration. Additional measures might be tracking the time required to recruit skilled board members or membership retention.  For many boards shifting to performance-based board management can represent a sea change in culture and is likely only achieved after carefully facilitated strategic conversations and thoughtful planning.

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Get the Right People on Board:  A final starting point is to conduct a thoughtful review of board recruitment strategies.  Does the agency have clear board member job descriptions?  Are members sought out individually for skills and expertise? Do board members invest time in cultivating potential board members?  Many small to midsized nonprofit agency have difficulty staffing their boards let alone staffing their boards with highly qualified community leaders.  Having worked with many such boards, I will not underestimate the challenge of this task.  However, establishing a clear recruitment strategy and creating a meaningful board structure with the expectations of continual learning, performance-measurement, and strategic engagement will become reinforcing cycle that raises expectations and organizational optimism.   Energy and engagement creates energy and engagement.

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Developing a high performing board is not a trivial task.  Indeed, I would contend that for many agencies, creating a high performing board may an intentional process that spans a year or more. However, despite the challenges of reinventing a board, facilitating a process to develop a high performing board is critical as nonprofits seek to thrive in the continuing economic uncertainty and instability.  High performing organizations of  tomorrow are those that develop and maintain high performing boards today.

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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