Simon Sinek's Golden Circle

Have you ever wondered why some leaders and their organizations are propelled to the forefront of public awareness while others work doggedly to do great work, only to remain virtually unknown in their communities? Why some organizations are flooded with individual donations, while others have a hard time gaining and retaining a fraction of the numbers they feel like they should be able to attract. Last month those of us lucky enough to attend the Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference got a tip on how to figure this out. Scott Harrison the founder and CEO of Charity:Water – a man who certainly fits the description of a leader who has risen to the top of his field – referred us to a TED talk by Simon Sinek: “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”.

Watching the talk, I found Sinek’s message inspiring and thought provoking. Using the examples of Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers, Sinek suggests that all great leaders communicate in the same way: they start their message with their purpose, their cause, their belief.

Looking at the “Golden Circle” shown above, Sinek claims that most people tend to act, and describe their organizations, products and services, from the outside in – from What to Why. We all know what we do: we can describe what our responsibilities are, what tasks we must accomplish and what we produce. However, those who inspire us are able to go from the inside out. They understand, and can explain, the why behind their work - why they get out of bed in the morning to go to work and why we should too.

Sinek argues that we are biologically wired to respond to messaging that comes from the center of the circle. The part of the brain responsible for human behavior and decision making is also the part that is responsible for all our feelings like trust and loyalty.In communicating the why of what we are doing, Sinek argues, we are talking to the part of the brain that controls behavior. Then, once we have people’s emotional buy-in and inclination to act, we can then fill in the facts and figures that will help people feel confident in their decision to follow us.

Here’s where I see the link between Sinek’s findings on inspiring leaders and the fundraising professionals quest to enhance and expand their donor development efforts.  What if all our development communications focused on the center of the Golden Circle – telling people  why we do what we do? What if everyone we worked with started from a place of passion?   And what if our marketing materials drew on that passion and really answered the question, what makes you get out of bed to come to work in the morning?  Would people be more likely to come along beside us and contribute their time and talent for our “Why”?  I think it’s worth a try!

The Starr Family, circa 1977 (that's me on the right...don't you love my bow?)

As in marriage (and other endeavors that require a high level of human interaction), being successful on a board requires a great deal of trust, excellent communications skills, and the ability to share leadership. And just like in marriage, maintaining a happy, healthy and strong nonprofit board is easier said than done!

Unless you’re my folks, that is.

Today – May 22 – my parents are celebrating their 47th wedding anniversary! In the same spirit that Matt Kouri presented his blog on Nonprofit Impact Lessons from Parenting, I proudly present a few keys to strengthening your board from the best example I know of the happily married:

1. Have Fun Together: The family that “plays together, stays together” is an important reminder for a strong board team. Don’t underestimate your board members’ real need to actually enjoy their board service! Schedule some fun into your next board meeting…it can be as simple as starting the meeting by asking everyone to share a fun anecdote or story about themselves.

2. Don’t Take Each Other for Granted: This is common advice for a strong marriage, but often ignored when it comes to board members. Don’t fall into the trap of expecting your board members to work hard and give your organization their all just “because they are board members”. Board members at heart are really just volunteers, often struggling to do their best despite their busy schedules. Take every opportunity to let your board members know how much their service is appreciated.

3. Stay Patient through the Tough Times: I know that not every one of my parents’ 47 years together was perfect. There were tough financial times, times when the future was uncertain, and many times when their parental “leadership” was challenged (sorry, Mom and Dad!). But their commitment to sticking with their “organization” kept them going. In the same way, being on a board means making a long-term commitment to sticking with the cause through challenges. If you’ve remembered to show board members how much they are valued and to have fun as a group, it’ll be a lot easier for them to stick with you through the not-so-fun times.

4. Place a High Priority on Learning New Things: Of the many things I love and admire about my parents’ approach to life together, the one I treasure the most is their openness to learning new things. They seek out opportunities to broaden their understanding of the world, especially when challenged by their kids to do so. That kind of willingness to learning new approaches and perspectives would save a lot of grief for boards that try unsuccessfully to stick with an old approach that is no longer working. By recruiting and cultivating board leaders that have a fresh perspective, your board can and will be better able to serve its mission for the long haul.

May we all be so fortunate as to have a board team that is as faithful, fun and flexible as the Starrs!

By Boston College University

“You have mere seconds to grab – and keep – a job seeker’s attention, so what you say – and how you say it – matter” advises Mary Lorenz at the Hiring Site. Have you ever posted a job and wondered why you received so few or no emails or calls about it? As Services Coordinator, one of my responsibilities is posting weekly nonprofit jobs and news from Greenlights’ members. I am often surprised by the length of some of the postings (“Does anyone read this entire listing before applying?”), the number of spelling mistakes or grammatical errors, or the lack of detail around the organization itself.

When I was job hunting last summer, there were few job listings I saw that sounded so exciting I wanted to not only email and fax my resume, but also drive to the organization, personally introduce myself and leave another copy of my resume just to insure they received it. Park ranger positions always tempted me (except for the wildfire fighting part), because I love the outdoors! There are several tips that everyone could take into account when trying to find fabulous new employees. The Hiring Site recommends the following:

1. Go traditional with job titles. Sure it’s fun to say “Looking for Rock Stars!” but sticking with traditional job titles increases the number of times your job shows up in searches. And it provides a clearer picture for potential candidates of what you’re looking for.
2. Think beyond healthcare and 401(k)s. When looking for jobs, we want to know the salary and insure there are benefits. But benefits don’t have to mean just the typical ones. For example, some of the nontraditional benefits of my position are attending Greenlights’ workshops, occasional staff outings planned by our “Director of Fun”, and pizza once a month at staff meetings. Include those kinds of benefits in your job postings too – it will say a lot about your organization and office environment!
3. Break it up. Here’s a huge pet peeve for me – don’t have your entire job listing comprised of  “Responsibilities” with 30+ bullet points below that. Create categories like “responsibilities of the role” and “mission/environment of the organization”. In “Do This, Not That” by Mary Lorenz, she suggests, “The easier the job posting is to read, the more likely a candidate is to read the posting in full and recognize whether or not he or she is truly qualified for the position.”
4. Address the elephant in the room. Include salary information in your posting – even if it is only a range.
5. Proofread. If you dismiss resumes with spelling or grammatical errors, then make sure that your own job posting doesn’t include any as well. I proofread when posting jobs, but I can’t catch everything, so review the posting multiple times and ask another staff member to look over it as well before submitting.

Monster.com suggests a few additional tips for appealing to fabulous candidates:

1. Write a compelling opening paragraph. Just like writing essays in school, your opening paragraph needs to grab the reader’s attention and spark interest!
2. Have a clear call to action. Close your posting with simple instructions on the application process and inspire them to apply immediately. The Lance Armstrong Foundation has a great call to action at the end of their job postings: “We are always looking for passionate, diverse, creative and innovative individuals who exemplify service excellence, show extraordinary potential, embrace new ideas and thrive in our ever-changing environment. To join our global movement, please apply online at …” and then they include the link. Every time I post one of their jobs, that paragraph always makes me sit up a little straighter and think “I’m creative and innovative!”

There is no perfect, mathematical equation to finding the ideal employee, but a few tweaks and a little extra work on your job listings may inspire a larger variety of fabulous candidates. If nothing else, maybe just add something about “free bagel Fridays” or “talented bakers need only apply” and you’ll certainly earn a thumbs-up from me!

By visualphotos.com

In the nonprofit world, collaboration is more than just a kumbayah, let’s all hold hands and get along concept. It is critical to business success, a logical way to fill gaps in organizational capability, and sometimes even a long-term survival strategy. As such, we believe in a robust, well-defined, and analytical approach to collaboration, and even a differentiation between regular-old collaboration and “strategic collaboration.”

The Greenlights Team recently had the privilege of leading a group of 48 Applied Materials Foundation grantee nonprofits in a full-day “Advancement Academy” focused on collaborative learning and problem-solving, and centered around the concept of strategic collaboration and nonprofit mergers. As a foundation that is on the cutting edge of engaging their grantees in more than just a grantor-grantee relationship, Applied Materials now regularly convenes their Austin-based nonprofit partners to encourage learning, collaboration, and networking, even though their grantees work in fields as broad as education, basic needs, and the arts.

To begin the day, Greenlights laid out a central definition of “strategic collaboration” to distinguish the concept from a more common view of the term. We defined a collaboration to be truly strategic when it involves…

• Two or more organizations…
• working together in a meaningful, well-defined, and deliberate manner…
• by investing time, energy, and resources…
• to accomplish a set of shared objectives…
• that are mutually beneficial to advancing the missions of the organizations involved, and…
• that are more likely to be achieved together than alone.

We further laid out the Greenlights Collaboration Continuum, a construct that allows nonprofits to plot existing or potential collaborations on a scale ranging from less intensive collaborations to the most intensive form of collaboration, outright merger.

We have found at Greenlights, having been contracted by nonprofits to lead many nonprofit merger and strategic collaboration initiatives, that meaningful collaboration takes not just a more analytical approach than is typically afforded but also a different form of organizational leadership. Nonprofit executive leaders and boards who are leading their organizations in long-term sustainable ways are often able to embrace strategic collaboration as a core business practice, to promote it on the organization’s regular discussion and evaluation agenda, and to see it not as a distraction or something that signals weakness, but rather as a source of strength for the organization.

Greenlights was thrilled to be able to partner with Applied Materials in this way and, even more so, we were very encouraged by the high level of engagement by and very positive feedback from the many nonprofit leaders who attended this year’s Advancement Academy and who are now even better equipped to lead their organizations in a more strategic, more collaborative manner.

Greenlights Advancement Academy for Applied Materials Foundation Grantees

My winning horse! Photo by Dan Dry, from http://www.kentuckyderby.com/news/photos/kentucky-derby-137-winners-circle

I’m not a betting gal, but I am good at picking a winner.

In 2001, we were invited to a Kentucky Derby + Cinco de Mayo party, where mint juleps and margaritas were promised. It was the first time I’d ever watched the Derby–and possibly my first mint julep as well. However, more than the mint juleps and margaritas, I remember being struck by the interesting names of the horses in the race. I found it beyond funny that there was a horse for a then-trendy, now-forgotten cell phone called Startac. I decided to root, however, a horse named Monarchos, whose name struck me as a sign of the times with lots of noveau-high-falutingness. I picked a winner.

Since then, I’ve looked at the names of the Derby horses each year–well, most years, sometimes I forget–and I pick a winner based on the name. And every time I do it, I’m right. I remember picking Giacomo (2005) and Barbaro (2006), for no other reason than the fact that I’m a total italophile, and they had Italian names. I picked War Emblem during jingoistic 2002. I picked Super Saver (2010) when our economy was in trouble and coupons were de rigueur.

But I never placed a bet until this weekend’s Derby. Through a work event, I had (lucky) family members going to the actual Kentucky Derby. I looked at the list of horses and told them to put $10 on “I’ll have another” for me. I won. But this isn’t all about my savant abilities for picking winners base on semantics. (Although I do think it’s quite awesome and am a bit scared that stating it so publicly will ruin my streak.)

Since my evaluation of the horses is based almost solely on my feelings about the horses’ names, I spend time thinking about what each one means and playing with the words in my head. (In addition to being an italophile, I’m also a logophile.) This year’s race line-up included Optimizer, Creative Cause, Alpha, Prospective, Done Talking, and Liaison.

Six horses with decision-making or business-based names. Seven if you count the mafioso El Padrino. But that’s a different kind of business, and I digress.

What does that say about our world? Or what does it say about our world 3 years ago, when these horses were born and named, and have things played out in the way that their breeders might have hoped? Clearly that was a time of economic struggle, powerful political tides, and challenge in many ways. In the nonprofit community, our shirtsleeves were rolled up and our boots had straps (so we could pull ourselves up when we needed to). People were ready for decisions, action, and success.

We’ve heard and seen that the tide is changing in the nonprofit community though, and we’ve been part of it as cheerleaders, consultants, participants, and facilitators. Back in 2011 (when theses horses were 1), Matt wrote about his cautious optimism. And I think 2011 and 2012 have been good years, for the most part.

If I were naming a nonprofit horse this year, I’d want to capture the ideas behind the best practices and trends that I think will carry us forward through the next three years. If you know a horse breeder, perhaps you could put in a good word for one of these name suggestions:

• Strategy: Thinking things through and coming up with a well-informed plan will never go out of style.
• Prepare Pivot Thrive: With almost half of the Executive Directors in our community planning to stay in their current role for 4 years or less, organizations will need to embrace the Prepare Pivot Thrive mantra for transitions.
• Succession Success: In our recent career trends survey we also learned that about half of the organizations in Central Texas do not have succession plans. The lack of clarity when it’s time for transition has me biting my nails, and I’m hoping that in the next few years, we’ll whittle this number down.
• Merge and Conquer: We’re seeing more and more opportunities for strategic collaboration, and I think that the organizations who are taking it to the merger level have found new leverage for success.
• In the Clouds: Whether it’s through e-learning or some kind of virtual hosting, things are moving up for nonprofits who are embracing cloud strategies for sustainability, efficiency, and affordability.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever be bold enough to bet more than $10 on a race, but I am confident enough to state that continuing strategic work, preparing for leadership successions, collaborating–and even merging, and embracing new technology are winning bets for nonprofits.

Nonprofit Excellence Award honorees receive a $1,000 grant award and will be recognized the evening of September 20, 2012 at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center in Austin, Texas at the Texas Nonprofit Awards alongside OneStar Foundation’s Governor’s Volunteer Awards.  The event takes place on the evening of the first day of the Texas Nonprofit Summit, the premier nonprofit management conference for the state of Texas.

Nonprofit Excellence Awards celebrate Central Texas nonprofit organizations and individuals driving social change through exemplary achievements in the categories of:

Collaboration
The Collaboration Award highlights a successful partnership that a nonprofit has made with another nonprofit, business, foundation, or other entity that has resulted in improved impact and has achieved greater outcomes for both organizations because of their unique association. 

NEW!  Impact
The Impact Award honors a nonprofit organization, or one of its programs, whose notable performance and delivery to the community sets a high standard of quality and impact.  This organization can demonstrate ways in which it continually seeks to measure and improve impact.

NEW!  Innovation & Learning
The Innovation & Learning Award honors a nonprofit organization whose creation and application of new approaches or learning (from a workshop, conference, consulting engagement, book, etc.) to its work has advanced the organization and serves as a model for other nonprofits.  This new practice or approach is being, or has been, incorporated into the fabric of the organization and makes an affirmative enhancement to the operation or core activities of its mission.

NEW!  Board Excellence
The Board Excellence Award recognizes an organization for its success in fostering an engaged and effective board.  This organization can demonstrate the board’s direct linkage to the overall success of the organization, or in areas such as fundraising, advocacy, strategic planning, successful leadership transitions, etc.

NEW!  Nonprofit Leader of the Year
The Nonprofit Leader of the Year Award celebrates a nonprofit staff member whose masterful achievements in their role have directly benefited the organization’s operating capacity and impact in the community.  Individuals from all levels of employment are considered.

2011 Winners:

(pictured left to right)

Collaboration
CLEAN Air Force of Central Texas

Innovation
Capital Area Food Bank of Texas

Learning in Action
Austin Disaster Relief Network

Service Excellence
People’s Community Clinic

Special Recognition
Austin Classical Guitar Society

Check out the nomination guidelines and nominate today or by May 29, 2012 at 5PM!  Questions?  Contact Kate Smallwood at kates@greenlights.org.

Was it really nearly a month ago that I was flying to Vancouver with my colleagues for the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Annual Conference? The cool temperatures of Vancouver have been long forgotten now as the reality of the pending Texas summer is upon us. I’d really like to go back, so today I am going to close my eyes, turn up the A/C, and pretend I’m back in Vancouver. Rather than go on about the beauty and charm of the city or where to find THE best Ukrainian food in Vancouver, I thought I’d reminisce about my favorite session of the conference.

The description for “Does Your Board Know how to Evaluate Fundraising Effectiveness?” referenced effective management dashboards – that’s all it took to win me over. Each month I prepare a colorful, pie-charted dashboard to report to our board of directors on the current state of our fundraising program and how our board members have been helping us meet our goals. I’ve retooled and revamped it several times, not because I didn’t think it was useful information, but because I always wonder, “Is the best, most useful information for our board?”

Session presenter, Peter Drury, definitely proved that there is indeed more useful (or at the very least- additional) information that should be shared with your board to help them evaluate your organization’s fundraising success. He referenced the “dysfunctional dance” that we can unknowingly create with our board if we only focus on the present fundraising outputs and not regularly envision the future outcomes and impact we want to achieve for our organization.

The coveted take-away Peter left us with was “The ‘Beyond Cash’ Fundraising Management Dashboard.”  For the lucky ones in the room, we received the card stock, color copied, two-sided hand-out of beauty to take home with us. Fortunately for those not in the room he has made the tool available online.

The core of his message is simple– when it comes to fundraising success there is more to measure than just cash in the door.

The ‘Beyond Cash’ indicators he shares are things that most of us already track in some form or fashion (retention rate, median gift size, number of new donors, multi-year pledges), but how many of us are keeping track of our:

• Engagement Index: What percentage of your donors are making that first gift as a result of learning about you through another volunteer or donor?
• Non-Ask Ratio: What’s your organization’s ratio of solicitation contacts to “non-ask” contacts like stewardship visits or communications sharing the impact of their gift.
• Brand Strength Rating: How many of us are biannually asking our board and staff to rate their confidence in our brand?

Put all of these together, and this dashboard certainly is a great goal setting tool, reporting and evaluation document, and conversation starter to share with your board of directors. What do you think? How are you currently communicating your fundraising success to your board?

Looking specifically at the experiences of a large international nonprofit, CARE, Convio explored what happens when a nonprofit transitions to dual-channel marketing or, in other words, when they work to engage people both through traditional direct mail tactics as well as through online techniques. Based on their analysis of CARE’s donor data, Convio reports that dual-channel donors are the most valuable. Specifically:

Image from forbes.com

Gordon Gekko may believe “greed is good,” but in the nonprofit sector we know that “FREE is good!”  When it comes to working or volunteering in the nonprofit sector, we tend to be under-resourced, over-worked and busy as all get out.

That’s where the Greenlights Online Resource Library comes in. Did you know we have almost a hundred different articles and tools available for your FREE viewing and downloading pleasure?

Let’s take a quick tour of what’s “hot” these days.

Image from 123RF.com

By far the most popular category in our Resource Library is Board Development, with 3504 views in the past year.

What’s the most popular board resource? Check out the sample board fundraising commitment form, which has been downloaded more than 1000 times since February 2011, or the Board Member Matrix if you want to look at your current board makeup and think about top priority recruitment needs.

Another oft-visited section of the library is Financial Management, where a compilation of resources on the IRS 990 Form is downloaded quite a bit, and another favorite tool is a sample set of nonprofit financial policies.

But what about managing staff and volunteers, you say?  If you want to learn how to conduct background checks, evaluate your Executive Director, or assess the performance of staff, we’ve got you covered.  Tools for all of the above and more can be found in the Human Resources section of the library.

All this, plus resources for raising more money, communicating your story, planning for growth and more are just a mouse-click away.  And the low price of FREE is hard to beat.

Each boy then splits his dimes into three containers, one for “spending” which they can use to buy anything they choose (within reason), one for “saving” which they must hold onto and eventually will end up in a bank savings account, and one for “giving” which they either put in the offering tray at church or give to one of the charitable causes we support.

So far, this system seems to be instilling in our children valuable lessons about hard work, performance, rewards, discipline, and even philanthropy. Such systems of measuring and rewarding performance worked for me growing up, they seem to work well throughout our economic system, and one would think that they would work in the nonprofit arena too.

But do they work?

At Greenlights, we’re pretty proud of the fact that we evaluate everything we do, every workshop, every consulting project, even sometimes the meetings we lead. We survey our board, our members, our clients, even each other. In fact, if SurveyMonkey had an award for “Most Use By A Nonprofit,” we’d probably win it.

Program evaluation is weaved throughout our culture and all of our programs, both the immediate, short-term variety, and the longer-term, longitudinal kind. And we do it all on essentially no budget (or at least no real designated funding for evaluation). And while we can’t say that we are “rewarded” financially (like my sons are) for achieving certain performance targets, I can say that our funders know about our performance and that many of them choose to fund us based on our demonstrated track record of impact and success.

But we also understand that many nonprofits have a difficult time tracking, monitoring, and evaluating programmatic performance. They lack sufficient funds and staff time for it, their client populations do not lend themselves well to be tracked, or they lack the expertise to design and implement good program evaluation practices. As the nonprofit sector matures, though, and as funders continue to increase their demand for demonstrable “return on investment” for their dollars, we must put aside these excuses as a sector and embrace a new level of sophistication in measuring and evaluating our impact.

To help nonprofits do this, Greenlights has engaged in a new research project to study how nonprofits do or do not evaluate their programs, and we will be publishing this research and our thoughts on it later this year. If you have not yet taken our survey of nonprofit program evaluation, please do so: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Results_and_Impact.

We have also posted several free program evaluation resources and tools to our Online Resource Library: http://www.greenlights.org/resources/resource-library/cat_view/30-resource-library/24-planning-and-evaluation .

The hardest part about our allowance system at home is when one of the boys does his chores and gets paid, but the other one does not. This results in a lot of crying and upset feelings (both by parents and child!), and while we certainly feel guilty for not paying that child, we know it is a lesson he needs to learn now and not later in life when it will be much more costly.

Maybe this is how many funders are feeling these days, with so many nonprofits asking for money, so many unmet needs, and relatively limited philanthropic capital to give away? How about we nonprofits make their decisions much easier by investing in our own abilities to demonstrate meaningful impact and programmatic outcomes.