Non-Profit Chas

A Leader’s Note to the Future

2010-07-20T13:54:53Z

In the late 1990s, the board of directors of a summer camp sold half of its land – 45 acres with a private pond and recently constructed cabins – for about $45,000. They did this to pay an expense they knew was coming. They should have planned for it, right? They could have found the money elsewhere instead of selling a significant asset for such little money, right?

What will leaders in the years 2020, 2050, or 2100 think? Will they question my actions? Will they criticize our leadership?

Since getting involved with non-profit organizations, I often find myself coming across decisions made by previous boards and executives. From my perspective in 2010, it’s easy to question the rationale behind these moves. And with an organization of any age, there are a lot of moves to question.

From land sales to mergers to program closings, I’m sure past leaders had reasons for their actions. I’m sure they were doing the best they could, and believed they were acting in the organization’s best interest.

What will leaders in the years 2020, 2050, or 2100 think? Will they question my actions? Will they criticize our leadership?

To help our future leaders understand why we made our decisions, I’m making sure to document everything. Board meeting minutes include notes on discussion and rationale. Hard decisions have reports, data, and other background attached so that those who take over for us may better understand how they got there.

If nothing else, I hope that they can learn from my mistakes just as I’m learning from those of our past leaders.

Giving Up on Altruism

2010-04-08T18:55:34Z

Is it truly altruism if you’re getting intangible benefits such as resume-building experience, connections and friendships, or even personal fulfillment?

Very few of my friends are involved in non-profits in a volunteer leadership capacity. They may have volunteered in the past, but they’re concerned with their jobs, their families, or they’re just being protective of their personal time. They already feel too busy and don’t see how volunteering could possibly benefit them. Sure, it’s a noble cause, but once you graduate college and get into the real world noble causes go right out the window. Right?

A few months ago, I was interviewed for a magazine article on Generation Y non-profit leaders. One of the questions was “how do you convince Generation Y to get involved in a leadership role?”

The answer falls somewhere between engagement in the cause and selfish, personal interest.

Selfishness is the opposite of altruism. Giving is supposed to be pure, for the benefit of the cause alone. Or so you might be told.

Organizations send donor receipts clearly stating that the donor has not received any material benefit for their donation. If there’s a thank you gift, the value of the gift has to be taken out of the tax-deductible amount.

But what about intangible benefits? How about the satisfaction of making a difference? It’s entirely possible get hooked on the high of helping someone else. Is that wrong?

Still, there are even more selfish benefits of volunteering, and those are often the reasons people get involved with non-profits.

For millennials early in their careers, the opportunity to stretch their skill sets, work on big projects, and network with more connected and powerful professionals can be a very attractive proposition. Sure, it’s hard work but it can pay off – especially when you don’t get a chance to do these at your regular job.

Personally, my volunteer service has helped me get promotions and new opportunities. I’ve been asked to work on projects in finance, human relations, fundraising, strategic planning, public relations, marketing, and a number of other professional skills. Because the non-profit organizations had a need and I volunteered, I got to add these to my repertoire long before my day job ever gave me the opportunity.

Volunteering also puts the rest of my work in perspective. The daily dramas of a cranky client or colleague are nothing compared to the highs and lows of a cause you care about. Defusing an angry parent in a custody dispute or watching a camper make a personal breakthrough are far more memorable and important in the grand scheme of my life.

So back to the title topic: Is it truly altruism if you’re getting intangible benefits such as resume-building experience, connections and friendships, or even personal fulfillment?

From my vantage point, who cares?

1 Facebook Page, 2 Weeks, and 3 Realizations

2010-03-10T15:08:31Z

About a year ago, I created a Camp Fire USA Facebook page for our council: a tiny non-profit with a lot of history and not a lot of resources. I threw our logo up there, I tossed in a quick event, and that’s pretty much it. No real content to speak of. I invited one or two people to be fans, and they did. But since there was no content, there was no reason to share it, and the total fans grew to an astonishing 8 people.

Last week, I went back to the page and added photos, a video, and several events. I spruced things up. And then I invited another 8-10 people I knew who were passionate about Camp Fire and our programs.

Two weeks later…

Our fan count is in the 80s. It continues to grow by at least a few every day. We’ve gotten inquiries directly related to exposure on the Facebook page. Given our small organization and the cost (in time and money) this is a very inexpensive way to reach more people.

Realization #1: This is what I do.

I breathe marketing. I live on the web and in social media. I’m a digital-freaking-native. There’s no excuse for me to not realize how I could have been applying all of these skills to Camp Fire. That said, I’ve opened my eyes to the possibilities that I so very often advise my clients on.

Realization #2: Social networking is our marketing priority and we’ve been doing it the hard way.

People choose camp programs based on trust, price, and recommendations. We’ve got a very competitive price, so we’re left trying to build trust and get recommendations. Fortunately, our customers tend to be very passionate about our product. So we’ve spent a lot of our time and money trying to equip them to make recommendations for us via offline social networking (i.e., talk to your friends about us, here are brochures you can pass on). It’s been tough – people are busy, they’re uncomfortable with such a directed process, and so on. Facebook (and other online social networking sites) are effortless and natural. Parents of our campers are on Facebook. Their friends are on Facebook. What were we waiting for?

Realization #3: It’s a better ROI.

We have great retention rates for our campers. Kids want to come back, parents are pleased, and we stay in touch throughout the year so the return rates are wonderful. The challenge we have is reaching new parents and kids. We do all kinds of direct and indirect marketing to try and acquire new campers, but the aforementioned trust and recommendation factors leave us fighting an uphill battle. Social networking is precisely the approach we need, and it’s likely to pay off much better than a stack of flyers on a random store counter.

3 Sad Stories about Your Non-Profit

2010-03-07T16:21:28Z

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Desiderius Erasmus

The Land of the Blind

Let’s make a generalization: If you work for a non-profit organization, you are living in the past. You’re doing something outdated, for reasons you can’t quite articulate, and at an unknown cost – especially consider the opportunity cost of doing something less efficient.

Fortunately for you, the eager non-profiteer, so is everyone else. Here are three stories (no names, to save face) of non-profits that might sound familiar:

Tools: the Legacy Computer

In 2006, one organization I knew had a very old computer sitting in the corner of the office. It served one purpose: to host a very old piece of donor management software on a very old operating system. Only one person knew how to use this software, and it wasn’t very helpful anyway. Not only that, but it was increasingly difficult to support the failing hardware. There were dozens of opportunities to upgrade or find a new system over the course of about a decade. The cost to the organization was measured in lots of time and the occasional hardware replacement.

Professional Development: It’s Getting Worse Every Day

“If you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse.” Executives, employees, and board members need to invest some portion of their time in professional development to get better at what they do, or they’ll soon find themselves incompetent. Worse yet, they won’t even know they’re incompetent.

A large non-profit had very low turnover, which meant that hundreds of its employees had been in essentially the same job for 15+ years. These employees were more likely to be unhappy, but wouldn’t quit their jobs. They weren’t let go because they were technically doing their work, but they weren’t providing the value of their more engaged, productive counterparts. This meant that the more engaged employees were more likely to get assignments, sometimes overworking them. The cost to the organization is in lost opportunities, some unnecessary overtime, and higher turnover of the best employees.

Process: File, Print, Repeat

A few years ago, another organization needed to print about 900 letters to fold, stuff, and mail to constituents. One of the staff members dedicated an entire day to hitting File > Print and then printing a single copy. Once it was printed, she did this again. Two down. After a whole day of the most inefficient software use I’ve ever heard of, someone found out and pointed out that she could just hit File > Print and enter the quantity to print out. The cost to the organization was 7+ hours of this employee’s time, and the cost of her pay.

Be the King

Nearly every non-profit is under-resourced and over-burdened, leaving no time or money to invest in new tools, professional development, re-evaluating their processes, and so on.

What these non-profits rarely realize is that they could save money and time by investing in those resources. There’s an ROI on many of these things, and it’s worth investigating.

It doesn’t take much to gain a tremendous advantage over other organizations while freeing up your own resources. There are tons of ways to do it: books, seminars, networking, and lots of online options:

Non-Profit Blogs at AllTop.com
Tip: If you’re new to reading blogs or you can’t find time to keep up with them check out my Feed Reader 101 post on how to keep tabs on thousands of articles each month in as little time as possible.

3 Lessons from Girl Scout Cookies

2010-02-11T15:03:35Z

Our Camp Fire council had a discussion recently about how other youth organizations have changed over the years to meet new challenges and opportunities, respond to market forces, and simply try new things.

This article from Comcast Finance talks about Girl Scout cookies and the breakdown of where the money goes:

And that there is a point of question. Stated in such a vague way—spanning the country all the way from the Land of 10,000 Lakes to the great Garden State—we can’t help but wonder, where exactly does this largest chunk of cookie sales ($1.70 to $2.00) go?

The Girl Scouts have seen significant declines in their cookie sales, leading to the closure of a number of councils, their camps, and their various programs. In the 90s, when the low-carb craze hit their cookie sales were badly affected. A local Girl Scouts council survived by implementing a separate development fundraising program (I attended a seminar on this a while back). The development program led to a much more sustainable (and financially lucrative) program.

This reminds me of our council’s long history. Decades ago, when we had thousands of participants in our year-round programs, our candy sale fundraiser was very lucrative. We also relied on a major grant source. Those two things dried up over the course of time as participation declined and the grant money went to other needs. Without the scale of thousands of kids selling candy, it became a very weak source of income.

I take three lessons from this story:

1 – People buying cookies (or candy, pizzas, or Christmas wreaths) aren’t necessarily engaged donors who are supporting the program, they’re just buying cookies. Don’t force willing, engaged donors to go through your cookie sales program to give you money.

2 – Diversify your income so that you’re not subject to the whims of one particular market. People love cookies, but people also love fad diets.

3 – Be accountable and transparent about your finances. A $10 box of cookies doesn’t seem like much, but supporters want to know that their $10 is going to the right place. They’re asking the questions, so you should be prepared to provide the answers.

Visual Guide to Giving

2009-12-14T04:03:01Z

Found via Make a Difference Michiana. Originally posted at the Mint blog where they have plenty of other amazing things to check out.

7 Tips for a More Profitable Silent Auction

2009-10-31T22:33:29Z

A silent auction isn’t an easy thing to .

1. Get people to bid more than the item is worth.

You’re a charity, not a pawn shop. Avoid setting up items that have a clear dollar value (e.g., a $20 gift certificate) because it’s hard to rationally justify spending $50 on a $20 gift certificate. If you have gift certificates, use tip #6 to get bidders focused on the prize (a juicy steak dinner) rather than the cost ($20 at a restaurant).

2. Don’t make it about the items.

Some people will gladly spend that $50 on a $20 item, though. But you have to make those people understand that the bid isn’t a purchase price, it’s a show of support for your cause. If you do this well enough, the items won’t really matter.

3. Get items that can’t be bought.

You could arrange for lunch with a local celebrity or a chef’s tour of the kitchen at a nice restaurant. Backstage passes at a concert or an autograph don’t usually cost anything, but can be very difficult to get. The key to this tip is providing a unique experience or item that isn’t for sale (but doesn’t necessarily cost anything).

4. Create packages that have an inflated value.

A night out to a nice dinner might cost $75, but it can be worth far more. If you can pair dinner with tickets to an event or VIP treatment, the value of the package goes way up.

5. Create your own items for cheap.

Get a basket, bucket, or box. Into that container, put candles, lotions, cookies, pizza ingredients, or whatever themed package you can think of. These don’t have to be pricy, but have some variation. I spent $75 on a pail of barbecue stuff: wood chips, sauces, seasonings, grilling tools, and a cookbook. It felt like a great value, and it was right up my alley.

6. Show off the items, even with a picture.

This seems so obvious, but there are plenty of items that aren’t going to physically sit on a table to be examined. They might be event packages, a beach house rental, or a large item that you can’t fit. Print a photo of the item (or something representative), mount it on foam board, and display this on a small easel.

7. Stagger the finishing times.

If bidding ends at 9pm, you don’t necessarily know if won any of the auctions. But if half of the items close at 9pm and the other half at 10pm, those who didn’t win in the first round have a chance to pick up some of the other items. The disappointment of losing an item you really wanted can be a great incentive to make bigger bids later.

Inefficient but Effective: Dartmouth

2009-06-15T19:40:06Z

Sure, there’s a lot of demand for transparency in non-profits. Donor-investors expect you to run lean and clean, with as much efficiency as possible. But let’s face it: that’s not the goal of a non-profit. Your goal is your mission.

Dartmouth’s development office produced a fantastic 2 minute, 21 second video explaining their “business model” to donors. It’s done with some sweet animation and a sense of sarcasm that rarely succeeds. But in this case, it makes you sit back and appreciate just how difficult it can be to run a top-notch institution of higher education. Read more about their approach…

Hired! How to Recruit and Hire in this Economy

2009-03-14T14:44:22Z

Last month, Camp Fire posted a new job – our Executive Director.

This was a big step for us. We’ve done it all wrong for quite some time, relying on a volunteer ED and trying to squeeze as much water from as many stones as possible. Frankly, I can’t think of a better way to suffer from burnout than to abuse your volunteers and demand heroic efforts.

Fortunately, we resolved to finally hire someone to take the job. There’s a whole different mentality when you hire someone than when you’re recruiting volunteers. You can be a lot more selective when you hire. They give a resume, you interview them, and you weigh the nuanced details of one candidate over another.

Define the Position

The first step is knowing what you need and putting it on paper. We’ve been running loose for a while, and HR is one area we’ve neglected. Position descriptions and policies and benefits and all that jazz – it’s pretty much nonexistent. So we looked to our national organization for some of the tools, and crafted a position description around that framework. More importantly, we decided what we really needed to focus on: programs first, fundraising second.

Honesty is the best policy

We’re not a big, strong organization. We’ve struggled and are currently digging our way out of some long-standing problems. It’s certainly a positive outlook, but not everyone wants to come into a fixer-upper of an organization. So we were honest about our history and situation. We really wanted someone who would be eager to take on the challenges and build something great. The worst thing you can do is hire someone who later feels duped and ends up leaving the job.

Post the Job for Free

Getting the word out was the most intimidating challenge for us – we had no idea how many people would apply, and we wanted to get as many applicants as possible. So we started with some obvious areas, and ended up spreading the word through some unusual places:

Local community websites
Craigslist
Chamber of Commerce
Local United Way
National Camp Fire organization website

Our personal networks
We didn’t spend any money posting the job. No paid classifieds, no paid listings, not a dime. As it happens, most of our candidates came from our personal networking – people one to three degrees away from us. Any good HR recruiter knows that’s how the best job matches tend to happen – through their networking and relationships, not through blind application and resume sifting.

Sort the Resumes and Interview

We took in dozens of resumes, and our hiring committee (of 2 volunteers) sorted them, made phone calls, and scheduled interviews. After narrowing down to a core set of candidates, they scheduled a second round of interviews with a larger group of board members (including me). Having met with this core group, I have to say: there’s a lot of talent out there looking for jobs. Any of our candidates would be an excellent addition to any organization, but we only had room to hire one. (The thought crossed my mind that all of these candidates would be great board members, though I’m not sure how they might react to that conversation.)

Retaining Good Staff when the Economy Turns Around

The economy certainly plays a role in all of this. Some people have been laid off or had their savings hit by the market. Others are simply looking for a new challenge. There’s a lot of talent on the market. But one factor to consider is how your new hire might react once the economy improves.
If your organization is a place that people enjoy working,
If there are continued opportunities and challenges,

If your people have invested themselves and are seeing returns – having built something great – they won’t want to give that up.

Hiring! Executive Director

2009-02-09T20:05:08Z

Camp Fire USA River Bend Council is seeking qualified candidates for the position of Executive Director. It’s a full-time position located in South Bend, Indiana.

View the position announcement >