The Report (Project Part 8)

We are wrapping up our reorganization report soon and I have committed to giving my boss my report tomorrow.  I leave on vacation after that so the timing is good.  I won’t be here to hear him howl in frustration.

The biggest challenge I think I have had through this process is to remain a “disconnected” consultant.  When crafting a recommended departmental org chart it is extremely difficult to remain an outsider and not bring in personal biases or knowledge.  I think I have done that but I guess I am not 100% confident of success.

After the boss reviews the report we will have a meeting to go through the recommendations and action steps and to discuss the realities of the personnel issues that have been raised as a result of the process.  In spite of the difficulty, I like what is designed and the resulting chart and think it is going to provide some streamlined processes and systems.  Hopefully the end result will be enhanced service to our donors.

There will be some challenges in the days ahead as we work on revising job descriptions and adjusting some of our internal procedures documents.  Should be fun. Who can I pass that process off to?  Hmm…..

A Wiki Resource

Maybe this has been posted before by others but I found it today so I thought I would share.  I was looking for some resources on wiki software that we could use for collaboration purposes in our department.  I ran across this site that appears to do a good job of comparing the different platforms that are available.  If you are looking at implementing a wiki for group work, check this comparison out.

The (Hidden) Danger of Abundance Thinking

Michele Martin over at The Bamboo Project has written a series of posts about Scarcity vs Abundance thinking and the impact of each mindset on an organization.  The first posting got my brain thinking in all sorts of directions and as a result it has been sitting by my computer for a few days now as I wrestled with the concepts.

One of the danger areas that I have seen over the years is when abundance thinking takes hold to the extreme.  It goes something like this:

• Organization A experience a sudden rise in donors and donations due to some external event.  Because of it’s participation in the event it generates a fair bit of favorable press.
• Organization A is able to retain the majority of its donors over the years and experience multiple years of ongoing growth in income.
• Organization A attributes the ongoing growth to the way it does business and slowly a mindset of “we do it this way” sets in.
• Organization A does not evaluate internal processes because there is “no need to change” the way things are done.
• Organization A begins to focus on perfection rather than speed of response.  Everything starts to take twice as long to accomplish.
• Organization A starts to experience a decline in donation income and works hard to do more of the same because that has always worked in the past.

While I would agree that many if not most non-profits wrestle more with scarcity thinking than they do with abundance thinking, I think there is a hidden danger that lurks around the corner for those non-profits that start to think of themselves as being “successful” as measured by donations.  There tends to be a lack of learning, a resistance to change, and I would even suggest that fiefdom building can be just as significant.  (Maybe it is a function of refusing to believe that there is abundance.)

So how do we avoid that mentality.  Consider the following:

1. Measure what you manage.  Is this activity that we are engaging in really necessary?
2. Encourage staff to think out loud.  Don’t assume that your receptionist has nothing to offer.
3. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.  This can’t be emphasized enough.  Mistakes teach.
4. A wise man once said, “Doing the same things over and over expecting to reach a different result is the definition of foolishness.”  Look for new and more efficient ways to accomplish the work that needs to be accomplished.
5. Look for ways to give.  Michele nailed this one with this post.

I think non-profits will always be prone to scarcity thinking as they wrestle with tight budgets and lagging income.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.   There is more value in collaborating than in competing.  And I would dare to say, maybe the time has come for some non-profits to fold into others and create better synergy.  A little radical I suppose. 

Key Result Areas – Project Part 7

Do you know what your Key Result Areas really are?  Does your staff know what they are?

One of the interesting parts of this project has been to ask each staff member during the interview process to list the top three to five things that the department must do well in order to effectively serve our donors.  What has been interesting to me, is that there has been a great deal of consistency with the answers.  Some minor variation but most of that might even be considered word choice more than anything else.

Here is the list as it develops of the key areas that the department must focus on:

1. Be available to donors/inquirers. 
2. Treat our donors with respect and appreciation.
3. Provide them with timely, accurate information that answers their question or meets their need.
4. Know the “product”.  Be familiar with the various aspects of the work the organization is engaged in.
5. Keep the lines of communication open between the donor/development department and other departments in the organization.

Reading through that list might make you say, “Duh!”  But stop for a moment and think through how you care for and respond to your constituency.  What policies do you have in place for how your phones are answered.  What training do  you give your staff who are on the front lines of the phone response?  How well do you work with other departments to gather information about what your organization is doing and where the success stories are? 

Smaller organizations probably have an easier time with much of this.  The larger an organization gets, the easier it is to become less personal and the harder it becomes to be timely.  And yet it is in the personal response where relationships are built.  Ask your donors why they give to you and I would be willing to bet that high on the list will be a statement about how they have been treated. 

See my earlier post on inadvertent messages that we send. 

We continue to walk through our reorganization project.  It is an enlightening process for sure!

What Message Are You Sending Your Donors?

When was the last time you did an audit of your donor response systems?

Sometimes programs get set up without thinking through the inadvertent message we may be sending.  Take for instance a website where it takes more than 3 clicks to make a donation.  What message does that send to someone who may have been impacted by the email appeal you sent?  “Oh, don’t bother giving.  We don’t really need it.”

Take for instance this car dealership.  I pass this dealership on my way to and from work each day and have really been puzzled by their perspective.  For some reason, they think that placing cars in the entrance way is good promotion.  The dealership sits on the major highway into town and gets lots of traffic.  But now that they have put the cars in the driveway, you would be hard pressed to find your way into the dealership.  “Don’t bother.  We don’t really want to sell you a car.”

I realize there is some disagreement about the value of postage paid response envelopes vs regular reply envelopes.  However, within your own context, consider the message you send by not including an envelope (or a postage-paid envelope) in your direct mail appeal.  Maybe it is good stewardship.  But then maybe using the entrance to park cars in could be considered good use of available land.

Here are some items to consider:

1. Do you have a “corporate” e-mail address that donors can use to inquire?
2. Do you have a toll-free phone number available for callers?
3. How many clicks does it take to make a gift on  your website?
4. Do you have special landing pages for e-mail appeals that encourage giving and make it easy to do so?
5. Do you include envelopes in your direct mail?  Is it postage-paid?
6. Who answers your main phone?  Person or automated?
7. How long do you take to respond to e-mail?  1 day?  2? 5?

Take a moment to audit your messages from the viewpoint of the donor.  What are you really saying to them?

What To Do With Learning

Michel Martin writes an excellent post about the concept of empowering employees by providing learning opportunities.  Michele lists the following ingredients as necessary for a culture of learning:

• A passion for the work
• Managers who nurture curiosity
• Access to resources and learning activities
• Access to learning tools and the encouragement to use them
• An expectation that learning is something that happens on a daily basis on ‘company time’.

I want to add one more:

• The opportunity to use the knowledge gained

Staff can learn all they want but if the opportunity to put that learning to practice is not provided, then we have not only wasted the staff member’s time but we have also wasted the value of the experience.   There are two avenues that many organizations take with regard to learning and knowledge gains.  1) “We don’t do that because our staff just ends up leaving and taking that knowledge somewhere else” or 2) “We provide learning opportunities but we would ask that you just continue to do your job”.  In my humble opinion, the first is probably preferable.  At least it is honest.  The second borders on the criminally incompetent and should be avoided at all costs.  (Strong words maybe but the ramifications really are huge.)  By providing the opportunity to gain knowledge and therefore necessary skill sets and then not taking advantage of that knowledge, the staff member is frustrated and the organization ends up losing any advantage they may have gained.  And more than likely the person is going to leave anyway.

So how do non-profits use the knowledge gained?  A couple of things come to mind:

1. Provide opportunity to manage projects.  It doesn’t matter that the staff member may be “lower tier” on the org chart.  Let them learn through the experience.  Even a mistake or a failure can be valuable.
2. Provide opportunity to have input on macro level issues.  What do they think about this direction or that direction.  You never know what will come of it.

The opportunity to gain knowledge and put that knowledge to work provides a lot of satisfaction in ways that makes up for many of the other challenges that come with working in the non-profit realm.

Interviews Begin – Project Part 6

By nature I prefer conducting paper surveys.  They are easy to score, tabulate and read.  They don’t take a lot of time to work through and I can usually obtain enough information to understand the perspective of the respondent.  But . . .  There is nothing quite like the sense of passion that you gain by conducting the one-on-one interviews.  Especially in a project like this.

I started the interview process this week.  After spending some concentrated time reading through the Questionnaire and noting some of the Assessment responses, it became apparent pretty quickly about where I needed to focus during the interview process.  And the interviews are not disappointing either.  The process will continue for some time as I can only do a couple a day.  Of particular note is this – do not underestimate the perspective that your team has.  Many times, departments get into a rut, doing things “the way we have always done them” without really doing the analysis to determine the value.  And really sitting down and listening to your team can provide insights that maybe go beyond the typical management level understanding.  Those the actually do the work have tremendous insights about how things might work better if  ”we could just do . . . ” . 

Here is what I have discovered so far:

1. One of our processes is tallied three different times.
2. Many of the “exceptions” that we handle could have been dealt with before reaching us if technology was implemented differently. 
3. Our file documentation process is killing us.  We file hard copies and electronic copies of everything!
4. Lack of training in other departments is increasing our workload.
5. There appears to be a lack of definition about what our Key Result Areas truly are.  And if you believe the mantra “You get what you inspect not what you expect” then this is an issue of real concern.  If we don’t know what we are about then how can we know what to measure?

These are certainly preliminary findings.  I have many more interviews to go.  Between what I have read from the Questionnaires and what I am hearing in the interviews, we have a lot of work to do.