Why do you give? A few answers...

LinkedIn.com has an "answers" section, where users can ask questions (usually related to their business or networking issues) and other LinkedIn members can post answers. Of course, I always monitor (and occasionally answer) the questions in the Nonprofit category.

One recent question was What motivates you to give to charities? Of the five answers posted so far, a couple are from nonprofit experts, but almost more instructive are the answers from people outside the sector, including those who have become disillusioned with charities and no longer give.

Sheilah used to give, particularly to health-related causes, but is upset that "we are no closer to a cure." Her friend is undergoing cancer therapy, has lost her job (and therefor her health insurance) because of her illness, and is unable to find any organizations willing or able to assist her. Sheilah now feels her charity dollars will be better spent giving money directly to people in need and not going through intermediary organizations.

Patrick gives to nonprofit causes that have effected the lives of himself and his family. He and his wife have had to cut down the number charities they support to only two. Their frustration with the rest? "Once you give those same charities sometimes harass you to the point of hanging up, or tossing the junk mail into recycle."

Terri has "cut way back on donations to major charities and switched to smaller groups where I can actually see how my donation is helping." Marisa likewise is looking for "transparency" where she can see the direct result of her giving, "not just pay into some anonymous account and other people's admin overheads."

Is your nonprofit making any of the mistakes that has turned these donors off? Are you harassing Patrick? Are you communicating your progress and results to Sheilah? Do Terri and Marisa know how you're using their dollars and that each one does make a difference?

What are you doing to retain these donors and keep them connected to your work?

Hiring an Interim ED

I am currently in the midst of my third assignment as an Interim Executive Director. I really enjoy these assignments, as I get to really learn about a number of different organizations, help them through some transition or another, and then move on bringing that experience with me.

That explains why I like these jobs, but, if your nonprofit is in the midst of an executive transition, why should you hire an outsider consultant as your Interim instead of somebody already on staff?

An "insider" can be a good Interim ED under certain circumstances, but there are dangers as well. I can tell you about one agency I'm familiar with that made a major error with an insider Interim.

Upon the retirement of their long-term ED, the Board was pleased to promote a certain senior staffer to Interim. This staff person had been groomed by the previous ED for the position, and the Board expressed confidence in her ability to lead the organization during the transition.

The key words there are "during the transition." The Board simultaneously began a major search for their permanent ED. The Interim, of course, applied, but so did many well qualified outsiders. While the Board, staff, funders, etc., all loved the Interim, one of the outsiders was hired to be the new Executive Director.

The Interim was demoralized to return to her staff position after being in the leadership post for nearly six months (and having been praised for her performance). She considered it a slap in the face, and so did many of the other staff. The new ED shortly had to contend with many key people resigning and leaving for other organizations, including the previous Interim ED.

Had an outsider been brought in as Interim, her feelings may have still been hurt at not getting the big job, but it would not have been such a public and obvious insult. Much of the fall-out would have been avoided.

What can you learn from this?

If your Executive Director (or really any other important position) is leaving, look inside your organization first and before the ED leaves. If there are no internal candidates that you feel good about promoting, hire a consultant to be your Interim ED before going to an external search. You can always promote the internal candidate after an external search, but taking away the leadership role once assigned is a hornet's nest you'd be better off avoiding.

Here's Telling Them!

Does your nonprofit organization take in-kind donations (used clothing, furniture, or other goods)? Do you ever get tired of people trying to dump their old, useless garbage at your door and expecting you to thank them (as well as give them a receipt for their tax deduction)?

I've worked with a few agencies that accept "gently used" items and have had that frustration. You always have to choose between insulting a donor by refusing their trash, or wasting your own scarce resources to get rid of the garbage on your own. Not a good place to be in.

Well, I don't have a solution to offer you today, other than clearly written policies that staff can point to while apologizing for sending the donor away, but I do have a new champion for our plight.

Marsha Wiseman of Muskogee, Oklahoma, has written a letter to the editor of the Muskogee Phoenix: Don’t leave trash in the donation bin! Print out Marsha's words and post them in your office. Yes, somebody understands. It's not much, but it's something.

To partner or to merge...

If you've been working in nonprofit management for any amount of time, you should already be fairly adept at recognizing good partnership opportunities. Whether it's working with a local office supplies retailer to put together back-to-school packages for the low-income children you serve, or joining with other social service agencies that provide complimentary, but different, services in a public outreach campaign, there are a million reasons to work in partnership with other nonprofit agencies and businesses.

But when does the partnership get to the point where you should consider a merger?

A quick checklist might include:

• The existence of ongoing partnerships (or potential for ongoing arrangements) that cover multiple program areas,
  
• Essentially aligned missions (ie: desire to serve the same population or cause),
  
• Similar organizations in adjacent regions,
  
• There's the potential to strengthen organizational capacity (ie: instead of two Executive Directors trying to do it all, one ED and one Development Director),
  
• When you have few funders in common, or your common funder(s) would view you as stronger for having joined forces,
  
• When the new agency will lead to economies of scale, not a bloated bureaucracy,
  
• When your clients will view the merger in a positive light,
  
• When the merger will result in expanded services to your clients,
  
• When one of the organizations is facing a change in leadership (ie: a longtime Executive Director retiring),
  
• When a merger is the best way to achieve the goals in your Strategic Plan,
  
• When the merger can be accomplished without leaving any constituencies behind, and
  
• When the new organization will be stronger and more sustainable than either of the predecessor organizations.

I am not one who regularly pushes merging for the sake of merging. Nor am I one who talks about there being "too many nonprofits." And I certainly am not a proponent of having huge, bureaucratic behemoths attempting community work.

But, the reality is that it is increasingly difficult for small organizations (budgets under $750,000) to operate successfully, and create sustainable funding. As much as I love small, grassroots organizations, sometimes they can better serve their communities as part of a mid-sized agency.

The list above is just a place to start your discussions and soul searching within your nonprofit. You may not meet all of the conditions, and you may have other conditions of your own that lead you to decide to pursue a merger. A merger is the ultimate partnership. It's not to be entered into lightly or without great thought and purpose. But it's not to be feared either.

Nonprofit Professionals - Amateur Managers?

Jonathan Peizer, of JP's Philanthropy Blog, had a great post yesterday called Being Smart and Being a Good Manager is Not the Same, and I've got to agree with him. JP says, in part:

Not that they are exclusive mind you. However, in my travels I have found many smart/intellectual/degreed people who assume that because they hold the title of manager and they are smart, they are de facto good managers. This is ironic because if you asked these same people if they were expert in an academic field that was not their own, they would defer to others who were.

Think about this in relation to how nonprofit managers come up through the ranks. People who are highly trained and qualified at helping people with their individual problems, or delivering a particular service, are put into situations where they are supervising other professionals and creating budgets, all without any prior preparation. If you ask them, they'll say they are social services experts or program experts, and that is their qualification to manage the agency, but they will never say, "I'm an HR expert and I just love spreadsheets."

After reading JP's posting yesterday, I began thinking about my own preparation for my career in nonprofit management, and now consulting.

Certainly my undergraduate degree in Politics gave me absolutely no background in supervising the work of others or running a program, let alone an entire organization. I learned critical thinking skills, I learned written communications skills, and I learned quite a bit about how to avoid some of the mistakes of the Cold War, should I ever happen to be transported back in time into Truman or Eisenhower's cabinets at certain moments in history. But I didn't learn about management.

My graduate program (Master of Public Policy and Administration, MPPA) provided a bit of management theory (Frederick Taylor and Max Weber) and organizational behavior, but the main focus of the program was on policy analysis and econometrics.

One management course I remember best from that time was one I took through the MBA program on employment law, where one of our texts was The Short Works of Herman Melville. We had a great time discussing the legal ramifications of the management decisions in "Billy Budd, Sailor" and "Bartleby the Scrivener", but I'm not sure that that's ever helped me in supervising a social worker who was dealing with her own family problems on the job.

Some of my best, and most relevant, management training came from professional development workshops at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. I first sat in on these workshops as a staff person (I was the Director of their Silicon Valley office for several years) and eventually wound up teaching a couple of them. I continue to do occasional Supervisory Skills workshops for my clients as an independent consultant.

When I find myself wrestling with a management question, it is these workshop materials that I find myself looking back to for reference, not "Billy Budd" or "Bartleby." (Don't get me wrong; I love these stories, just not as management reference works).

(I should also mention that I had great mentoring at both CompassPoint, and at HandsNet before that, and it is that experience which most prepared me for my current role).

Which brings me back to my point and a question. How is your organization preparing your next generation of managers and leaders? Are you investing in their professional development? Are you making sure that they get the skills they need beyond program implementation, whether through workshops or mentoring?

How about yourself? Are you prepared?