Year-end fundraising tips

November 27, 2024

Filed under: Fundraising — jonathanpoisner @ 3:28 pm

November 27, 2024

Given we’re on the cups of December, I felt it would be timely to share some thoughts on year-end fundraising.  Of course, in the ideal world, you would have finished planning for your year-end giving campaign earlier.  But it’s not too late to gin up a year-end campaign that builds upon your past successes.

So here are six key suggestions for you to consider when it comes to year-end fundraising:

1. Don’t just make one effort and call it done

People are incredibly generous in December.  I’ve read various statistics, but roughly one-third of all nonprofit donations come in during the month.  And as much as 10% comes in during the final couple of days of the year.

If your organization has the capacity, you should send out a letter to past donors (and prospective) asking for a gift.

Again, if capacity allows, you should individually follow up via phone or text with those you can (starting with those with the highest level of past giving assuming you have limited capacity).

Of course, for your very top donors, you should be trying to meet with them in-person if they’re interested as that’s the most effective way to build relationships.

Your email campaign should also not just be a one-off.  Ideally, you’d kick off the month with an email about your year-end campaign (perhaps focused on Giving Tuesday), follow-up mid-month with a progress/update, and finish it off on the 29th or 30th to spur those final end-of-year donations.

Layer in social media with an overlapping message.  And again, not just one.  Time at least some social media to go out the same day as your emails. Sometimes the first message piques their interest and the second spurs them to action.

For each separate social media channel where you are active, think 2-3 posts early in December launching your year-end giving, 3-4 mid-month, and a final burst of 4-6 between Christmas and New Years.

2. Make it an integrated campaign

You’re not coming up with a dozen different fundraising appeals for all the mail/email above.  You have one over-arching campaign, with a goal/theme, and you should repeat that across every appeal/channel.

Obviously, you’re not repeating word for word. Email will be shorter and use simpler language than mail, for example.

But your early December messaging should announce the year-end campaign, your mid-December message should report some early progress, and your end-of-month messaging should get people excited about the campaign’s success.

What that central goal/theme looks like will vary wildly by organization. While you’re thinking of this as a campaign, I don’t recommend pitching the dollars for a specific organizational activity, as end-of-year giving is a prime opportunity to generate general operating revenue that provides you the maximum flexibility.

3. Make your donor the hero of the story

Think you not we.

You want your donors (and prospective donors) to feel celebrated and important, to understand the appeal/importance of your mission, and to feel part of the team.  You want them to feel “super” like they have a “super power.”

For example, don’t talk about what “we” have accomplished. Talk about what “you” have accomplished.

Bonus points if you can make the story unfinished, so the donor’s continued generosity is key.  Or have a clear sequel story that you gin up as part of the ask for the “next story.”

4. Prime your best folks to further spread the word

You have your lists and social media reach and they get you so far.

But messages from you will have more power when reinforced by individuals who the donor knows.

Reach out to your board members and any key volunteers letting them know to expect the year-end fundraising email(s) and ask them to forward/share them (preferably more than one of them).

Consider directly messaging them on social media (if they’re on your channel) making the same request as you make posts.

This takes time, of course, but can both increase the odds donors respond and allow you to reach new donors from the networks of your board/volunteers.

5. Offer a match (if you can)

Especially for email, evidence shows a match can be motivating to some donors and increase the number of responses and the average gift. 

Of course, you can overemphasize a match. It needs to be part of the appeal — the shiny icing on the cake — not the cake itself.  

But to the extent you have a single donor (or an array of donors together) who can offer a match that’s large enough to seem motivating, you should do so. After all, cake icing is yummy.

I would not necessarily feature the match in every message.  I’d do so more at the beginning of the campaign and again at the end if you haven’t already secured the match.

6. Segment

Don’t treat all your donors the same.

To the extent you can, you should remove those you’re targeting with large individual asks from your mass emails and general mailings.  Perhaps include them in the final year-end emails if they haven’t given.

With mail, if you can produce two letters – one for those who haven’t given recently and one for those whose support you want to renew, that’s preferable to one message covering both.  The letter is mostly the same, but at a few key points your ask language would differ. You can, of course, take this further and segment past donors into different tiers who get letters that mention slightly varied asked for donation amounts.

Likewise, with email, if your email list is synced to your fundraising database in a way that allows you to distinguish past donors from prospective, I would again recommend a slightly different message to the two lists.

Bonus: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good

Don’t read the tips above and get overwhelmed if you’re starting from scratch. Better to do a few of these than none. Pick those doable within your time and technology.

Then start planning earlier next year and see what more is feasible.

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Scary Nonprofit Quotes 2024

October 24, 2024

Filed under: Board Development,Communications,Fundraising,Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 3:04 pm

Welcome to the 3rd not-quite annual edition of Scary Nonprofit Quotes.

I authored the original edition in 2021 as Halloween approached and a follow-up in 2022.  After a one-year hiatus, I’m back.

I’ve wracked my brain and reviewed notes from the year. So without further adieu, here are the scariest things I’ve heard uttered by nonprofit leaders during the last couple of years.  Some of these may seem made up, but they’re not!

If you have a scary quote of your own, please add them as comments!

Scary Quotes, 2024 Edition

  1. I knew 10 years ago our fundraising database was a mess and needed to be replaced, but it just never seemed like the right time.

  2. I know this is what most of the people we had you interview said, but I don’t think they get nonprofits.  (Note: the people interviewed actually had more nonprofit experience than the board chair who uttered this].

  3. I can’t continue to be board chair of this organization unless the organization starts paying me as a contractor.

  4. I don’t believe we should work with deadlines or agreed upon objectives. 

  5. I don’t use talking points or write up what I’m going to say at our fundraising events. I prefer to wing it.   I’m not sure I could tell you what I said after the fact. 

  6. I know it’s a headache, but I’ll just leave that to the next Executive Director to deal with [after I leave in about 2 years].

  7. I don’t care if our board minutes are accurate.  Nobody will ever read them.

  8. I like to just use general topics for meeting agendas rather than specific questions.  I prefer to just let the meeting unfold.

  9. High staff turnover is something we just have to accept given we’re a nonprofit and therefore don’t pay well.

  10. I think I should be able to bring my wife to the board meeting. [notwithstanding the confidential information/topics that will be covered].

Let’s do a poll!  Please vote for your favorite Scary Quote of 2024.  I’ll be sure to post the results on Halloween. 

Please also comment if you have your own scary quotes you’d like to share!

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Why volunteers before how volunteers

September 25, 2024

Filed under: Advocacy,Board Development,Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning,Uncategorized,Volunteers — jonathanpoisner @ 3:32 pm

With a few exceptions, the vast majority of nonprofits with which I’ve worked have viewed volunteers as both an important resource and strategy. 

Almost always, they immediately get to the question: how do we get volunteers?

In my experience, if you start by answering that question, you’re getting off on the wrong foot.

Instead, you should first ask the question: why volunteers?

How you go about getting volunteers will greatly impact what types of volunteers you secure.    You may recruit lots in raw numbers, but not meet your needs.

At the same time, understanding why you want volunteers will help you identify the right recruitment priorities.

So before designing the how, start with the why.

And to answer the why, I generally counsel asking two other questions in combination:

First, what do you most want out of your volunteers?

Second, what level of volunteer do you need?

Let’s take those questions in turn.

What do you most want out of your volunteers?

Here are five potential reasons I’ve experienced first-hand:

  1. To do the work staff just can’t get around to doing (either back-end administration/fundraising or programmatic).   The most recent statistic I found (from 2021) featured 60.7 million adults volunteering 4.1 billion hours.   A well-designed volunteer program should get more work done than could be done with the staff time necessary to recruit the volunteers.

  2. To be authentic voices.   Whether in fundraising or program, volunteers can speak authentically in ways that staff simply can’t. 

  3. To tap into their relationships.  Relationships drive fundraising, volunteer recruitment, advocacy, and other areas where nonprofits often focus.  Volunteers bring with them all of their relationships with friends, colleagues, etc. and can likely be heard by those people in ways that aren’t possible if the organization were to communicate with them directly. 

  4. As sources of local knowledge.  Particularly if your organization is trying to make a difference over a relatively large geography, volunteers are uniquely positioned to become your eyes and ears on the ground to help you make sure you deploy your resources in their geography in ways that will work.

  5. As sources of specialized expertise.  Whether it be graphic design, accounting, information technology, or a dozen other areas, organizations can sometimes meet their needs for technical expertise through high-level volunteers that save them money.

There is also a second question worth asking:  what level of volunteer do you need?

My very crude short-hand is there are three levels of volunteerism: participants, activity leaders, and organizational leaders.

Participants show up and do something for you.   Often just once, but sometimes repeatedly.   This is the bread and butter of many volunteer programs, particularly if they aim to generate lots of activity.  This looks wildly different based on the type of nonprofit.  A conservation nonprofit might have tree planting or cleanups.  An advocacy nonprofit (no matter the topic) might have phone banks or door-to-door canvassing. 

Activity leaders are the next level up: these volunteers are willing to lead all or part of some activity.  They may provide the training for participants, they may provide food for a fundraiser, they may take responsibility to recruit other volunteers, to cite just a few examples.

Organizational leaders take ownership for the long-term health of the group, overseeing either a series of activities or overall organizational health.  Board members are inherently organizational leaders if they’re doing their job.  But nonprofits shouldn’t assume that only board members will fulfill organizational leadership roles.  Other volunteers can be cultivated and given non-board authority in ways that allow them to take on organizational leadership as volunteers.

After answering these questions, it’s now appropriate to go back and set up a program that answers the how of volunteer recruitment.

If what you most need is local knowledge from people who’ll take organizational leadership, it argues for a very different volunteer recruitment strategy than if what you need most are activity participants who’ll do basic grunt work.

In a future blog entry or article, I’ll write more about effective volunteer recruitment programs.

But no matter your skill-set at recruitment, you’ll go further in setting up your program if you start by answering the question why.

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Building and Sustaining Effective Coalitions

June 28, 2024

Filed under: Advocacy,Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 2:47 pm

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about effective coalitions, , since I’ve been hired to launch a couple in the last year and facilitated meetings of a third.  Actually, I’ve been thinking about this topic for 25 years as coalitions have been at the forefront of my professional career, both when I was working as a nonprofit Executive Director and as a consultant.

I was looking back at a PowerPoint I created several years ago about effective coalitions and realized I’d never taken the time to update it and present it in written form.

So here for your reading please is some of my top advice when it comes to how to build and sustain an effective coalition.  Since much of my career has involved nonprofits for whom advocacy on public policy is a major component, this article is heavily weighted towards coalitions in the advocacy context.

In the article, I’ll discuss best practices for launching a coalition, some thoughts on different types of coalitions, and best practices for sustaining a coalition.

But first, an obvious first question: what is a coalition?  My simplest use of the term for purposes of this article: any effort involving more than two organizations choosing to work together for some shared purpose beyond just a one-time event/project.  By this token, I’m using the word coalition for a catch-all term that could encompass structures that may go by a different name, such as network, alliance, partnership, etc.

Best practices for launching a coalition

Step 1: Determine and start with the core.  This is everyone who has to be involved, not necessarily everyone who’ll ultimately be invited.  Who are the organizations who you’d consider essential?

Step 2: Take the core’s temperature.  This is best done in a series of one-on-one conversations.  In my experience, you’re more likely to get candor one-on-one.  If there aren’t at least a few people enthusiastic, it’s okay to pull the plug at this stage.

Step 3: Meet to answer 5 key questions.  This could happen at a single meeting, but I find it often takes two meetings, and I’ve been involved in at least one coalition where it took four.

Question 1: What’s the purpose of the coalition?   Is it around a specific policy outcome with a defined period of time to pass it or a topic area where the coalition would want to make progress over time?  Or is it about building capacity of the coalition’s members, irrespective of any policy goal?

Question2: What type of coalition makes sense given the purpose?  I’ll discuss this question further below. 

It’s a really good idea to put the answers to Questions 1 and 2 into writing.

Question 3: Given the purpose and type of coalition, what system of decision-making makes sense? 

Question 4: What is/are the initial priority or priorities for coordinated work?  If there’s no shared initial action to take in the next year, it’s probably premature to launch.

Question 5: Where will the resources come for the collective work?  Are you counting on additional outside resources to flow into the coalition?  Will coalition participants pool funds in some way and then hire/contract with someone to coordinate/lead?  Or will coalition members directly expend resources to do the work?

More on types of coalitions

There are many types of coalitions, but I find they usually fit into one of five categories.

Networks are when organizations that come together with the primary purpose of sharing information to allow for ad hoc coordination where interests overlap, so as to decrease duplication of effort and identify opportunities for greater impact. 

Associations are when organizations come together to advance the long-term interest of their members, with a primary focus on building up the capacity of the members, via shared resources and shared capacity building.

Coordinated projects are when organizations come together to advance a very specific project.  Obviously, if it’s a really simple, short-term project, you wouldn’t need a coalition. So presumably these would be complex, longer-term projects. It could be advocacy focused (e.g. pass a bill) or it could be generating more public attention to an issue (e.g. such as issuing a shared report).  

Campaign coalitions are a special type of Coordinated Project that usually involves advocacy around a fixed deadline, such as an election or the end of a Legislative Session. 

Strategic Alliances are when organizations come together around an issue or related set of issues where they hope to make progress over an extended period of time. Example: reduce air pollution in Oregon. A strategic alliance may spawn campaign coalitions or coordinated projects that involve other participants who aren’t part of the overall alliance.  

Extensions of a lead organization are when organizations come together under the leadership of a single, well-funded organization using a coalition structure to advance an outcome, and the other organizations are just fine playing a more supportive role. 

How do you decide which is appropriate?

Focus on the why behind the coalition.  Discuss and pick the most appropriate, but don’t feel you have to stay constrained by the options above.  You can create your own model.  Just be sure that the participants are in alignment about what you’re doing and why.

Why do some coalition launches fail?

In my experience, the number one reason is lack of individual leadership.  That’s partly why taking the temperature of the core is essential up-front.  I was once hired to help launch a coalition and we skipped the one-on-ones up-front and went straight to holding two initial meetings.  Everyone agreed upon the purpose, the type of coalition, governance, and an initial policy priority.  But then it fell apart. 

Why? Because nobody was prepared to lead.  The group instigating the initial meeting (and who paid me) assumed someone else would step up.  Nobody would agree to chair the coalition, plan for the meetings, or make it a major focus. 

Some individual with at least one of the groups needs to “own” a sense of responsibility and have sufficient time to invest to lead.

Sustaining coalitions

I see five keys: communications, power, planning, behavior, and personal relationships.

Communications: Failure to communicate internally can lead to schisms, with insiders and outsiders.  There needs to be enough meetings and materials shared between meetings, but not so many to bog things down.

Power: Not all coalition partners are equal, especially if the members of the coalition include some of very different organizational size/capacity.  In my experience, it’s best to be open in acknowledging such imbalances when setting up the governance.  There’s no one right answer to how to address power imbalances, but in my experience it’s best to openly discuss them than pretend they don’t exist.

Planning systems:  Like with individual organizations, failure to plan is planning to fail.  It’s really important to have agreement on the major strategies being pursued.  Not all members of the coalition will have the same strategic orientation, so it’s best to openly discuss this and hopefully reach alignment.

Any coalition planning should also establish an intention regarding whether to add/grow the coalition.  Coalition growth is not valuable for its own sake.  Be clear on why you’re going to invite others if that’s the intent.

Whatever planning should engage the participants who’re going to be counted on to implement it.  That means setting aside the time to do this planning. I’ve seen coalitions go seriously awry because they launched too precipitously into action and discovered too late that the coalition members were fundamentally at odd as to their overall strategy.

Behavior: The two most common things that can go wrong here are lack of transparency – where some coalition partners are keeping things to themselves, and confidentiality – where some coalition partners intentionally or inadvertently share information externally that was meant to be internal.   Another challenge can be around taking and sharing credit.  Having an open conversation about this can be helpful.

Of course, while you can come up with codes of conduct, norms around communications, or other techniques to address behavior, personal behavior also matters.  I saw one coalition really struggle because the person assigned to participate from one of the leading participants was just plain rude in how he treated people (he was not self-aware and I’m convinced he didn’t realize his tone and manner was consistently rude). It made people not want to work as part of the coalition anymore.

Relationships matter: The flip side to the example of a rude person shutting down a coalition is that coalitions function better when the participants get to know and like each other as individuals. Finding some opportunities for coalition participants to interact beyond the confines of coalition meetings can be really valuable for the long-term health of a coalition.

Do you have advice of your own to offer when it comes to launching or sustaining a coalition? Please share it with a comment!

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Nonprofit dashboards 101

May 30, 2024

Filed under: Board Development,Fundraising,Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 11:41 am

The phrase “Nonprofit Dashboard” is not one I recall hearing in my first decade in the nonprofit sector (1994-2004).  Then, a few years into the new millennium, I started to hear the phrase occasionally.  By the early 2010s, I started to hear the phrase frequently.  

Dashboards have emerged as a tool for nonprofits because most organizations have far more data about their own performance than their counterparts two decades ago (or longer).  In addition, tools for graphically displaying data have become commonplace, embedded within programs we already use like Excel. 

But Dashboards aren’t something that are right for every nonprofit and doing them right requires serious thinking.

So what is a Nonprofit Dashboard? 

The term Dashboard is used because the tool is analogous to a car dashboard – a quick, comprehensive view of the overall status of the car.  In the organizational context, a Dashboard is usually a 1-3 page document, produced on a regular schedule, which uses a combination of tables, charts, and graphs to visually represent key metrics by which an organization is evaluating itself.  

While Dashboards can be focused solely on a specific program or other activity (e.g. fundraising), more often organizations develop Dashboards that are comprehensive with regards to their organization.

Why create a Dashboard? 

Do staff really need one more report on their to-do list?

Dashboards can serve many purposes, but the three most common benefits Dashboard proponents cite are: 

  • It generates strategic thinking about how the organization measures success.
  • It can help to identify on a timely basis where an organization is being successful and where things may be going off course.
  • It can provide a useful tool by which to focus the attention of the board on the most important things.

For really small organizations just struggling to hire their first few staff, a Dashboard is probably overkill.  But at some point Dashboards become worth the investment.

What should a Dashboard measure?  

There are many terms bandied about, but the one I like is Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).  “Key” because you have to pick and choose since there are many metrics that matter to an organization and the challenge is to pick out a reasonable subset of them that are most important.  “Performance Indicators” because you’re measuring something that’s an indicator of success.

How do you choose your KPIs? 

If at all possible, the search for KPIs should begin with an organizational strategic plan, which should already identify goals and measurements of success.  The challenge is to then pick which measurements are the most important to pay attention to in the next few years. 

If you don’t already have these, start with your programs and ask: Which are most important?  Some are more likely to be icing on the cake and others get at your core.  Focus on the core. 

For each program, what metrics are you already tracking (or can you reasonably track in the future) to evaluate your performance over time?   For some organizations these are straightforward.  A school may be tracking enrollment and learning (via test scores or grades).  A homeless shelter may track people served and homeless placed into permanent housing. 

For other organizations, particularly those engaged in advocacy, the search for meaningful program measurements can be more complex.  But every time I’ve engaged with an organization on this topic, we’ve come up with some outputs that are good indicators of progress, even if they don’t represent the ultimate outcomes being sought.

Leaving programs aside, nearly every Dashbaord I’ve seen also include multiple KPIs that focus on finances – mostly on the revenue side of the equation.  Here the challenge is to think through your revenue generating strategies and identify what matters most.  Overall revenue is obvious. Unrestricted funding is another good one. Or you may find it important to focus on fundraising metrics by major type of revenue (e.g. individuals, corporations, foundations, etc.).

With regard to fundraising from individuals, some metrics that may be important are: the number of individual donors (or members), retention rate for individual donors (how many who gave in the prior year, have given in this year), average gift levels, the percentage of donors who have upgraded in the last year, number of donors who’ve made a second gift, etc. 

Over several years, the list of which metrics you focus on may evolve – but at any given time you should look at your fundraising strategies and see what matters most. 

Sometimes no one metric seems right so you have to invent something that rolls up several data points into a new one.  For example, when I was Executive Director of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, we developed a long-term communications plan where progress could be measured in dozens of different ways, no two or three of which seemed most important. 

Yet, in the end, we knew that what we really wanted out of our communications was for our constituents to take action.  So we created a new metric which we called “Total Actions” taken in response to our communications.  Each quarter we added up all sorts of actions people took in response to our online communications, such as clicking on links, forwarding emails, donations, downloading documents, social media shares, etc.  As long as Total Actions was on a solid upward trajectory, we knew we were making progress.

Of course, having good fundraising and/or communications data for your Dashboard presumes you’re using a valid Constituent Relations Management (CRM) database to track donations, online communications, and other data necessary to produce the metrics.  If you’re still on Excel or hate your current database, getting past that hurdle should come before you create a Dashboard.

Likewise, the discussion about program metrics presumes that you have a means of tracking the outputs and outcomes from your programs and you put that data somewhere – whether in your fundraising CRM or in some separate data set. If you’re not pulling together data to evaluate individual programs, it will be hard to create a Dashboard.

The last question is: how do you display the data?

I’ve found that Excel is plenty powerful to take data and generate good charts and graphs for a good Dashboard.  Or sometimes, just putting the data into a Table and color coding rows as Green, Yellow, and Red based on whether you’re doing great, okay, or not well is sufficient.

If your own Excel skills are too limited, you probably can find a skilled volunteer who in just a few hours time can take data in a spreadsheet and display it in a useful manner in a way you can easily replicate every 3-6 months without ongoing assistance.

It’s worth investing some time/energy to get the Dashboard display right.  If you’ve done all the work to generate and select the data, you should absolutely make sure it’s presented to your board and senior staff in a format that aids comprehension.  

If you have an example of a Dashboard you’re willing to share with me, I’m always looking for more ideas for how to use them effectively.

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On the value of one-on-ones

April 30, 2024

Filed under: Board Development,Fundraising,Leadership — jonathanpoisner @ 10:37 am

I was recently talking to an Executive Director and it became clear they hardly ever met with anyone else one-on-one. They were doing so much writing, emailing, and group meetings that they were hardly ever talking to just one person.

When I pushed them on this, they responded that meeting with just one person is inefficient.

I believe that is short-sighted. Organizations thrive based on personal relationships and it’s very, very hard to forge such relationships other than in one-on-one (or one-on-two settings when you’re forging a relationship with a couple).

Something happens in a one-on-one conversation that doesn’t happen at events and certainly not via email/mail or even on the phone.

You can form a stronger personal relationship and you can ask people to take personal responsibility.

Let’s start talking about forming relationships.

It’s not rocket science to understand forming relationships is easier in person.  Legions of studies have demonstrated the role of body language and facial expressions in communications – neither of which works over the phone. 

And in one-on-one meetings, you can make the communication truly two-way – asking questions of a potential organizational supporter and not just talking to them.  This can help you understand what motivates them so you can calibrate any asks to match their needs. You can do this in an authentic and not a staged way.

Meeting with people one-on-one also allows you tap into personal responsibility and not just collective responsibility.

At an event, it’s about how all these people in the room can help.  One-on-one, it’s about how you can help. Yes, peer pressure can matter. And well run events tap into that collective power. But getting somebody to take real ownership and dig deep when giving almost almost always works better off outside of events.

Studies done in the 1970s and 1980s focused on personal versus collective responsibility in a different context.  Scientists had people fake epileptic seizures in public places to see who would help. Sometimes they did this when only one person was around. Other times they did this when several people were around. Which situation led to more help?

Interestingly (to me), the answer is you were more likely to get help during the seizure if just one person was around. This is contrary to what I would have thought.

But it rings true upon further reflection.  When something happens and other people are around, you tend to look around to see how they’re responding.  And in unusual situations, people are often slow to act. If everyone else is also just looking around, you may think: I guess it’s not my problem. 

But if there’s nobody to look at for social cues, you know it’s about you, and you alone.

When you’re invited to give and the invitation is clearly about you, that’s when people tend to step up and make larger donations. 

In these contexts, as you get to know people, you’re also in a better position to add in further opportunities for them to step up — will they champion the organization to their friends, will they volunteer, etc.

This helps explain why time and time again, organizations that invest their staff and board time in doing one-on-one donor meetings are quicker to transform themselves financially than those that bank on fundraising events. 

The same thing is true beyond fundraising. Time and again, I’ve seen organizations build far more effective coalitions and partnerships with allies by doing a series of one-on-one meetings rather than relying on group meetings with several organizations at once. One-on-one meetings are also the bread and butter for community organizing where you’re trying to build not just an episodic volunteer base, but one where the volunteers are willing to take on leadership.

So stop putting your time into the next great event and banking on social media revolutionizing your organization.  If you want to grow, and grow quickly — get out and meet with more people and invite them to take responsibility.  Of course, for many Executive Directors, that requires figuring out what you can jettison from your busy schedule, a topic I’ll discuss next month.

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Theories of change – a primer

December 20, 2023

Filed under: Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 9:27 am

Organizations that thrive tend to have clarity regarding their theory of change.

What is a theory of change?  In plain language, a theory of change explains how the activities of the organization lead to accomplishment of the long-term goals an organization is working towards and how accomplishing those goals advances the mission.   

Sometimes the theory is a series of logical statements (because we do A, therefore B happens; because B happens, and we do C, therefore D happens; until one of these statements leads to the “mission” being achieved).

Sometimes the theory can best be explained via a flow chart or graphical diagram that visually displays the way different activities come together in ways that a logic chain or written statements can’t easily communicate.

Other theories of change I’ve seen are simply a series of “Strategic Assumptions” written down that collectively embody the theory. 

The format that makes sense for any particular organization is highly dependent on the circumstances – the nature of the goals being sought and mission being advanced, the types of activities pursued, and the complexity of the organization.

Why does articulating a theory of change matter?  And if it matters, how can a theory be developed?

Theories of change matter for at least five reasons.

  1. Resource Allocation: A theory of change can be a useful tool to identify how to spend scarce resources.  While there are some nonprofits that reach a scale that allows them to pursue many-pronged approaches to bringing about change, small and medium sized nonprofits almost always focus on a smaller number of strategies. 

    This is a basic function of the adage that it’s almost always more valuable to do one or two things really well than more things so-so.    

  2. Synergy: A theory of change can force an organization to think hard about how its various programs fit together to accomplish more  than the sum of the parts.  Instead of having programs A, B, and C running in silos, a theory of change can allow staff and leadership to more easily identify ways in which each of the Programs can be conducted in ways that build upon or reinforce each other.   

  3. Skill-Set Prioritization:  Having a theory of change also helps greatly in determining what skill-sets to focus on in hiring staff.   For example, if you are a nonprofit with a heavy focus on changing public policy, you might have a theory of change that focuses on grassroots pressure as a means of moving lawmakers.  Alternatively, your theory of change may focus on building strong relationships with centrist lawmakers who often hold sway.  Which theory of change should inform what type of staff skills you’d prioritize when hiring.    

    If you are a direct service nonprofit, by contrast, your alternatives might look very different.  Your theory of change may be very heavily dependent on having good relationships with the target audience you’re serving, in which case you should hire staff with a personality and track record for relationship building.  Conversely, if your theory of change is heavily focused on providing technical expertise, then technical expertise should be front and center in hiring.

    Of course, it’s easy when reading these examples to say: but we want both!  Yes, and I’d like unicorns and rainbows and leprechauns.    But when we hire candidates from the real world, we must pick and choose candidates with some strengths and other weaknesses.  Knowing what strengths are most essential to your organization is a by-product of having a theory of change.

  4. Communications and Branding: theories of change can inform how an organization brands itself publicly via its communications.   If you have a theory of change, it helps answer key questions about your message and audience.  Conversely, lacking a theory of change, it’s very easy for whoever develops your communications to settle upon messages that are problematic. 

    For example, more than once I’ve witnessed public policy organizations that lack theories of change who consistently try to both focus on pressure tactics that appeal to a base and simultaneously to use strategies based on personal relationships with centrist elected officials.  As a result, the organization’s communications are contradictory – language used to appeal to the base often sets back its personal relationship with centrists. 

    To use a somewhat analogous example from the movies:  There’s a reason a good cop, bad cop approach doesn’t work with a single cop. 

    In these cases, the organization should usually assess what allied groups are doing and then pick/choose one approach, rather than placing its communications professionals in an impossible situation.

  5. Team Alignment over Time: Lastly, theories of change can also prove really valuable as an orientation tool for new members of a team. The existing team may understand how your various activities work together towards your ultimate aims, but oftentimes new board or staff do not. On multiple occasions, I’ve found theories of change to be the best overall orientation to an organization.

So how does an organization set out to create a theory of change?

It’s definitely not rocket science. 

First, you need a clear goal or goals that advance your mission.  Until you know what change you are seeking, you can’t develop a theory for how to create the change.  The change sought by a nonprofit credit union will look very different from a nonprofit mentorship program for at-risk youth, which will look very different than the change sought by a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization. 

Yet, in each case, the first step is the same – identify one or more goals that you are seeking over a period of time (usually 2-5 years) that collectively will advance your mission.

Second, sit down with a group and describe your tentative activities and repeatedly ask “why” doing them would lead to your goal(s).  In doing this with others, I often find myself asking the question “why” 5-10 times in a row trying to tease out the steps in logic being used by participants.  In doing so, you may discover you’re making assumptions about the behavior of others that are iffy.  Or that you’re relying on allies to behave in a certain way without first securing buy-in from the allies for the strategy.

You’ll likely also discover interim outcomes that you’re seeking to achieve not because they are ends, but rather because they involve obtaining resources (money, volunteers, political power) that represents steps in the causal chain towards your ultimate end goal(s).  These interim outcomes should be celebrated, not dismissed as unimportant.

Third rebuild your list of strategies to match up with what you’ve discovered in the group exercise.  How do they fit together?  Are there ways they reinforce each other?

Fourth, write it down as a series of logical statements.  Or, if it’s easier, conduct an exercise where the team all individually creates a graphic/drawing of how the work fits together and then discuss your respective drawings. 

Most every organization I’ve worked with has been able to encapsulate its theory of change in either a page of text or a diagram.  Often times the diagram requires some explanatory text. 

Run the diagram or written theory by your board and/or others as a reality-check to see what questions they have.  You may find you’re leaving out something critical.  Or you may have made it overly complicated and you can simplify it to the bare essentials.

Of course, a theory of change – whether stand-alone or part of a strategic plan — shouldn’t be carved in stone.  A learning organization should continually evaluate and reassess its theory based on how its work plays out in reality.  You may believe that people involved in one of your programs are primed to volunteer for another program, but after 1-2 years of trying you may conclude that they’re not. 

Alternatively, the lay of the land may have shifted sufficiently to require a new theory.  Perhaps a pandemic upends a theory of change that relies on lots of in-person activities!

Do you have a theory of change that’s worked well for your organization?  Please share it with me as I’m compiling examples for a future, longer article.

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How to relentlessly focus on relationships

July 25, 2023

Filed under: Communications,Fundraising,Human Resources,Leadership — jonathanpoisner @ 3:42 pm

I’ve previously written about the value of relationship-building to nonprofit organizations.

Organizations that thrive relentlessly focus on relationships. Successful organizations are constantly expanding their pool of relationships and strengthening existing relationships. Then they consciously activate those relationships.

I was recently talking to a nonprofit leader who seemed to grasp this in theory, but struggled with execution.

As such, I’ve repackaged in this article some of my prior writing about the value of relationships with the aims of providing more practical advice people can use when it comes to building relationships that matter for your organization.

But first, why relationships?

It comes down to human nature.  While people receive information outside of relationships, relationships have a powerful role in how people react to information.

People listen more to people with whom they have a relationship.

People are more likely to be persuaded by people with whom they have a relationship.

People take action more when requested from people with whom they have a relationship.

Of course, the quality of the relationship matters too. The deeper the relationship, the greater the odds that we will listen to someone, be persuaded by them, or take action at their request.  Conversely, a bad relationship makes someone even less likely to listen or act upon a request.

Here’s a practical example of how this may impact fundraising for a nonprofit.  An Executive Director may give a pitch-perfect donation request to John Doe. A board member may give a mediocre donation request to the same John Doe.  If the board member and John Doe are friends and the Executive Director has never met John Doe, the mediocre board request is far more likely to yield a significant donation.

Yet, it would be a mistake to think of relationships as just about fundraising.  Relationships impact an organization’s interaction with volunteers, media, allied organizations, elected officials, and people the organizations are working to serve.  Any time you’re trying to shape behavior, relationships matter.

So how do you go from theory to practice?

Here are seven ideas worth considering.

First, build into your workplans (especially Executive Directors) time set aside for relationship-building.  If you don’t set aside time for it, you’re less likely to make it happen.  Examples of relationship-building activities that take time:

  • Attending fundraisers for peer organizations.
  • Going to lunch or coffee with allies who you don’t know particularly well.
  • Asking for advice from elected officials or other decision-makers.
  • Attending conferences and focusing on relationships more than the conference substance.

Second, create events with relationship-building in mind.  This could be:

  • A volunteer appreciation event. 
  • A “Meet the Executive Director” or “someone else important” event. 
  • A workshop or training where time is set aside for people to get to know each other. 

Every time you plan or attend an event, a standard question should be: “how can this event be used to meet someone new and/or strengthen my relationship with those I already know?” 

Third, train your staff about the value of relationships and events.  If they’re attending an event while working for you, they should understand they should be focused on new people and not just standing in the corner chatting with folks they already know well.  Challenge them to come back from every event with a couple examples of new people they met with whom they should do some follow-up.

Fourth, set relationship goals.  When I was an Executive Director, I had a goal of having lunch or coffee with one allied Executive Director per month with no agenda other than getting to know them (and their organization) better.  By putting this goal in writing as part of my annual goals with the board, I “forced” myself to stay on track.

Fifth, use your organizational database to record what you learn.  Even with the best intentions, it can be challenging to meet people and remember everything of relevance you learned six months or a year later. Your organization should have a CRM (constituent relationship management) database (probably primarily for fundraising, but for other things too) where you can keep track of who you met with of significance and add notes of anything significant you learned where you may wish to follow-up at your next meeting. Taking notes in your database doesn’t make your relationship any less authentic. It just recognizes we have fallible memories.

Sixth, seek out and bring into your organization those who’re obviously good at relationships.  You and I know them.  I’m a natural introvert.  But we all know those extroverts who seem to know everyone and like playing a connecting role between people. They are golden for your nonprofit if you can excite them about your cause.  If you see somebody who fits that bill express interest, put extra time and attention into cultivating them.

Lastly, be committed to asking those with whom you’re in a relationship to activate their relationships on your behalf.  As I write this, I have 1,345 LinkedIn Connections.  Those 1,345 have more than 477,000 unique connections!  Of course, LinkedIn is just being used as an illustration of a point:  the people with whom any individual has relationships open them up to a vastly larger network of relationships than they can ever tap on their own. 

So don’t just rely upon this “activation” of relationships to happen by chance.  Directly ask your supporters to reach out to their friends and neighbors.  This could be as part of a Peer to Peer fundraising effort, as part of volunteer recruitment, recruiting people to attend events, sharing online news, or some other method.  Bottom line: turn donors into fundraisers and volunteers into volunteer recruiters. 

Do you have other ideas for how to build and strengthen relationships? I’d love to hear in your comments.

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Musings on Theories of Change

May 24, 2023

Filed under: Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 5:18 pm

I was recently talking to a potential client when it became apparent to me that they really could use a theory of change.  Yet, their Executive Director was unfamiliar with the concept and it took some back and forth to help them understand.  After all, most nonprofits never broach the topic.  Nonetheless, I find it’s sometimes a very useful tool as part of strategic planning or as a stand-alone exercise.

What is a theory of change?  How can it help?  And how do you go about generating one?

What is a Theory of Change?

In plain language, a theory of change explains how the activities of the organization lead to accomplishment of the primary programmatic outcomes an organization is seeking.

Sometimes the theory is a series of logical statements.  Because we do A, therefore B happens; because B happens, and we do C, therefore D happens; until one of these statements leads to the ultimate outcomes being achieved.

Sometimes the theory can best be explained via a flow chart or other graphical diagram that helps visually explain the way different activities come together in ways that a series of written statements can’t easily accomplish.

A variation that I’ve used successfully is a set of “Strategic Assumptions” written down that collectively embody a theory about why the organization’s principal activities are advancing the mission. 

What format makes sense for any particular organization is highly dependent on the circumstances – the nature of the outcome(s) being sought, the types of activities pursued, and the complexity of the organization.

Why are theories of change important?

Theories of change matter for a few reasons.

Most obviously, as a way to identify how to spend scarce resources.  While there are some nonprofits that reach a scale that allows them to pursue many-pronged approaches to bringing about change, thriving small nonprofits almost always focus on one.

And even mid-sized thriving nonprofits stay focused on one or occasionally layer in just one other core strategy.  This is a basic function of the adage that it’s almost always more valuable to do one thing really well than two things mediocre.

I’ve witnessed organizations lacking a theory of change that are very frenetic, generating plenty of tactics, but without any unifying strategy that ties them together.  They’re jumping to seize opportunities that don’t tie together into a coherent whole.

Having a theory of change also helps greatly in determining what skill-sets to focus on in hiring staff.   For example, if you are a nonprofit with a heavy focus on changing public policy, your theory of change might inform whether to focus on hiring staff who’re adept at grassroots organizing to put pressure on policy makers, as opposed to those who are skilled at messaging to centrist lawmakers.

If you are a direct service nonprofit, by contrast, your alternatives might look very different.  Your theory of change may be very heavily dependent on having good relationships with the target audience you’re serving, in which case you should hire staff with the personality and track record for relationship building.  Conversely, if your theory of change is heavily focused on providing technical expertise, then technical expertise should be front and center in hiring.

Of course, it’s easy when reading these examples to say: but we want both!  Yes, and I’d like unicorns and rainbows and leprechauns.

When we hire candidates from the real world, we must pick and choose candidates with some strengths and other weaknesses.  Knowing what strengths are most essential to your organization is a by-product of having a theory of change.

Theories of change can also inform how an organization brands itself publicly via its communications.   If you have a theory of change, it helps answer key questions about your message and audience.  Conversely, lacking a theory of change, it’s very easy for whoever develops your communications to settle upon messages that are problematic.

More than once I’ve witnessed public policy organizations lacking theories of change who consistently try to focus both on (a) pressure tactics that appeal to a base of supporters and (b) forging personal relationships with centrist elected officials.  As a result, the organization’s communications are in conflict: language used to appeal to the base often sets back its personal relationship with centrists.

To use a somewhat analogous example from the movies:  There’s a reason a good cop, bad cop approach doesn’t work with a single cop.

In these cases, the organization should usually assess what allied groups are doing and then pick/choose one approach, rather than placing its communications professionals in an impossible situation.

Lastly, theories of change can be particularly useful as a means of building and sustaining alignment within your team (e.g. your board and staff) as circumstances change.  If your team agrees on why you’re doing what you’re doing, alignment is more likely to endure than if they just agree on a surface level.  Often it’s this missing “why” that causes alignment on your team to break down.

How does an organization set out to create a theory of change?

It’s definitely not rocket science.

First, you need a clear outcome or set of outcomes embodied in your mission or top-level strategic goals.  Until you know what change you are seeking, you can’t develop a theory for how to create the change. 

The change sought by a nonprofit credit union will look very different from a nonprofit mentorship program for at-risk youth, both of which look very different than the change sought by a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.

Yet, in each case, the first step is the same: identify one or more high-level outcomes that you are seeking over a longer period of time (usually 3-5 years).

Second, ask yourself what conditions or things must happen for the long-term outcome to be achieved.  You can think of these as interim outcomes or stepping stones on the path you’re laying out.

Third, identify the major strategies or activities you’re doing that you believe generate the desired conditions and therefore advance you down the path.

Fourth, ask yourself why those activities will lead to the conditions that will lead to the outcomes.  Sometimes I’ve run what I call the “annoying 5 year old” exercise when I pretend to be 5 years old repeatedly asking “why” to every prior statement. It can be annoying, but it often yields nuggets of wisdom the reveal the essential answer. Surfacing these underlying assumptions can create “aha” moments with the team that helps build alignment. 

Fifth, have somebody take a stab and putting the above “thinking” into both a written format and a diagram format.  In either format, this should be 1-2 pages and not more than that.  I’ve seen it done in half a page.

Lastly, discuss what you’ve developed.  Perhaps vet it with others outside your core to see what they think.  Does the theory adequately explain why your major activities are advancing the ball towards the desired outcomes/mission?  If not, what adjustments or refinements are needed?  Are any adjustments needed to what you do to allow for you to make the change being sought?

Then what

The theory may be included within your strategic plan or exist as a stand-alone document.

Trot it out annually to discuss how you’re doing as an organization in light of your theory of change. 

If it’s a diagram, blow it up and pin it on your wall as a reminder to come back to from time to time as a way to vet new opportunities.   

Use it as an orientation tool with new board members and new staff.

Of course, the theory should not be carved in stone.   I’ve seen organizations whose circumstances changed so dramatically over a couple of years that the prior theory of change no longer made sense.   I’d recommend revisiting your theory of change at least every 3-5 years through some form of exercise that abbreviates the steps above.

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Tools for an Executive to Stay Focused

April 24, 2023

Filed under: Board Development,Human Resources,Leadership — jonathanpoisner @ 3:46 pm

Quite a few times I’ve encountered Executive Directors who come across as very competent.  Their writing is cogent. Documents they produce are always well-formatted. They are well-spoken in person, laying out clear ideas. They get a lot of stuff done. Many tasks are clearly getting crossed off their to-do list. They clearly work a lot of hours.

Yet, their organizations flounder.

Almost always, it’s because they’re getting the wrong tasks done.

By wrong, I don’t mean they are doing tasks that are inherently counterproductive.  It’s that they’re doing tasks that should be priority 6 through 10 when priorities 1 through 5 are crying out for more attention.

Peter Drucker wrote extensively about this 50 years ago in his seminal book: The Effective Executive, which I have reviewed.  The effective executive not only does things right, they do the right things. 

How can an executive stay focused on the top priorities in order to be more effective?

In every organization I’ve encountered, the Executive Director (or CEO) could work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and not run out of useful things to do on behalf of their organization. Of course, in the real world you have 40 hours per week on a sustained basis, with some executives able/willing to let that spike to 50-60 hours for extended periods.

How do you decide what to do within the time available?

My first recommendation for an Executive Director when evaluating a potential tasks/projects is to filter it through three questions to determine whether to not do a task.

Question one is: is the task/project essential to our organizational strategy. Whether or not the organization’s strategy is embodied in a written strategic plan, you should know what your goals are and the strategies you’re using to achieve them. If a task doesn’t squarely fit within one of the strategies to achieve one of your goals, it is almost always suspect.

Question two is: should I be the one to do this task? Just because it fits within the organizational strategy doesn’t mean the Executive Director should tackle it. What tasks should fall to the E.D. and what to other staff, to contractors, or volunteer leaders?

Even in an organization with no other staff or contractors, an E.D. who isn’t finding ways to delegate tasks to the board or other volunteers is almost always going to tackle tasks that take them away from higher priorities.

A question any Executive Director can ask: is this something that requires the E.D.’s participation either because of my unique skills or relationships? If not, your first step should always be to ask: who else would be better to do it?

This filter is especially important for an Executive to use when receiving requests that they participate in meetings. More often than not when I encounter a floundering executive, they are heavily scheduled into meetings where they aren’t essential participants. They just don’t want to miss out on the “action.”

A third filter to apply is to ask the question: is the task the cake or the icing on the cake?

Put another way, is accomplishing this task an essential building block to the overall success of the organization or is it just one nice outcome we want? Unless and until the essential building blocks are achieved (or on track for achievement), tasks that are simply positive should be shelved.

Think about posting a sign within your eyesight at your desk with these three questions:

  • Is it strategic?
  • Am I essential?
  • Is it the cake or just the icing?

In addition to using these filters to nix involvement in some tasks, there are three other tactics I recommend to Executives looking to become more focused.

First, identify up-front what are the most important tasks you struggle to complete. (Oftentimes that’s major donor fundraising). The solution: calendar large blocks of time to focus on the activities you struggle to complete and rigorously stick to that schedule. Force yourself to stick to a schedule where everyone on your team knows you aren’t to be disturbed.

Second, cut out the easy time-wasters. Examples of these include:

  • The meeting that takes an hour that could just as easily be accomplished in 30 minutes.
  • The half-dozen times during the day checking your Facebook because there might be something relevant to the organization’s work.
  • The extra 15 minutes formatting a document to be perfect when it was already good enough to be understood. (Occasionally, that extra 15 minutes matters, but usually not).

Lastly, beware shiny objects. These are the opportunities that come along that seem exciting on the surface. Perhaps you’re asked to speak to a group. Or to put together a media release on some breaking news of relevance.   Often, these are things that may gratify the ego, but really aren’t essential building blocks to organizational success. Get used to saying no and feeling good about it because when you say no to something new you’re saying yes to the core work you already have underway.

Do you have techniques of your own to share? I’d love to hear them.

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