Five Lessons for Effective Staff Management

April 22, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Uncategorized — jonathanpoisner @ 2:30 pm

Business author Jim Collins, in his monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors identified getting the “right people on the bus” as a core attribute of highly functioning nonprofits.

Of course, once you get the right people on the bus, there are many elements that go into turning them into an aligned, effective team that advances your mission. 

I was recently asked to summarize some of my past writing on nonprofit leadership as a guide for Executive Directors who’re building staff teams. At a high-level, here are five lessons that I believe every nonprofit Executive Director should take into account when building their team.

Lesson 1: Prioritize building on strengths instead of mitigating weaknesses

All employees have areas of strength and areas that, for lack of a better term, are weaknesses when it comes to delivering on their intended role.   Instead of focusing on mitigating weaknesses, my experience has been that identifying strengths and adapting work to take advantage of those strengths better maximizes team performance and results in higher job satisfaction for employees. 

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t identify weaknesses or blind spots with employees that can be worked on.  But more of your time and energy should go into aligning the work with employees’ inherent talents. 

Lesson 2: Foster Autonomy and Mastery as Motivational Tools

By and large, the nonprofit sector more than the for-profit sector can rely on the nonprofit’s mission as a built-in motivator for employees.  Almost always those employees motivated by money or status could better achieve those in the for-profit sector.

Yet, even with the mission as motivator, I’ve seen huge differences in nonprofit employee satisfaction.

Dan Pink has written and lectured about motivation in a broader context and highlights the concepts of autonomy and mastery as key.  Nonprofit leaders should keep these in mind when thinking about their own staff supervision.  (Here’s a video for more background).

Autonomy: Employees who have freedom to make decisions within the a broad strategic framework are more likely to be motivated than those who are continually constrained to simply implement decisions made by others. 

Mastery: Employees who have the opportunity to develop and exercise expertise are more likely to stay motivated than those who feel like they’re able to go through the motions.

Lesson 3: Building and Sustaining Relationships

Strong interpersonal relationships are vital for effective staff management.  People are more likely to respond well to those who they like and trust and to dig deeper to help a team with which they feel a sense of community.

That can all emerge spontaneously, but leaders who nurture relationships are more likely to succeed.  That means not neglecting regular activities that are designed to further the relationship, including both one-on-ones in the workplace and opportunities to engage beyond the workplace.  That doesn’t mean you have to become “friends” with those you supervise.  It does mean consciously working to draw connections within your staff based on open communication and opportunities to engage in informal activities.

Lesson 4: Time Management Matters

Time is a precious commodity in any organization as most nonprofit staff could probably work twice as many hours as they’re being paid for without running out of productive things to do.

To address that, choices need to be made as to where to prioritize time, preferably by looking at a strategic plan or other functional plan that identifies goals and top strategies for achieving them.

Even within those choices, too many nonprofits waste time and fail to adapt tools to save time.

Several time wasters relate to meetings:

  • Overly long meetings that could be done in half the time if there was a clear agenda, active facilitation, and a willingness to call the question rather than allow people to drone on.
  • Unnecessary meetings that could be eliminated with a few short emails and/or shared document editing.
  • Meetings that involve several people that really only need 2-3 participants. 
  • Executive Directors who feel compelled to be the organization’s face at every partner/allied organization meeting when they should be delegating that role to others.

There are also tools to save time that many nonprofits fail to use. Mostly these fall into the area of technology.  I’ve been amazing that in this day and age some nonprofits are still having multiple people edit Word documents sequentially rather than adapting to tools that allow for multiple people to collaborate at the same time (such as GoogleDocs).  Project management tools (like Asana, Trello, etc.) and communications platforms (like Slack) can also allow for a lot of project planning and task list accountability in ways that cut back significantly on the need for drafting/reading/responding to emails and meetings.

Lesson 5: Embrace Strategic and Functional Planning

I’ve seen too many nonprofits whose staff are frenetically doing lots of things, but those things are not strategic and thus not advancing goals. While this can bring temporary satisfaction to a team, it rarely does so over the long haul. 

While they serve other purposes as well, do not underestimate the value of strategic and other forms of planning as a staff management tool. 

  • They are a means of honing your staff’s thinking, to the extent you involve staff in this planning.
  • They are way to bring your staff into alignment (with each other and with the board), so their work is less likely to be at cross-purposes.
  • They produce products that are invaluable as orientation tools when you have staff transitions.

What do you think?

If you have a high-level staff management lesson you’d like to share with my readers, please comment away! Or shoot me an email for me to incorporate in an updated post.

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On Fundraising Stories

April 16, 2025

Filed under: Communications,Fundraising,Online Communications — jonathanpoisner @ 12:11 pm

I often talk about the importance of shifting fundraising language from a bullet-point approach to a story approach.

I know that for some nonprofit leaders this is challenging because storytelling isn’t their natural inclination. It’s not mine either.

Yet, by taking into account some basic techniques, virtually anybody can generate effective fundraising stories.

A more complete primer on fundraising stories can be found in my E-Book, the Essential Major Donor Toolkit. 

For those getting started, here’s a handful of important things to bear in mind when trying to craft a fundraising story. 

Include all the Elements of a Story

In crafting fundraising stories, ensure they have all three elements of a story.

  1. An objective.  The objective could be a community need or the need of individuals within it. 

  2. An obstacle.  The obstacle could be bad policy, lack of funding, natural causes, or some other threat or barrier that keeps the community (or individuals within it) from achieving their objective.  

  3. Impact.  There needs to be either harm if the objective isn’t overcome and/or some positive impact if the objective is overcome.  These are the stakes.  They don’t have to be huge stakes, but they must be clearly articulated in a way that the donor will find important.

Every story you’ve ever read – not just fundraising stories –have all these elements.  Don’t just talk about community need.  Don’t just talk about obstacles.  Don’t just talk about impact.  Make sure all three show up. 

Incomplete and Complete Stories

Make sure you are crafting both complete and incomplete stories.

A complete story is backwards looking and shows how you have made an impact in the past.  Complete stories are an important way to demonstrate to donors that their past support has translated into the charitable impact they desire and thus a good bet for future donations.      

An incomplete story is one where the outcome is not yet known and, importantly, one where the donor can make a difference by helping the organization have future impact.  Incomplete stories are essential to create urgency and to ramp up the emotional stakes.

In writing any story, ask yourself: am I writing this to demonstrate past impact or am I writing this to create urgency so donors will want to give right now.

In writing the set of stories that may go into your fundraising, make sure you have some of both type.

Put the Donor in the Stories

Too often I read fundraising appeals that talk about all the great things “we” did as an organization.

As you write/edit your stories, use the word “you” instead of “we” whenever possible.

You want donors to feel like they’re a hero making an impact and that means making them central to the appeal.  “Your support ensures IMPACT.”  “You can help IMPACT.” 

The word “you” should show up in both completed stories where the donor had a role in the organization’s past impact, and incomplete stories where the donor can be the hero.

Where possible with the technology, you can also insert their name into appeals.

* * * * *

Want to run a fundraising letter or email by me for a quick reaction, I offer all nonprofits a free half hour consultation.  Just reach out if interested.

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Short-term planning and project management 101

March 31, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 10:47 am

As a strategic planning consultant, I focus a lot of my energy on helping groups grapple with a 2-5 year time-frame.  Too often we’re so focused on the current moment that we never look beyond to define who we are, where we want to go, how to get there, and how we’ll measure progress. 

Yet, even as I write that sentence, I know that the current moment matters.  This year perhaps more than most. 

And as I talk to Executive Directors, I often find a haphazard approach to how they prioritize their work and track their to-dos on a daily or weekly basis.

Nonprofit leaders – more than just Executive Directors – need workable systems for short-term planning and to-do management.

Too many just wing it.

I recently was challenged to describe the elements of a useful system.

Here are four essential requirements for a nonprofit short-term planning and accountability system

1. Tracking to-dos

This is the basic building block.  This should include a nutshell version of the task, an opportunity to provide more details (preferably with a hyperlink to external information of relevance), a due date, and the ability to track progress (including marking the item as completed when appropriate).

As tasks are completed, they should be archived, but not deleted, so that it remains possible to search them or even reopen them if it turns out something wasn’t actually completed.

Ideally the system should allow for recurring to-dos, that automatically get a new due date upon completion of the prior one or that always occur on specific dates of the week, month, etc.

2. Project level organization of tasks

A flat to-do list with hundreds of tasks (as most Executive Directors probably could identify if pushed) can feel overwhelming and makes forward-looking planning challenging.

Ideally tasks should be categorizable by a list of “projects.”  I’m using the word project largely because the various online systems that can be used are often referred to as “project management” tools. 

For most nonprofit Executive Directors, the projects might be the bigger categories of their work (fundraising, board governance, fiscal management, communications, etc.).

Ideally, the projects should be able to be broken down into sub-projects, so that fundraising from individuals can be kept separate from grant fundraising.

The point of breaking things down into categories is so that you have the opportunity to view all your tasks either as one long list, presumably sorted by due date, or alternatively to just see all your tasks within a specific project – or even sub-project. 

While the long daily task list is great for when you start your day and want to see what needs to be done,  the “project” view is nearly essential when it comes to forward-looking planning that involves adding things systematically to your to-do list. 

Did you just schedule your next board meeting?  Take 5 minutes to add all the tasks associated with the upcoming board meeting (crafting the agenda, pulling together materials, sharing the agenda, etc.).   Did you just get invited to submit a grant proposal, take 5 minutes to add all the tasks associated with pulling together the proposal and accompanying materials. 

Yes, you could do this with an entirely flat list, but it’s much easier to think of all the to-dos when you’re looking at a partial list focused on just that project.

I used to accomplish the above in an Excel spreadsheet where I had a column for the broad area of work, a column for the task, and a due date column.  I could sort the Excel spreadsheet either by due date or by the broad area of work and also due date.  And then re-sort back when appropriate.

Of course, in the pre-computer age you could also accomplish this with detailed handwritten notebooks. 

3. Collaboration

While the above three requirements are sufficient for an individual, organizations are team endeavors and whatever system you utilize needs to provide some means by which multiple individuals within the team can share with each other what they’re working on and even collaborate on the same projects and to-dos.  This is where the dozen or so most robust online project-management tools really shine.

Reassigning tasks, sharing deadlines, showing how task A by person A needs to take place before person B can begin Task B, sharing links/comments on tasks taken on by others.  These are just a handful of the most basic boosts to collaboration that can now be secured at a very low cost.  I can only wish these tools had been realistically available in my years as an Executive Director leading a team!  

Getting everyone onto the same system and getting them to use it isn’t necessarily a hill to die on, but if I were a nonprofit leader I’d push really hard to make that happen, absent a really compelling reason otherwise.

4. Some connection to longer-term planning

The above system is a great way to plan for and accomplish a lot of things.  But how do you know that you’re prioritizing the right things?  When you’re an Executive Director staring at the long to-do list and realizing that 3 out of the 10 things you put into your to-do list for the week you’re just not going to be able to do, what gets triaged?

Or better yet, never gets put in at all because you’re thinking about your own capacity as you identify to-dos.

Whether it’s a strategic plan or some other tool, you (and your team) need some method to identify priorities.  This may show up in your project management system where you pre-identify the essential tasks from the “icing on the cake” tasks. 

What system to use?  There’s nothing magic here.  But having alignment around your broad, long-term aims, the major methods you’ve identified to advance those aims, and how to measure progress is a great start. 

Then taking stock – probably monthly – and saying: what’s most important in the next month or two?

Then going back to your project management system and verifying that the things you want to prioritize are definitely incorporated into your projects/tasks. And perhaps deleting or moving out in time those tasks that you’d still like to eventually do, but that aren’t priorities in the short or medium-term.

Is this too much planning?

I can already hear a couple people I’ve known saying: “Who has time to do all that planning? As an Executive Director, if I’m not running 100%, things will fall apart.” 

My response: Better to spend 4 hours/week planning and 36 hours/week doing.   You may do 10% less “activity,” but you can feel far more confident that you’re doing the right activity, especially in alignment with your team. You’re also far more likely to be proactive than reactive to events.

In my experience, leaders who operate with a higher degree of planning and project management also feel less stress.  Not zero stress.  But less, because they can more easily take stock and see with their own eyes what needs to be done by when and make adjustments accordingly, rather than relying on intuition and hope. This means less burnout and a longer-term ability to stay in the role.

If you have specific project management tools or approaches you recommend for others, please share as a comment!

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Staying Grounded in Dangerous Times #2

March 26, 2025

Filed under: Advocacy,Leadership,Politics — jonathanpoisner @ 10:30 am

February 28, 2025

I wrote my last email less than a week into our current wannabe dictator’s Term.

Now I can say: one month down, 47 to go.  Sigh.  

Last month, I noted that it felt wrong to put out an e-newsletter as if the world hadn’t changed fundamentally for nonprofits.

Of course, there are thousands of nonprofits right now struggling to survive as illegal and/or callous decisions seek to claw back their grants and contracts.  This is especially true for those involved in US AID and those reliant on funds related to the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act’s climate spending  If you’re among them, I feel your pain and hope you’ve found a way to get the legal and other support you need.  

For those of you who have yet to have your own funds cut, how do you react?  

Three bits of quick advice this month:

1. Reach out to your friends who’re struggling, either financially or emotionally.  We are stronger together.  

2. Speak out. Whether that’s calling your members of Congress (daily), writing letters to the editor, speaking out at town halls, or some other activity.  Now’s not the time to cower. 

3.  Be realistic about your own nonprofit’s fundraising.  I know a lot of groups whose annual budgets called for growth this year.  I’m not saying it won’t happen, particularly if you had solid plans and had investments (of time in particular) in place to actually do more fundraising.  Recognize there’s a very strong chance that increased inflation and massive layoffs, among with the business uncertainty engendered by chaos, will equal a recession. 

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What makes a high functioning board?

March 12, 2025

Filed under: Board Development — Tags: — jonathanpoisner @ 2:53 pm

Not every one of my client engagements involves work with a board of directors, but enough do that I can safely say I’ve worked with several dozen boards and that’s allowed me to reach some conclusions regarding what separates those that truly lift up their organizations from those that drag them down.

Unfortunately, it could also take a book to spell out all these differences, along with recommendations for how to improve boards.

Nonetheless, someone challenged me to identify the most important attributes of a high-functioning board so they could know where to begin for improving their own board.

So without further ado, here’s my best effort.

Effective boards do five things particularly well:

  1. They’re efficient
  2. They’re responsible
  3. They’re financially supportive
  4. They are connected to the cause
  5. They are continually improving

Efficient means they hold well-run board meetings that are actively facilitated and focus on essential topics, they use committees or task forces where appropriate between meetings, and board-staff relationships are managed in a way that doesn’t create additional, unnecessary time sinks.

Responsible means the board meets their legal, ethical and fiduciary responsibilities.  Plus, it also means they are accountable to each other and to the staff.  Put another way, they plan for the board and they ensure the organization has a culture of planning.  Plus, they do what they say they’ll do. 

Financially supportive means they donate themselves and they have some involvement in raising funds or securing revenue for the organization.  Not everyone needs to be an asker, but everyone needs to somehow engage as an ambassador, steward, cultivator, or some other way that either directly bring in dollars or helps someone else on the team bring in dollars.

They have some connection to the cause (that staff should help reinforce) so that their passion for the mission can help get past any inertia or fear that would otherwise block them from being effective board members.

Lastly, they are continually improving, meaning they are constantly asking relevant questions, such as: who else should be on the board?  And what could we be doing better?

There are, of course, many details underneath each of these.  Books worth of details.  And the process taking a mediocre board to high-functioning can take multiple years.

But if you’re beginning the process of building or improving a board, I think reviewing the above with the board and asking them: “how are we doing?” is a good place to start.

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The Leadership + Plan + Team formula

March 6, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 10:45 am

One of the lessons I took away from the last few years is what I’ve come to think of as the Leadership + Plan + Team formula.

Organizations lacking any one of these elements are unlikely to thrive on a sustained basis.

Leader + Plan but No Team: I’ve seen leaders who’re personally impressive and have a plan, but who don’t cultivate a team around them. The result is an organization that thrives in fits and starts, but not on a sustained basis because there’s only so much one person can do.   The organizational challenge becomes particularly acute when the leader in question decides to move on.  

Leader + Team but no Plan: I’ve seen leaders who’re personally impressive and do cultivate a team around them, but who never take the time to develop and use a long-term plan.  The result is an organization that does a lot of things, many of them well, but the lack of planned focus leads to lots of activity, but often misaligned and poorly thought out.     

Team + Plan but no Leader: I’ve seen great teams, who have a focused plan, but who fail to secure a top leader who has the leadership skills to attract new resources around their shared vision and to keep the team aligned over time.  The result is an organization that chugs along, but doesn’t shine.

Every example I can think of a nonprofit that thrives over a sustained period of many years the formula has always included Leadership + Plan + Team.

If you see your organization missing one of these elements, address it.  Don’t wait for the situation to somehow resolve itself. 

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Preparing for a Likely Recession

February 27, 2025

Filed under: Board Development,Fundraising,Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 1:45 pm

February 2025

Preparing for a Likely Recession

No, I’m not an economist (although I do have a B.S. in Economics). 

A lot of smart people – including economists — thought there’d be a recession 2 years go and there wasn’t.

And the same thing the year before that.   And a few years before that.

You get the gist.   In any given year, somebody is predicting a recession.

Of course, this year, between the federal chaos/layoffs, tariffs, and general economic uncertainty created by businesses unwilling to invest under a unpredictable regime, it’s hard not to believe that the long overdue recession will finally come.

It doesn’t mean the end of your nonprofit.  Indeed, you may actually thrive during the recession.

I managed the Oregon League of Conservation Voters through the 2001-2002 recession and the first half of the 2008-2010 “great” recession. 

Having managed a nonprofit through these, what do I wish I’d done differently in the 6 months prior to them?

Here are six ideas of what to do and one of what not to do.  Some of these lessons are directly based on my experience at OLCV and others are based on my knowledge as a consultant.

  1. Pay attention to your cash reserve.  If you haven’t already, have a conversation with your board up-front about what level they are willing to let that reserve drop to during a recession.  It’s okay – indeed, it’s appropriate — to have an annual loss during a recession if you began the year with a large enough reserve.  Have this conversation openly with your board rather than making decisions on the fly

  2. Be open with staff about your financial situation.  Are you in a really solid position?  Or somewhat precarious?  At OLCV, I wasn’t always open with my staff about how tight our finances were leading up to the 2001-2002 recession.  When a difficult decision was made by the Board Executive Committee (with my support), to freeze all staff salaries (e.g. no pay raises during the year, even COLAs), there was some staff frustration.  If I’d done more in the year prior to educate staff about how thin our reserve was, I would’ve saved heartache later on.

  3. Think about delaying “icing” expenditures.  Some of what you do is the cake.  It’s what you absolutely need to do to advance your mission.  Other things are nice, but if you don’t do them, nobody’s going to look at your nonprofit and say: you’re failing.  Take a hard pass through your budget/expenditures and ask: what can easily be deferred 6-12 months until we know more about our financial situation?  Ask staff their opinion about what to defer (or just cut).

  4. Don’t stop fundraising!  If anything, step it up.  Some people might say: “our donors are probably freaked out, so now’s not the time to ask.”  Don’t make that decision for them!  You never know their situation.  I once had a donor who I knew had been laid off make his largest ever gift to us.  (I learned later it was because he’d received an inheritance).   Even in bad recessions, plenty of people have jobs/situations that leave them doing well financially.  They are sometimes even happier to donate recognizing the need and their relative good fortune.

  5. In your fundraising, focus more of your energy on cultivating existing donors to deepen your relationships than adding first-time donors.  When individuals cut back their giving during a recession, they tend to stick with organizations they already support versus those that are new.

  6. Also in your fundraising: focus on your relationship with your top donors.  In most organization, there are 10-15 donors who make huge difference.  Be proactive in the next few months cultivating your relationships with them.  Let me know what you’re doing, how your reacting to the new lay of the land, and how their donations are making a difference.

  7. Lastly, a lesson of what to avoid: don’t choose a recession as the time to launch a business-focused fundraising effort.  Corporate fundraising yo-yos much further down during a recession historically, compared to individual giving or foundation philanthropy.  If you’ve laid the groundwork or you’re targeting businesses that are somewhat recession-proof, this might not apply to you.  But think hard about making a new, business-focused campaign an important part of our 2025-2026 strategy.

Do you have lessons of your own to share? Please leave them as a comment!

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14 Tips for Board Minutes

February 26, 2025

Filed under: Board Development — jonathanpoisner @ 3:20 pm

These tips range from the hyper-specific to general.  I’ve encountered more than a handful of organizations for which board minutes are done slapdash without any real attention to meeting either the need to be legally accurate memorials of what happened or documentation of use to those unable to attend.

  1. The minutes should state when the meeting convened and when it adjourned.

  2. The minutes should state the location (if in-person) or state that the meeting was conducted virtually.

  3. The minutes should indicate who was in attendance (both board members and others).  (And if people arrive/leave part-way via the minutes, the minutes should reflect that).

  4. The minutes should follow the order of the agenda, so that it reflects what happened during the meeting in the order the events take place.

  5. Minutes should be in past tense. 

  6. While it should follow the order of the agenda, the minutes taker shouldn’t just take notes on the agenda it it’s using a shared platform, like googledocs.  You should retain a clean copy of the agenda that doesn’t contain notes of what happened during the meeting. (The minutes taker can always copy the agenda into a new document or cut & paste the agenda into a new document if they find having the agenda useful as an outline).

  7. Motions should be memorialized, with detail on what the motion is, who made the motion, who seconded.  If a voice vote is taken and there are no objections, it is sufficient to just indicate a sentence that the motion passed.  If a counted vote takes place, the tally of yays and nays should be detailed.  Motions are the one thing you absolutely most record in the minutes. 

  8. Minutes should be concise and direct.  They are not a way of reporting everything every person said, details from presentations, etc.  They should focus on the most essential things: actions taken by the board and commitments made by individual board members to take on tasks.  If there are documents shared during the meeting, it can be appropriate to link to those from the board minutes. 

  9. To the extent there is a desire for minutes to reflect informational items where no action is taken, it is sufficient to note the item and provide a very brief summary of the topic covered.  This should not be a transcript of the meeting.  

  10. The Secretary should take notes during the meeting.  And then within 48 hours edit them into draft minutes while their memory is fresh.  This is the time to double-check spelling, write out acronyms and jargon to make them understandable.  In the absence of a Secretary, somebody else on the board should step up and play this role.  Staff can offer to assist, but ultimately these are a fundamental board responsibility.

  11. Before being distributed, it’s appropriate (though not essential) for an Executive Director or Board President to provide suggested edits at this point, for the Secretary to then finalize. 

  12. Board minutes should be circulated as soon as ready, rather than waiting until just prior to the next board meeting.  At the next board meeting, the minutes from the prior meeting should be approved by a board vote (with any corrections identified), usually as the first item of business.

  13. The organization’s online file system should allow for minutes from past board meetings to be easily sought out if it proves necessary.  At a minimum, when new board members are oriented, they should be shown the minutes from the last 2-3 board meetings.

  14. Lastly, while the existence of this Tip Sheet suggests the importance of minutes, careful readers of Why Organizations Thrive will note that Executive Directors are separately encouraged to send an email to their boards within 48 hours of a board meeting summarizing the most significant things that happened.  This is an important way to maintain momentum with those board members unable to attend.
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Don’t drop the glass balls

January 29, 2025

Filed under: Human Resources,Leadership,Strategic Planning — Tags: , , , — jonathanpoisner @ 11:13 am

A client recently used the following phrase when discussing the challenge of being an Executive Director.

“I’m constantly juggling balls.  Too many to keep in the air.  The key is knowing which balls are glass and which balls are plastic.”

I loved the metaphor and doing some online sleuthing believe it originated with the author Norah Roberts, who used it to discuss the challenge of being a successful writer and raising kids

I’ve thought about the metaphor and would like to suggest several implications for how a nonprofit leader should approach their work.

Bottom line: there are steps you can take to be an excellent nonprofit juggler who rarely (or never) drops a glass ball.

About the Metaphor

The metaphor is pretty self-explanatory.  Drop a glass ball and it shatters.  Drop a plastic ball and it doesn’t.  The plastic ones can be retrieved and picked back up if necessary, or perhaps kicked out of the way if unnecessary.

Glass balls are your tasks where mishandling them would have significant consequences.  Plastic balls, in contrast, might be annoying to “drop,” but the consequences would be comparatively minor.

Of course, if you’re a nonprofit Executive Director (or anywhere in nonprofit management), you’re not just juggling your own balls.  You’re also setting in motion members of your team (at least those you supervise) to juggle their own balls.

So even as you have to scan the balls to make sure your own glass balls don’t drop, you also have to be cognizant of who among your team has glass balls that are at risk of being dropped.

Of course, you might say: “well the answer is to just never drop a ball.”  And I’d say: “good luck with that.”  Seriously, I’ve never seen an executive doing their job who isn’t consistently faced with triaging tasks to either let them go entirely or to push them off to some future date.

Distinguishing Glass from Plastic Balls

As you scan your tasks, identify which ones are glass.

Here are some examples of glass balls: 

  • Key activities for mission-critical programs.  If these go awry, it would significantly detract from your mission impact.
  • Activities where failure could seriously harm the reputation of the organization, thus threatening its future funding. 
  • Key donor relationships.  Work to maintain those relationships can be thought of as a series of glass balls.  Plus, activities of the organization that any of your very top donors particularly prioritize. 
  • Financial oversight, to some extent.  Not every task within your fiscal management system represents a glass ball.  But collectively, ensuring reasonably accurate, reasonably timely financial reporting definitely would count.
  • Losing top-notch staff.  Dropping balls that could cause your top staff to leave would fit in this category, as would loading up those staff with so many balls of their own that they feel compelled to leave.

Dropping these glass balls can lead to irreversible damage, loss of trust, financial instability, or failure to advance the mission.

What are your plastic balls?

They can be important too, but failure (or neglect of them) won’t be so harmful.

  • Many minor administrative tasks would fit into this. 
  • Meetings where your participation would be nice, but is not essential.
  • Minor events.  You want these to happen, and of course you want them to go well, but if you have to either cancel them or let them go forward in a middling way, there’s no permanent harm.

How to avoid dropping glass balls

Here are a handful of strategies to consider:

1. Don’t juggle so many balls!

This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to overlook. 

Use work plans to lay out what tasks you’re taking on and don’t commit to activities that are beyond what’s realistic.  If something emerges new, can you safely offload something else (in our metaphor, catch a plastic ball and either hand it over to another juggler to handle)?

This applies not just to you, but also the people you manage and their balls.  Don’t establish expectations that are unrealistic. That’s hard to do unless you require some level of work planning by them from which you can help them assess and manage their work and workload.

2. Don’t try to make the perfect throw every time

Juggling (literal juggling, not metaphorical) is something I learned to do at a summer camp as a teenager.  One of the things I had to learn was to get the basics down of the throwing motion, but not be so focused on the perfect throw that I wasn’t simultaneously able to track where the other balls were and prepare to catch/throw them.

Perfectionism is a common failing that many people face when it comes to how they approach tasks.  As a nonprofit leader, I often found that I could accomplish 90% of the benefit of a task at 60% of the time necessary. The remaining 40% of the time might get me to perfection, but that time was unavailable for other projects.

3. Use technology/tools to track your balls

In the real world, juggling balls blindfolded is beyond challenging.

Yet, I sometimes see nonprofit leaders who aren’t blindfolding themselves, but are definitely hamstringing themselves by not continually tracking and planning for their tasks.

Just last year I was asking a nonprofit leader how they organized their work day/week and pretty much it was: I show up to work, do what’s in my calendar, and respond to emails.  I wasn’t surprised to hear that balls were being dropped.

Back in the olden days when I was an Executive Director in the late 1990s, I relied on a paper “Franklin Planner” (bonus points for anyone who remembers those!) to keep meticulous notes around to-dos, organized within major categories and tied to a calendar.

As soon as possible, I gravitated to computer solutions, which at first for me were Excel spreadsheets that I used to keep track of the “balls” and could identify those that were critical.  I didn’t know the glass/plastic ball analogy, but I behaved like I did by bolding some spreadsheet rows to emphasize their importance.

About 15 years ago, I moved to online project management systems.  For the last 5 years I’ve been very dependent on Asana.  I use it to plan and track projects, activities within those projects, sub-tasks within the activities, etc.  I use priority-level settings to identify my “glass balls” as a consultant.  

Every day begins by looking at what I have to-do.  When any task is completed, I return to Asana to mark it done and immediately create any new follow-up tasks that are appropriate.  When I agree to take on new projects or tasks, I’m in Asana within a day or two laying out the tasks needed on a timeline.

I’m not telling you to be as relentless in using a tool like this as I am.  But you need to have some tool and don’t just use it half-heartedly.

Bottom line: if you’re not consciously identifying your balls and tracking their flight, you’re a lot more likely to drop one.

4. Consciously remove or let drop balls, particularly plastic ones

As a nonprofit leader, you should be regularly identifying plastic balls (or even glass!) that you can catch and hand over to someone else on your team.

Some balls you may not be able to delegate, but if you’re feeling out of control, you can still consciously catch the ball and instead of immediately rethrowing it as a juggler, you can set it on the counter next to you, to be picked up later. 

Of course, some balls are still dropped.  That’s okay.  When a ball does drop, it’s important to be aware of it, though, so you can perhaps kick it off to the side in a deliberate manner, so it doesn’t get underfoot and trip you up. 

Whether you’re temporarily setting a ball aside or dropping/kicking it off to the side, be sure and communicate to anyone else who had expectations you’d complete something that it’s going to be delayed.  (Note: some technology tools make this really easy!).

5. Recognize that some plastic balls can turn into glass

The same task may change on you over time.  Board recruitment at a time you have a really strong board may be plastic as a ball, but if you neglect the task for too long, it may become glass as your board strength deteriorates. 

So don’t just think about the relative level of importance of tasks as you take them on initially, but rather have some sort of process on a periodic basis (quarterly?) to spend a few hours taking a harder look at your overall work plan and see if anything needs more attention than you had originally envisioned.

6. Get help learning how to be a better juggler

You can juggle more balls if you’re a better juggler. And some of that is just practice.

But you can also get training to be better and handle more.  Sometimes finding time to get professional development is absolutely worthwhile to be a more effective juggler. 

In my early years as an Executive Director, I had the benefit of a lot of training thanks to a national organization with which we were affiliated. Those trainings absolutely set me up for greater levels of success, even as the time spent at the training meant I had to juggler fewer balls in the short-run (setting some aside).

Where the metaphor breaks down

I think the analogy breaks down, in part, because it may lead you to focus too much on the urgent things (that seem like glass balls), while plastic balls that are really important get neglected. 

Paul Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People wrote about a time management technique that divides tasks into four quadrants.  One axis is urgent versus non-urgent, with urgency about time sensitivity.  The other quadrant is important versus non-important.

The challenge for some executives is they fail to work on things that are important, but not urgent.  Because of the lack of time sensitivity, you may feel the ball isn’t glass.  Or you may see the ball is really high in the air so there’s just plenty of time to get to it.

Even as you think about the glass v. plastic ball metaphor, I’d encourage you to also recognize that some types of relationship-building, planning, etc. represent a series of activities that may individually be “plastic” balls, but collectively they are “glass.” Drop one or two, no biggie. Drop most or all, that’s big.

So recognize that you can’t just focus on this one management technique, but apply it in the context of others that make sure you’re focusing on the right things.

Feedback

As always, please share your thoughts on this metaphor or techniques you use to either distinguish between more important and less important tasks or to avoid “dropping glass balls.”

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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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