Blog - Page 16 of 17 - Jonathan Poisner Strategic Consulting

Planning half heartedly

April 25, 2011

Filed under: Strategic Planning — Tags: Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 7:13 pm

I was recently talking to an organizational Executive Director who’s thinking about a strategic planning process.

He wants the planning process to get his board more engaged.

But he doesn’t think the board will take time to participate in a real planning retreat.

This becomes a bit of a chicken and egg problem — if they won’t participate fully in a robust process, how do you get an outcome that increases their engagement?

I wish I had a simple answer.

One technique is to “trick” them into greater engagement by engaging them one on one with a consultant. And then have the consultant fold them into additional conversations culminating in a short, but productive retreat.

In the end, though, no trick can replace leadership — either from the Executive Director, a board chair, or some other board champion who can rally board members to participate in a planning process.

Short of that, I worry about organizations that go through the motions of planning, without a real investment, and then expect a transformation in the organization.

More realistically, a strategic planning process that lacks serious board engagement can still be valuable as a tool for an Executive Director to get some real planning done, with buy-in from the board. But buy-in and engagement are not the same.

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Growing your Facebook fan base

April 22, 2011

Filed under: Communications,Online Communications — Tags: Facebook — jonathanpoisner @ 11:30 am

Sometimes investing a little bit of dollars has a big impact on your base.

The good folks at Idaho Conservation League did an interesting strategy and let the folks at Groundwire share it with the world.

Bottom line: Facebook for a very low dollar figure lets you microtarget ads at a very small group of people who’ll be highly likely to become fans.

I’d be interested in seeing how other organizations use this opportunity over the next few years.

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Never ask for a donation

April 21, 2011

Filed under: Fundraising — Tags: Fundraising — jonathanpoisner @ 3:34 pm

Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking about fundraising as an ask.

Indeed, that’s the language I often use when I’m creating a fundraising plan or counseling somebody — “you have to get out and make more asks.”

Yet, at a fundamental level, fundraisers for nonprofit organizations aren’t asking. They’re inviting.

They’re inviting people to participate in an opportunity.

What the opportunity is varies wildly by organization. It could be as broad as “help us save the planet” to as narrow as “help us build a house for a family.”

The donor isn’t making a gift — the word gift implies a transfer of something of value with zero obligation on the part of the receiver. But in the nonprofit organization context, the receiver has an obligation — to fulfill the mission of the nonprofit organization.

There’s an exchange going on.

And what a great exchange it is for the donor. In exchange for your money, you get to help make a real difference in the world and feel great doing it.

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Communications plans for institutions

April 19, 2011

Filed under: Communications,Strategic Planning — Tags: Communication Plans — jonathanpoisner @ 4:34 pm

I recently had a conversation which went something like this. . .

Person A: “We need a communications plan for our organization.”

Me: “Why?”

Person A: “We need to know who the swing vote is on our issue so we can persuade them.”

Me: “Why?”

Person A: “Because they’re the swing vote. That’s who we should be talking to.”

Now I wasn’t pushing back on the “why” because I’m not a fan of communications plans for institutions. To the contrary, I think they’re extremely valuable once an organization gets to a reasonable size.

But I’ve been struck a few times now by people coming out of the “campaign” world who don’t get how communications for institutions are not the same animal as communications for a campaign — whether it’s a ballot measure or candidate campaign.

In a campaign, you have a very identifiable goal, with a timeline, and a specific set of people you’re trying to influence. In most tough campaigns, Person A is right — your communications plan should identify the swing and figure out how you’re going to move them.

But what about institutions? Institutions may engage in campaigns, but their interests run beyond the campaigns. They may be trying to influence a variety of different audiences, making different asks of each.

In my experience, the most useful communications plan for an institution asks:

What’s our brand?

Who do we need to take action and what actions do we want to take?

Of these, which audiences are most important?

How do we reach our priority audiences?

What investments in additional capacity (staff, technology, other) do we need to make to have the capacity to reach them?

It may well be for an institution, very little of their communication is aimed at swing voters and the vast majority of its communication is aimed at potential donors, volunteers, and champion opinion leaders. There isn’t a right answer here — the important thing is to make sure your communications plan for an institution is focused on the organization and not some campaign or project that has only short-term implications.

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Some questions to ask before you hire staff?

March 17, 2011

Filed under: Human Resources — Tags: Human Resources — jonathanpoisner @ 1:56 pm

My last post was about reasons to hire a consultant.

I had a conversation yesterday with the Executive Director of a small nonprofit wrestling with the question of whether to hire another permanent staff person and, if so, how much pre-planning do you do for the position.

Here are a few of the questions I asked her to consider.

Do you have enough current cash flow and expected cash flow to ensure that you can keep this position employed for at least 1 year? If not, think twice — unless it’s a fundraising position where you can then readjust upwards your expected cash flow . . .

Is it clear under your organizational strategic plan (or its equivalent) what set of goals/programs this person would work on? This is more than: can you write a job description? It’s: could you craft this person’s work plan and show how those responsibilities match up against your strategic plan?

Do you ever hire if you can’t do this? Maybe if you know you need to work in an area, but lack expertise on staff to lay out a reasonable work plan and goals. I expect some organizations hiring new staff to work on social media/web are necessarily dependent on hiring people with expertise to help them develop reasonable work plans.

Another question I asked: Do you have the institutional systems in place to handle a larger staff (office space, other systems)?

Still another question: is there right person available? Getting the right people on staff is probably your most important challenge as a nonprofit manager, so if you run a hiring process and nobody strong emerges, you are almost always better off not hiring a mediocre candidate.

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Keys to hiring a consultant

March 14, 2011

Filed under: About My Work,Consulting — jonathanpoisner @ 1:06 pm

Okay, one key.

Here’s something I kind of knew when I was hiring consultants, but really appreciate now that I’m wearing the consultant hat.

It’s best to be explicit why you’re hiring a consultant, even if it may seem obvious to you.

I generally find people are looking for consultants for one of three primary reasons.

They simply lack the time to do something on staff, so they contract out.
They lack the expertise within the organization, so they are looking for expertise from the consultant.
The nature of the project requires an outsider to be a neutral facilitator of some process.

In general, I find I can be a more effective consultant if I know from the very beginning what role (or combination of roles) they are seeking from the consultant.

A strategic planning process that explicitly calls for me to offer up some of my expertise will look different than one that’s solely about having a neutral, outside facilitator.

If the project involves something staff could do, but lacks the time to do, that too provides useful guidance on how my work should be structured.

So be explicit folks!

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Paying attention to the institution

March 11, 2011

Filed under: Strategic Planning — Tags: Capacity Building — jonathanpoisner @ 10:51 am

I was recently talking to somebody about an organization that from all outward appearances was thriving.

They had expanded their programs and had gained recognition for having a real impact.

Yet, it turns out appearances were deceiving.

The Executive Director was doing it all without delegating. The board was overly dependent on a board chair who was carrying their water.

The director was so focused on programs, that institutional systems weren’t being developed and relationships weren’t being generated to prime future fundraising.

So sure enough when the board chair burned out, the Executive Director was faced with huge hurdles, to the point they are potentially going to move on. The organization faces a huge leadership void. It’s definitely not thriving.

The reality is it’s very hard for any outsider to evaluate whether a seemingly thriving organization is doing so in a way that builds its long-term capacity, or if it’s generating lots of activity by effectively spending down its assets. And by assets, I don’t mean money.

I mean its relationships, its institutional systems, its brand, its staff morale, and a dozen of other assets that go into determining an organization’s long-term vitality.

You can build a really big paper house, but it won’t stand up when push comes to shove.

As a donor, I struggle to determine which organizations are building for the long haul.

As a consultant, I’m trying to figure out how I can help boards and executive directors find the right balance between spending time and resources on program and spending time and resources on institution building.

I’d welcome hearing from others if you have tools or guideposts to help answer those questions.

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Why Wisconsin Matters

February 24, 2011

Filed under: Politics — Tags: Wisconsin — jonathanpoisner @ 9:45 am

What’s happening today in Wisconsin and a few other states matters. A lot.

Taking away the rights of public employees to collectively bargain and form effective unions represents a threat to our freedom.

The big battle for freedom in America today isn’t between citizens and so-called “Big Government,” as the right wing would have us believe. It’s between citizens and corporations.

(By corporations, I’m not referring to small businesses — heck I’m incorporated myself; I’m referring to large corporations publicly traded that have zero allegiance to anything except the singular goal of maximizing shareholder value).

Yes, government takes some of our income as taxes and places some limits on our behavior through laws.

But corporations limit our freedom in many more profound ways. And they’d limit our freedom far more if not for government as a tool citizens use to fight back.

Corporations thrive by making us dependent on them. And we are – for our health, our sustenance, our housing, and many other necessities. It’s impossible to live in America today and not transact with corporations literally dozens of times per day.

We are rarely in a position to bargain with corporations; almost always we must accept their terms.

Aside from limiting our freedom when we buy, corporations limit our freedom in many other ways.

Corporations limit freedom when they pump poisons into our air and water, thus limiting our ability to safely breathe the air and drink the water. If not for government enforcing clean water and clean air rules, our freedom would be limited to a far greater degree.

Corporations limit freedom when they charge obscene amounts for basic health care and use all sorts of underhanded tactics to remove sick people from health insurance coverage after taking their money. I have a friend who is still paying off medical bills more than a decade after a major illness, when he lived briefly without health insurance because his employer had him under contract instead of permanent employment.

Corporations limit freedom when they prey on desperate people, charging usurious rates of interest short-term loans.

Let there be no mistake – the battle over whether public employees can unionize is really part of a much larger battle over whether and how individual citizens can band together via unions or any other type of institution to seek redress from government and corporations.

If states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and other states with long union traditions strip away the rights of public employees, it will mark an acceleration in the decline of America’s middle class and a significant weakening of our ability to fight back.

So if I were in Wisconsin today, I’d be at the rallies. And perhaps even more, I’d be raising money and preparing for an epic election in the year or two ahead.

And when it comes down to it, we’re all in Wisconsin when it comes to this battle.

The November 2012 general election is just 621 days away. There’s no time to waste.

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When strategy is left out of strategic planning

February 23, 2011

Filed under: Strategic Planning — Tags: Strategic Planning — jonathanpoisner @ 4:38 pm

I’ve recently had a chance to read some strategic plans that seem to be missing a critical piece: strategy.

They have mission statements, vision, goals, and tactics. But what’s missing is anything in writing making the case that the tactics or programs they’re projecting to do will lead to accomplishing the goals (or outcomes) they hope to achieve .

To be sure, my guess is that if you queried these organizations, staff and board members could probably make explicit the implicit assumptions in their plans.

But I say “write it down.” Make it explicit and put it into the plan, if only for the benefit of future board members and staff members who were not part of the “retreat” where decisions were made.

Aside from the benefit to future organizational leaders, my experience is that in some cases, many of the disagreements organizations face during planning retreats stem from underlying disagreements about these strategic assumptions that lay behind the thinking of individual retreat participants.

Without making these assumptions explicit, it’s easier for people to talk past each other. You wind up getting stuck and resorting to dots on a butcher block paper or some other exercise (many of which are useful in some contexts) to get people to vote, but without achieve a true consensus about what you’re going to do and, perhaps as importantly, why you’re going to do it.

If you don’t achieve consensus on the “why” part, you’re much more likely to have disagreements down the road when things don’t go as planned and your staff and board must adjust their work plans.

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Great study on citizen to Congress communication

February 4, 2011

Filed under: Advocacy,Communications — Tags: Advocacy, Communications, Email — jonathanpoisner @ 8:32 am

Great study showing how Congressional staff rate different forms of communications as a means to influence members of Congress.