From strategic plan to work plan

May 24, 2011

Filed under: Strategic Planning — Tags: , — jonathanpoisner @ 8:10 pm

I’m often struck when talking to people how often individual work plans are wholly disconnected from strategic plans.  Or even more by how some organizations never develop work plans.

A good strategic plan should set the structure for work plans.  Every member of staff should have a work plan, as should board members.

The strategic plan should list out some combination of goals, strategies, tactics, and objectives.  These should cover both your programmatic mission-driven goals, as well as your institutional goals.

Individual work plans should flow from the strategic plan.  It should identify each tactic you’re working on, what strategy and goal that tactic is connected to, what you’re doing in more detail and by when each major step should be completed.  Don’t just say:  We’ll issue the Legislative Scorecard in September.  You should break that down into its major pieces;  Initiate selecting votes and do research in July, Select votes and do writing/design in August, Release in September, etc.

Each individual should have a work plan.  It should clearly identify for each of these goals/strategies/tactics what you’re doing, who’s doing it, and by when.  Excel can be one way to make this visually flow.  But you can do it effectively in Word if you haven’t mastered the wonders of Excel formatting.

If you find yourself putting something in your work plan that can’t be clearly linked to one of your programmatic or institutional goals, it probably means you shouldn’t be doing it.

Board members also need work plans.  They’re more likely to be narrowly focused on a few institution-building goals (fundraising, accountability, financial management).

You can draft these plans either bottom up or top down.  Bottom up: You can ask each individual to go through the strategic plan and draft their work plan and then somebody has the task of making sure everything’s covered and, if not, assigning tasks by editing work plans as appropriate.  Top down: the Executive Director can start with the strategic plan and draft these for each individual.

Drafting these plans should be done in a way that makes sure that all the individual plans add up to accomplishing the strategic plan, or at least the piece of the strategic plan that you aim to accomplish in the next year.

You then need to hold yourself accountable to the work plans.  If you create your work plan for individual staff and then never look back at it over the course of the year, it’s probably not an effective work planning process.   Even the best staff needs a supervisor who meets with them monthly and going over the work plan is something that should happen at the meeting.  Evaluation of staff (and board) performance should focus first and foremost on whether the work plan was implemented and how effectively the work was done.

So build time for this accountability into the work plans themselves!

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Asking your board for money

May 21, 2011

Filed under: Board Development,Fundraising — Tags: , — jonathanpoisner @ 5:10 pm

I recently heard Nick Fellers of For Impact present.

Great speaker if you ever have the opportunity.

One of the things he suggested that rang true for me is the following:

As Executive Director, you should do a 1 on 1 donor meeting with all board members (with or without your board chair joining you) at least once per year.

Treat them like the major donors that they are.

You’re doing this partly to excite them.

You’re doing this partly to train them on effective fundraising by modeling best practices.

And you’re doing this to ask the to take on more responsibility.

In this day and age, as board members lead complicated lives with competing priorities, you can’t expect a board member who perhaps thinks about your cause an hour a week to always self-motivate.

So go ask them!

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Hunting antelope v. hunting mice

May 19, 2011

Filed under: Fundraising — Tags: — jonathanpoisner @ 8:01 am

I heard this from Nick Fellers of For Impact.  I’m paraphrasing, not quoting.

If a lion hunts a mice, it can catch it.  But it probably burns more calories catching it than the mice will provide.

If a lion hunts an antelope and catches it, it can feed the lion for days.

In the fundraising context, this means don’t go chasing lots of smaller donations if your goal is to transform your organization.  Yes, a larger organization with lots of staff can and should build a broader base.  But especially if you’re a small organization in the first few years, you should be almost exclusively hunting antelopes, not mice.

I couldn’t agree more.

But I’d add one thing.  There are also some magic mice out there.  Magic mice are actually antelope hunters themselves, and if you can catch the mice, the mice will hunt antelopes for you.

Don’t focus just on those who can write you the big check.  Focus also on those people who have access to those who can write you the big check and go sell them on your organization and turn them into champions for you.  But be clear: if the strategy is to hunt magic mice and you think you have one, don’t stop at just getting a donation, or else the strategy isn’t being followed.

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How to Transform your Organization

May 18, 2011

Filed under: Fundraising — Tags: — jonathanpoisner @ 11:44 am

The number one way to transform your organization financially is to engage people one on one and to invite them to champion your organization.

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

What happens isn’t just that you as an individual form a personal relationship with the giver, although that certainly helps.

It’s that the giver is asked to take personal responsibility and not collective responsibility.

It’s not about how all these people in the room can help.  It’s about how you can help.

I recall studies done in the 1970s and 1980s that focused on personal versus collective responsibility in a different context.  The scientists had people fake epileptic seizures in public places to see who would help. The interesting thing is you were more likely to get help if you had the seizure when one person was there to observe than you were if several people observed.

This is contrary to what most people would predict.  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.  If everyone else is just looking around, you may think: I guess it’s not my problem.  But if there’s nobody to look at, you know it’s about you, and you alone.

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

(Incidentally, the scientists advise that to avoid this trap if you’re having some health crisis in public and there’s several people there, single out one in any way you can to ask them as an individual for help).

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.

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Short v. Long-term Development Plans

May 15, 2011

Filed under: Fundraising,Strategic Planning — Tags: — jonathanpoisner @ 3:20 pm

An organization has done a LOT of fundraising, but has never had a real development plan, either short or long-term.

One set of consultants advised them to create a three-year development plan prior to doing a one-year plan. How do you know what you want to accomplish in year one unless you know the long-term plan?

But my response is: How do you know what your long-term real capacity is until you do a one-year plan, stick with it, and evaluate it. So I’m pushing them to do a one-year plan and write a 3 year plan in about a year.

What do you think?

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Planning half heartedly

April 25, 2011

Filed under: Strategic Planning — Tags: — 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: — 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: — 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: — 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: — 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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