Nonprofit Management

I’m not talking about the U.S. Bill of Rights or the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights or the European Union approach or France or whatever…

Do you follow the Donor Bill of Rights? I hope your organization adopted it as a policy. Make sure everyone in the organization understands this. Yes, every single staff person and every single board member and every single volunteer.

How about a fundraiser’s bill of rights? Check out Norma Cameron’s version. I really really like this!

Hey, Ms. CEO. You best look at this bill of rights and enforce it. Hey, Mr. Fundraiser. How about using the Donor Bill of Rights and Fundraiser Bill of Rights when you’re interviewing for a job. Don’t you want to work for an organization that understands and applies these rights?

How about board bill of rights – and one for board members, too?  I need to work on those!

Guests on the 06-23-14 Diane Rehm Show were talking about the U.S. government and its benign neglect of situations in the Middle East, e.g., Syria, which has helped cause the current (new) crisis in Iraq.

Then I started thinking about benign neglect in the nonprofit sector. For example:

• A small arts organization that’s had an annual operating deficit for about a decade. And then borrows money from the bank and board members. So the accumulated deficit keeps growing. All the training and good plans from the executive director doesn’t get board members to act. The board chair thinks sending emails suffices. Every pay period, the E.D. chooses what not to pay.
• Board members who don’t perform. Term limits that aren’t enforced. Board members who threaten to take their big money and leave if they don’t get their way. Constant struggles to manage all this – and, of course, the board continues its dysfunctional behavior because it’s “too hard (?)” to make change.

Let’s just ignore stuff and hope it gets better. Let’s not even decide we’re ignoring stuff. We’ll just not pay attention. Or something. Hoping there’s a magic pill around the corner? Or not even hoping for that?

So I looked up “benign neglect” in Wikipedia. Oh wow. Benign neglect actually is a formal policy! Proposed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan during Nixon’s administration. At the time (1969), Moynihan was President Nixon’s urban affairs adviser.

Moynihan sent a memo suggesting, “The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect.’ The subject has been too much talked about, too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.” The policy was intended to ease the tensions caused by the Civil Rights movement.

Well, that worked well, eh? We are not a post-racial society. We now have new state laws that inhibit voting by people of color. Poverty is higher than ever – and mostly not white people are poor. Schools are more segregated than ever.

And today, it seems like the middle class (the 99%) appear to be reaping the rewards of benign neglect.

But back to the nonprofit sector. The benign neglect that stops you from creating an effective board. The benign neglect of how you treat your donors. And on and on and on…

I wonder: Does anything really benefit from benign neglect?

Some people like process. Others proclaim their commitment to the bottom-line.

But… And it’s a rather big but… How can you get to the bottom line without process? How can you make a good decision without process? And, as Seth Godin notes in his 06-21-14 blog, “…if we can’t agree on a process to talk about this, we’re not going to get anywhere, not for long.”

When I ask the process naysayers why they dislike process, they answer things like:

• So messy and uncomfortable. (Well wow. That’s life, eh? Get comfortable with disagreement and challenging assumptions and cage-rattling questions and…)
• A delay of game. (But you can’t just rush into the game without adequate information and ground rules and… However, some people use “process” to intentionally delay the game and wander in the wilderness until everyone gets bored and abandons the process. This approach is inappropriate and is intended to avoid a decision, trick people, whatever.)
• Takes too long. (There should be an arc for process. Some sense of arriving at some destination. Too long is bad. Not long enough is bad.)

Those are just a few complaints. But effective process (and effective process leaders) know all this and prepare accordingly. Effective process and effective leaders weave all of the following things together:

• Designing transparent steps and activities that engage people and reinforce conversation and learning and change.
• Maintaining a sense of momentum.
• Facilitating so that people analyze and synthesize and apply.

As Seth notes in his blog, the real problem is likely a broken process. I see lots of bad process. Intentional bad process. Unintentional bad process. Lack of understanding about components of effective process.

No wonder lots of people don’t like process!

I’ve told you before: I collect quotations … and have since I was a teenager. Notebooks full. And from various sources …. romance novels, spy and police action, science fiction fantasy, serious literature, business books, etc.

I use quotes to inspire myself. To include in articles and start chapters in books. I use quotes in my workshop handouts.

So here are some favorite quotations about relationships and relationship building. Maybe you’ll find a use for them – even if it’s “just” inspiration!

“Relationship fundraising is an approach to the marketing of a cause which centres not around raising money but on developing to its full potential the unique and special relationship that exists between a charity and its supporter. Whatever strategies and techniques are employed to boost funds, the overriding consideration in relationship fundraising is to care for and develop that special bond…” [Relationship Fundraising: A Donor-Based Approach to the Business of Raising Money, 1992]

Sir Denys Lasdun, English architect said, “The architect’s job is to give a client not what he wants but what he never dreamed that he wanted; and when he gets it, he recognizes it as something he wanted all the time.” Just substitute “fundraising” for “architect.”

“You’ll have more fun and success when you stop trying to get what you want and start helping other people get what they want.” [Dale Carnegie, 1930s American self-help guru, How to Win Friends and Influence People]

“Everything is a tale. What we believe, what we know. What we remember, even what we dream. Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated.” [Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel’s Game]”

I’ve been collecting quotations since I was a child. Quotations from serious works of literature and curious articles and novels.

I have a masters degree in 20th century French and American Literature. And I’ve always loved popular culture. And now I read business and political stuff, too. I learn from all of it. And I like using quotations in my own books and workshop handouts.

Maybe you like quotations. Maybe you don’t. But I think I’ll start writing some blogs about favorite quotes. Not really “just for fun.” More like for learning.

So this blog’s quote theme? Knowledge

“Our society is more than happy to accept spin and cant because we have come to believe that all expertise is bias, that all knowledge is opinion, that every judgment is relative. I see this daily in my university classroom. Many of even my best students seem to have lost the ability to think critically about the world. They do not believe in the transformative power of knowledge because they do not believe in knowledge itself…

“[This] is built into our carefully balanced political ‘debates,’ into our news shows with equal time given to pundits from each side and into the ‘fairness’ we try to teach in schools. We need not be surprised that people have become consumers who demand the right to choose as they wish between the two equally questionable sides of every story. Neither global warming nor any other serious problem can be addressed by a society that equates willful ignorance with freedom of thought.”

[Bernard Dov Cooperman, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, Newsweek, September 3, 2007. Letter to the Editor.]

And I fear this is even worse now.

What fun I had presenting at the AFP Golden Horseshoe Chapter conference last week. I’m always collecting comments and perspectives and insights.

From Christina Laughren, Food Bank of Waterlook Region:

• Communications breakdown is a breakthrough. Yes! A breakdown can help us see. Hopefully a breakdown forces us to learn and change – and that’s our breakthrough.
• Be a voice, not an echo. Oh my yes! Stop reiterating something someone else said. Sure, affirm it. But use your own words. Also, think for yourself. Add value with your experience and insights. Speak out!

Heather, Nelson, conference chair, shared this quote from Zig Zigler:

• F-E-A-R has two meanings: Forget Everything And Run! (As Seth Godin says, that’s our lizard brain; our biological imperative. Sadly, we choose that too often.) And the other meaning? Face Everything And Rise. Surely we can hold ourselves accountable for more rising than running. Yes, it takes courage. But your cause is worth it. You are worth it. And your organization, cause, colleagues, and community deserve the rising.

Thanks Heather and Christina.

Does your organization live in chaos? How about your fundraising department?

Check out this useful book From Chaos to Control: Build a High Performance Team Using Knowledge Management, by Sharron Batsch.

As Sharron says, chaos need not be the norm. So what’s your CQ (Chaos Quotient)? For example:

• Use the evaluation tool to determine your donor data management CQ.
• Use another evaluation tool to determine your CQ in your knowledge-based system.

I like Sharron’s acronym for the problem: L.O.S.T. (Leadership – Order – Staffing – Training). Fix all four and your chaos quotient goes way down! And Sharron tells you how to fix it all.

This book describes a step-by-step process to building your Knowledge Plan (KPlan). Anecdotes describe problems. (Oh how awful these are!) The book describes solutions. And then the book describes the Knowledge Management System Toolkit.

And then there’s the 15 second rule. Sharon’s office and team evaluate the effectiveness of their Knowledge Management System by whether (or not) they can locate the specific resource file needed in a particular situation — within 15 seconds. Wow. Imagine that kind of efficiency!

I really like this book. Get your copy now. Use it! Make big, important, useful change. Now.

Strategic planning or fund development planning or…

The quality of information you examine affects the quality of the plan you produce. (And, the process you use — information + stakeholder input — affects the quality of the plan you produce.)

Check out these pieces of information. I’ll be using this with my clients.

• Pew Research Center…Some data milestones from 2013.
• “As the World Turns: NPQ’s 10 Trends and 10 Predictions,” www.nonprofitquarterly.org. Posted on Tuesday, December 31, 2013.
• “What Nonprofits Should Start Doing in 2014: Advice From the Experts,” www.philanthropy.com, dated December 31, 2013.
• “2013 Highlights: Fundraising Trends and Tactics,” www.philanthropy.com.

Also read the newly-posted article about stinky nonprofits. Learn from 12 experts about how to improve your donor retention (or renewal or loyalty) in 2014. See tips from Pam Grow, Lisa Sargent, Chuck Longfield, Nancy Schwartz, Mark Pitman, me … and more!

Check out this absolutely marvelous and insightful video…

Empathy… That’s what will save us all.

Make everyone you know watch it. EVERYONE! In schools in homes in organizations at board meetings… everyone everywhere.

This is what philanthropy is. This is what nonprofits/NGOs promote. And this human tendency – to be empathetic – is how we change the world…how we secure gifts of time and money to change the world.

Watch it. Use it. Remember it. Share it. Tweet it. Text it.

P.S. Check out a few new things that I’ve posted in my Free Download Library.

• New ways to think about strategic planning.
• Training tool to help your volunteers do face-to-face personal solicitation.
• An overview of emotions, the very most critical thing you need to know for fundraising.

I’m a huge fan of the Nonprofit Quarterly…it’s daily on-line feed and its quarterly print publication.

NPQ makes me think. Gives me strategic information. Great practical tips about ethical dilemmas. Insightful articles about governance. Some of the best writing on the nonprofit sector as an important tool for democracy. Challenges to all of us about the role of nonprofits in public policy and advocacy.

And now, “How Much Profit Does a Nonprofit Need?” An article by Woods Bowman, posted 12-16-13. Interesting. Useful. Worthy of sharing with the organization’s CEO and finance team. A starting point for a conversation with the board’s Finance Committee.

Check it out!

And, here are a couple more things to read:

• Today’s Seth Godin blog, “Which charity?” A lovely piece about giving.
• My blog at Bloomerang, talking about Eric Friedman’s book Reinventing Philanthropy. Wow, do I ever disagree!