Nonprofit Management

Of course your organization should invest most of its resources – human and financial and everything else – in your mission and its impact. But, insufficient investment in infrastructure (everything else) starves your organization.

Everything else…infrastructure… Things like a living wage for your staff and good enough salaries to recruit and retain the best and brightest. Things like decent technology (and email and a website and a photocopier and….) Infrastructure includes professional development for staff and a decent fund development program that includes donor-centered relationship building.

There’s no pride in underfunding infrastructure. There’s no pride in starving the support systems that enable you to do quality program. Shame on all the nonprofits / NGOs — and their boards and staff — who think this is okay. Shame on the government agencies and funding sources and evaluators who think this is okay. Shame shame shame.

I’m here in Winona, MN – my annual faculty sojourn with the masters program in Philanthropy and Development at Saint Mary’s University. Marvelous and rigorous program for those who want to focus on leadership and scholarship to build stronger organizations, stronger communities, and a stronger world.

Cohort 20 and I just finished some great conversations that produced some cage-rattling questions for professionals, the profession, charitable organizations, and society itself. Questions like:

1. What does trust mean? Why does it matter?

2. Who is the nonprofit accountable to?

3. How comfortable are you being lost?

4. What makes someone part of a community? What does being part of a community entitle us to, obligate us for?

5. Why does society seem to feel that nonprofits should operate in “poverty-like” ways?

6. Why does a willingness to accept lower wages (than for-profits) seem to be an indicator or qualification for working in the nonprofit sector?

And here’s more from Cohort 20…bumper stickers!

1. Is lost actually found?

2. Don’t mistake leadership for strong talking.

3. Perhaps it’s called development because we find the answer – only questions that lead to more questions.

4. Rise up!

5. Mutiny!

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Everyone knows that the web keeps everything forever. So that indiscreet photo on Facebook or that really shocking blog stay attached to you forever. The college admissions officer and the personnel department search the web just for you.

But still, do we truly understand the implications as a society? Read this insightful article in the July 25 New York Times magazine, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting.” This is scary and, I think, sad.

“We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent – and public – digital files.

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Should every day be tough love day? Probably not.

Some days should be for whining. Some days for celebration. Some days are just getting by days.

But tough love day has to happen, too. That’s when you face the truth, the harsh truth, if harsh it is. Tough love day is when you stop whining, quit complaining, and figure out if you can do what it takes to produce a decent organization.

If you cannot do the minimum required…. the minimum required for quality service, the minimum required for quality corporate governance, the minimum required for quality professional development, the mimimum required for quality fund development….

Then you should close. Your clients and board members and staff and donors deserve some level of quality. None of them is more important than the other.

On tough love day, face this: If you cannot do the minimum required for good fund development — and you need donors to exist — then close.

You wouldn’t operate poor quality services would you? Then why would you do poor quality fund development? Quit whining. Why should donors stick around if you do fund development really poorly? Your organization isn’t entitled to donors and contributions. You earn them.

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Conversation is better than reporting. Conversation is more useful than updates. Asking meaningful (and open-ended) questions stimulates good conversation. Asking cage-rattling questions produces even deeper and more important conversation. All this together helps you and your organization learn and change. And learning and change is what it takes to be a healthy and effective organization.

So what’s the conversation like in your organization? How does your boss support meaningful and cage-rattling questions that nurture genuine and candid conversation? And how about your board? What happens there?

Check out all the questions on in my books and on my website.

Conversation is better than reporting. Conversation is more useful than updates. Asking meaningful (and open-ended) questions stimulates good conversation. Asking cage-rattling questions produces even deeper and more important conversation. All this together helps you and your organization learn and change. And learning and change is what it takes to be a healthy and effective organization. So what’s the conversation like in your organization? How does your boss support meaningful and cage-rattling questions that nurture genuine and candid conversation? And how about your board? What happens there? Check out all the questions on in my books and on my website.

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Life is about stories. This quotation says it all: “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 an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated.” (From The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón)

So here are two stories.

Once there was a little girl in Alaska. Actually, she’s still a girl in Alaska.

She started using the word “Fickity” and “Fickities.” She used it a lot. I know, you think it isn’t a word. But she overheard her daddy swearing in frustration. Yes, he used the “F” word. I imagine that most of us have – and perhaps still do!

Anyway, her interpretation was “Fickity.” She says it when she’s frustrated. I haven’t actually heard her say it. Her mom told me the story.

But I say fickity or fickities now. It seems so appropriate. So right. So on target.

I have another little girl story. A story of a little girl in Rhode Island. She’s a feminist. Yes, indeed! She’s 8 now. This is a story when she was about 5, a feminist even then. Her mom told me the story. But I actually know this little girl.

She and her mom were watching the movie “The Princess Bride” on DVD (or maybe video back then!) Have you ever seen the film? It’s delightful and funny.

Anyway, after the film, the little girl says to her mom, “Let’s play Princess Bride. I’ll be the Princess, mommy, and you be the prince.” And then, this little feminist said: “And you don’t have to rescue me. I can rescue myself!”

You see, there were a few scary scenes in the movie where the Princess Bride kinda squeaks and cringes with fear. And the valiant Prince intervenes and saves her.

But not this little feminist. I imagine her yelling loudly, “Fickities! Stand back my Prince, I’ll rescue myself!”

Here’s to these two little girls – young women and feminists both, I suspect. Thank you for your stories.

What stories do you and your organization tell?

By the way, the Rhode Island girl is now 12. And she is still a feminist.

You know the old adage: “What gets measured gets done.” So measure the right stuff.

1. For example, measuring board member performance

— Board meeting attendance

— Preparation for the meetings (And they bring the stuff to the meeting, too!)

— Participation in conversation at board meetings

— Give a personal financial contribution every year

— Regularly help nurture relationships

— Check in for updates when missing meetings

2. For example, measuring fund development

— Donor satisfaction with your communications, thank-you program, achievement of mission, programs and activities, overall customer service… And more. What would you add?

— Effectiveness of your relationship-building program: depth and breadth of information you have about the donor’s interests and aspirations and motivations; personalization in communications; effective mingling and schmoozing at events; collecting and using donor stories; donor-centered communications… And more. What would you add?

3. For example, measuring employee performance

— Strategic thinking and strategic conversation

— Asking really good questions and challenging assumptions

— Efficiency and effectiveness

— Willing to learn and change

— Doing the right stuff well

What do you measure? What measures do you want to add?

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Decision-making: I’m not a member of Rotary International. But someone shared with me the Rotary 4-way test. I believe this is a “test” that Rotary uses to make decisions. I think it’s great. Do you use it? Do I?

1st: Is it the truth?

2nd: Is it fair to all concerned?

3rd: Will it build good will and friendships?

4th: Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Micromanagement: I’ll bet we’ve all complained about micromanagement at times. “Drat, my boss micromanages me.” “Darn my board, it’s so into micromanagement!” The other day, someone told me: “You think micromanagement is bad, how about nanomanagement? That’s what I live with!” Oh my. What can I say?

Efficiency or effectiveness: How about this: Let’s shift from efficiency to effectiveness? So how do we define effectiveness in a particular area? And how do we measure it?

What’s your job? How do you describe what you do for a living? Not what’s your position title – but how do you describe what you do and why it matters? Maybe something like this: I help people and businesses fulfill their own aspirations by giving charitable gifts. I help donors live their dreams through the gifts they make.

Priceless: You know all those great ads that talk about what money can buy – and then end with something “priceless?” Think about your donors. What is their “money can’t buy it experience” with your organization? What if we asked our donors to share those stories with us?

Taboo: And here’s my final thought before I close the office for vacation – no weekly blogs for a bit of time: How did a taboo become a taboo? Who decided? And why did we go along with those deciders?

There is good lobbying and bad lobbying, good lobbyists and bad ones. Check out Jacob Weisberg’s article “All Lobbyists Are Not Created Equal,” April 24, 2009 issue of Newsweek magazine.

There are lobbyists for oil companies and car companies. These lobbyists focus on the good of the company. And then there are lobbyists for democracy. These lobbyists focus on human rights and health and the common good.

Newsweek‘s Jacob Weisberg reminds us that there’s a “crucial distinction between lobbying that’s good for democracy and lobbying that perverts it.” Surely you remember the Jack Abramoff scandal and Tom DeLay’s K Street Project. That’s the bad lobbying!

The nonprofit sector is part of a healthy democracy. The most effective nonprofit organizations focus on the common good. These organizations question the for-profit and government sectors. These organizations challenge democracy to be as good as it can be.

Everyone in the nonprofit sector should know Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the foremost theorists of American democracy. In his 19th century U.S. travels, de Tocqueville observed: “In democratic countries, the science of association is the mother science; the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one. Among the laws that rule human societies, there is one that seems more precise and clearer than all the others. In order that men be civilized or become so, the art of associating must be developed and perfected among them in the same ratio as equality of conditions increases.”

So people get together; they associate for the common good. People form organizations to advance civil society.

Roger Lohmann, in his wonderful article “The Commons: Our MIssion If We Choose to Accept It,” (The Nonprofit Quarterly, Summer 2003, www.nonprofitquarterly.org) describes five distinct attributes / dimensions of “the commons”:

1. Free and uncoerced participation

2. Common or shared purpose or mission

3. Jointly held resources or endowment

4. Participation that involves a sense of mutuality

5. Social relations characterized by justice or fairness

Everyone working in the nonprofit sector should understand the role that this sector — often called the third sector or independent sector — plays in democracy. Check out more articles about democracy in the summer 2003 and spring 2009 issues of the Nonprofit Quarterly.

Yes, the nonprofit sector is essential to a thriving democracy. And the lobbyists in the nonprofit sector — advocating for healthcare for all and women’s rights — are critical to justice and the basic tenets of democracy. The lobbyists fighting against genocide and fighting for peace aren’t seeking special rules that feather the nests of their clients.

There’s a difference in lobbyists. Not all are the same. And President Obama’s executive order to restrain lobbyists is important for Abramoff et al. But that same order deprives our democracy.

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Ideas from two books I read back in 2009:

Marty Neumeier’s book The Designful Company. This is a great organizational development book. A great book for strategic planning and organizational culture.

Here’s some stuff from Neumeier’s book. I hope you’re intrigued enough to read the book!

— The difference between ordinary brands and charismatic brands: “Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is famous for a crazy video in which he yells, I — Love — This — Company. With Apple, it’s the customers who shout that.” (Marty is quoting Mike Elgin, a former editor of Windows magazine. (Neumeier goes on to say that BusinessWeek reports: Microsoft’s brand value is at 17% of its market cap but Apple’s is at 66%.) By the way, I LOVE APPLE and I despise Microsoft. Microsoft’s products, including Word, are not very good. And Microsoft controls too much. Anti-trust violations anyone?

— “Companies don’t fail because they choose the wrong course – they fail because they can’t imagine a better one.” Apple keeps innovating because it operates with a culture of innovation.

So much more. Read The Designful Company.You’ll learn a lot. Good insights. Useful tips.

What Would Google Do? Author Jeff Jarvis promotes a new acronym, WWGD as a constant stimulus for creative thinking, learning, and change. Wow. Another good one. Read it!

Jarvis says, “The question I ask in the title is about thinking in new ways, facing new challenges, solving problems with new solutions, seeing new opportunities, and understanding a different way to look at the structure of the economy and society. I try to see the world as Google sees it, analyzing and deconstructing its success from a distance so we can apply what we learn to our own companies, institutions, and careers…Google is our model for thinking in new ways because it is so singularly successful…The world is upside-down, inside-out, counterintuitive, and confusing…”

And why is Google so singularly successful? “They didn’t do it by breaking rules. They operate by new rules of a new age.”

Read “10 Things Google Has Found To Be True?” Check it out. Things like: Focus on the user and all else will follow. (Sounds like being donor-centered and customer centered.) It’s best to do one thing really, really well. (Focus!) You can be serious without a suit. Great just isn’t good enough. Read the whole list.

What are you reading?