Why Organization Structure Matters
Convio’s report The Secret of Online Success: Why Structure Matters examines how nonprofits staff for ephilanthropy. Major themes:
- Nonprofit organizations are resource constrained – no kidding :>). “Insufficient staff resources” (mentioned by 90% of 60 nonprofits surveyed) is the major barrier to succeeding online, followed by “budget constraints” (64%) and “senior management not understanding the value of online marketing” (48%). But having the right people is more important than simply having more staff. Especially if a nonprofit only has a few people devoted to online efforts, it’s unlikely they’ll have the many skills (see below) required to manage ephilanthropy.
- Organizational structure matters – will make a big difference on how well online strategy is implemented. Usual options are: centralized (20% of nonprofits surveyed – all online staff in one department), decentralized (39% – spread across organization – this is model at my organization) and hybrid (41% – somewhere in middle). While there is no one “best” model, my take is that there has to be multi-department involvement, due to the many types of expertise required for ephilanthropy implementation: strategy, web administration, creative, campaign/project management, analysis and usability. (Usability is the skill that’s often overlooked but which can have a major impact on how effective a web site is.)
- Not having a (Internet marketing) plan is planning to fail – Yes, but to be most effective, the online ‘plan’ needs to be integrated with offline campaigns to derive the full benefits of a multichannel strategy.
- Structure impacts performance – A centralized group may perform best in maximizing online revenue, but a hybrid group may do better in building an email file. I’m not sure structure matters as much as the level of collaboration that exists within an organization. Some nonprofits have too many silos where staff prefer to work within their own department and actually avoid contact with other areas.
Convio’s report suggests we take the time to think out what type of structure makes sense in our organizations, and what types of skills may need to be brought in from outside. It’s also valuable to think about career paths, especially where there isn’t a centralized department (traditional promotion paths may not make sense). Sometimes in a decentralized setup, online goals may actually conflict with those of the department you’re in. While we often fear internal reorganizations, in this case in may make sense to consider whether changes are needed so that staff can effectively work together to achieve online goals.
Convio also provides a summary of this report and will offer a webinar to discuss it later this month (I don’t see it on their web site yet but received an email invitation – please contact me if you can’t find it.)
Tags: convio, multichannel, structure