Monthly Archives: July 2009

How Well Does Your Nonprofit Handle Change and Uncertainty

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Selling a home and moving into a new place to live is rarely a smooth process, but my wife and I have had our share challenges over the past year.  We first put up our house for sale last fall.  My wife’s insistence that we clear the clutter and with the help of an outstanding broker, we actually had many prospects.  But we received no offers, even after we lowered the price.  Meanwhile, my wife found a home that we both liked;  we made an offer, but were unable to go forward since our home wasn’t yet sold.

To reduce the pressure of constantly having to have the house in ‘showable’ condition every weekend and be able to quickly vacate the premises (with our two dogs), we decided to take it off the market until the spring, when presumably more potential buyers would be interested.  Apparently this strategy worked, for we received an offer shortly after we re-listed our home, again at a lower asking price.  The final agreed upon price wasn’t what we hoped for, but we felt grateful for having found located a buyer in such a tough market.

We then proceeded to look for a new home;  the house we liked last year was long gone.   Due to the economic meltdown, we decided to focus on rentals and coops/condos, much as we had lived in before moving into our house in fall 2002.  But we learned that many buildings were not ‘pet friendly’ and even those that did accept dogs had specific conditions, such as not allowing more than one dog (we have two).

Ultimately we found a beautiful apartment at an amazing price, so we quickly agreed upon a price.  But we learned later that the apartment had already been foreclosed on,  so we had to renegotiate with the bank before our offer was formally accepted.  Due to my wife’s persistence, we eventually went to contract, but it has taken a while to firm up a closing date.  Meanwhile, we’ve already closed on the sale of  our home so for now we’re living in temporary quarters and have moved most of our possessions to a storage facility.

What lessons can we apply to our nonprofits?  Change and uncertainty is part of life;  we can’t just make them go away.  We don’t know exactly when the current recession will end, but we can continue to do what we have always done – keep our constituents engaged and interested in our work.   When we eventually move into our new home, life for my wife and I will be different than it was before.  When economic times ease, our nonprofits will need to continue to find new approaches to raise money and serve our target audiences.   Fortunately, many nonprofits are doing great things online – learn from organizations recognized at sites such as Great Nonprofits and Nonprofit Coordinating Committe’s Nonprofit Excellence Awards to  keep your organization thriving, no matter when the recession ends.

The Importance of Training

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At many organizations that I’ve worked at, projects often don’t meet expectations not because of a bad product but more due to a lack of staff training.  Many nonprofits have a high turnover rate, so training becomes an ongoing need, not something that you can just schedule once in a while.  Some recommendations:

  1. Take advantage of web / phone conferencing software to offer classes regularly.  But make sure that participants are encouraged to ask questions at any time, not just at the end of the session.  Especially when you can’t visually see others’ reactions, it’s important to make sure everyone is absorbing the material.
  2. Offer recorded classes on your intranet, but don’t use this as an excuse not to provide live classes.  You can only get so much benefit from a class where you can’t ask questions.
  3. Give participants an incentive to fill out evaluations immediately after the class, and pay attention to their comments.
  4. Timing is important.  Don’t offer a class a month before a new product is available.  But also don’t wait until the product has been rolled out before classes are offered.
  5. When hiring new staff, knowledge of specific applications is helpful, but more useful is selecting employees that are comfortable with learning.  Most jobs change significantly after someone is hired, so choose candidates that are comfortable with learning new technologies.
  6. When budgets are tight, it’s tempting to cut training first.  Change how training is offered if you must, but don’t eliminate it completely;  staff productivity will be directly affected.
  7. Provide  ‘quick start guides’ to help participants retain skills, but don’t be surprised if you need to often a refresher class periodically.

One last poin:  Take advantage of free / low-cost training offered by organizations such as Nten, Network for Good and Idealware. For example, Kivi Leroux Miller’s recent 7 Steps to Better Email Fundraising and Communications session and accompanying Nonprofit Email Marketing Guide are wonderful resources for those new and old in ephilanthropy.  Personalized training by your nonprofit staff  is optimal but don’t forget to take advantage of other online options.

Lessons about Project Management

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I am currently working on a project to rollout a new web site for my organization’s main fundraising initiative.  It’s been a rocky road so far, but here’s what I’ve learned so far:

  1. Don’t rely on a vendor to manage your project.  Ultimately, a major challenge of successfully completing a project on time and on budget is to make sure departments within a nonprofit work together towards a common goal.  This responsibility can’t be delegated to the vendor whose product you are implementing.
  2. Develop the project plan as early as possible.  While there’s a certain amount of ‘discovery’ is useful, it’s important to make sure everyone knows what the schedule is and what their tasks are to complete.  By waiting too long to create a detailed plan, stakeholders can become concerned about project progress, even if it is on / ahead of schedule.
  3. In addition to regular status meetings, use smaller workgroups to achieve specific deliverables.  Include these workgroup meetings on the project plan.  By trying to involve everyone in all meetings, there will be much wasted time and it will take much longer to get things done.
  4. Use a centralized place for project documentation that everyone can access, e.g. project plan, minutes of meetings, wireframes etc.  Trying to keep all stakeholders up to date through email only makes it harder for everyone to stay informed.
  5. Allow enough time for quality assurance review – don’t just add it to the end of the project plan.  Testing should be done as new deliverables are completed so there is time for corrective action.
  6. Pay attention if the vendor is upsetting any of our stakeholders.   You can find this out quickly based on someone’s tone during a phone call, and is best dealt with by speaking a one-on-one with the stakeholder.  This situation can result in one department either trying to take control of the project or otherwise working independently of other stakeholders.
  7. Keep the project sponsor fully aware of what’s going on.  If there are problems, come up with recommendations on how things can be improved.
  8. Over-communicate through a variety of channels – be careful not to rely too much on email and not on phone calls and in person conversations.
  9. Especially over the summer, ask for notice when team members are taking time off.  Often staff only advise immediate boss and others in their own department when they will be out, not those in other departments.  Most online projects involve a team from multiple areas.
  10. Be careful to respect the wishes of your nonprofit organization colleagues.  Acting as liaison between co-workers and the vendor can be a delicate balance, but in the end, it’s important to stay focused on meeting your co-workers’ needs during project rollout.

Have a wonderful fourth of July!  While my wife and I will be moving this month, I’ll do my best to keep blogging.