Hamlin On Non-Profits

I am keenly aware of the damage the economy has done to the nonprofit sector and I recognize that hard times require most organizations to pull in and focus on the day-to-day activities with a sharp eye on the fundraising campaign. It’s not easy, in that environment, to think about bold initiatives. But bold can be gold and we need it more than ever.

The economy continues heaping havoc on those who traditionally rely on nonprofits for everything from childcare to healthcare to social services. It has also added a new tier – those who were not traditional consumers and now are. The inevitable result is increased demand and reduced capacity to meet it.

The social and human impact of the economy grows worse and the “old” way of addressing the issues isn’t keeping pace. Something has to give.

Which is where bold comes in. No matter the mission at hand, nonprofit leaders should find the time to examine new initiatives which come at problems from new directions. In Los Angeles, there is an initiative to eliminate chronic and veteran homelessness in 5 years. It was launched right into the teeth of the economic downturn.

That sort of bold thinking is needed across the nonprofit sector.

Nonprofit leadership should image reinvented social service systems, transformed delivery mechanisms, innovative advocacy and education initiatives, creative funding tools and more.

If the system is broken, don’t repair it, reform it. If the problem isn’t being adequately addressed, invent a new way to address it.

The nonprofit sector is a victim of bold thinking. The idea that we ought to let the economy run free and the damage land where it will isn’t new, but there are some bold organizations and tactics behind that concept at the moment and they are – all to obviously — effective.

In the face of such a bold force, an equally bold response is the only answer.

The internet has spawned a new, potent tool in nonprofit communications, newsletters.

In the “old” days, newsletters shipped via mail were effective but massively time-consuming and costly. Today, the information nonprofits want to deliver to their constituents can be crafted, packaged and sent in a matter of days (hours, sometimes) and the organization no longer has to worry about printing and postage fees.

Even if it’s convenient and economical, the new newsletter still requires careful thought and planning. Here’s a list of thing to consider as you prepare your e-newsletter:

Length: E-newsletters need to be tighter and shorter than the published versions used to be. Speed is part of the internet culture; users expect to scroll rapidly and move quickly from page to page – it is not effective to waste their time by writing long – be concise.

Frequency: Many organizations send weekly newsletters, others are content to communicate quarterly. The key consideration is audience response – if your weekly newsletters aren’t even getting opened (see Adjust below), perhaps you need to cut back.

Art/Layout: The internet is a visual medium. The audience expects a layout which is clean, open and easy to navigate. They are also drawn in by good photos and/or video content, either of which can tell your story very effectively.

Content: Do not turn your newsletter into a permanent sales pitch. If all you do is seek contributions, you run the strong risk of annoying your constituency. Since the goal is to engage – not discomfort – your audience, make sure your newsletter always contains solid news, information and personality. You can and should solicit support, but do it smartly.

Interaction: reaching out to readers engages them more fully. Invite readers to participate in a survey, respond to a specific articles, submit to a Q & A column or take a poll – no matter the mechanism, invite your constituents to participate.

Adjust: newsletter template and distribution systems automatically track key data for you, regularly reporting opens, linkages, pages visited, opt-outs. This is valuable information, because it enables you to align your publication more closely to your audience. In stages, try new devices or approaches – move the art work higher on the page or shift to a more casual tone or institute a new feature and match each adjustment to the audience data which follows. This takes patience, but it can lead to just the right formula.

I’m not in charge of the nonprofit world, but if I were. . .

Nonprofits would spend a lot more time thinking about the audiences whose support they seek and a lot less time thinking about their own perspective. Case in point: Environmental groups in these times might find great benefit from a sharp focus on the economic benefits of their agenda – creating jobs and saving money. When folks are far more concerned about their pocketbooks than they are about an arcane air quality initiative, it makes sense to speak to their concerns.

Community by community, nonprofit alliances would rise up with the sole purpose of explaining to the community at large – and business leaders in particular – the full nature and extent of nonprofit contributions. You won’t win their support if you don’t make your case.

Nobody would start a new nonprofit organization for the next four years, during which all the existing nonprofits would take a serious look at consolidating.

Foundations would invest in core institutional infrastructure along with those special projects and initiatives. Foundations would expect leaders of nonprofits to show progress in internal capacity – marketing, management, HR, advocacy – as a routine matter.

Anybody who has run a nonprofit organization for more than about eight years and who has no succession plan in mind or in place would face their Board to answer for that lapse. If the recalcitrant leader is also the founder of the organization, the time span would shrink to five years.

Every single editor, reporter, producer and talk show booker would remove all their nonprofit contacts from their address books and start fresh. There are lots and lots of great nonprofit voices out there – the public deserves to hear from them.

Instead of figuring out how best to address a given problem, nonprofit leaders would search for strategies to eliminate the problem.

. . .and that’s just on the first day.

When my partner and I encounter someone who is considering establishing a nonprofit organization, our first response is always the same: Do not do it.

There are an impressive number of good reasons to walk right past the temptation to start a nonprofit. There are also an impressive number of folks who ignore all those reasons and give in to the temptation.

Those who give in and create a new nonprofit are in for headaches, heartaches and anguish.

To avoid all that, conduct a thorough search. In almost every case, that search will reveal at least one, and probably several, organizations which are serving the same cause or serving one so close that it’s a match.

The search should not stop there. Once like-minded nonprofits are found, they should be carefully examined. An exploration of who they are and what they do will open the door to opportunities: volunteer service, Board membership, committee seat, fundraising support. Taking advantage of these opportunities will serve the cause more efficiently, more effectively and with far less stress and anguish.

Consider:

Every start-up nonprofit requires a prolonged, complicated, difficult and often expensive growth phase.

If another organization has undertaken that arduous process, it only makes sense to capitalize on that welcome fact.

Most start-up nonprofits launch with extremely limited resources, which places an enormous burden on very few people– and, too often, just one. That is a weight to be borne only when it is absolutely imperative to bear it.

Start-up nonprofits are inevitably starved for resources; if another organization can compete for those resources more effectively and has a solid base of support, the newer nonprofit is going to have nothing but trouble surviving.

For all those reasons, anybody who starts a nonprofit when one or more are already serving the cause wastes time, energy, dedication and resources.

Don’t start a nonprofit, serve your cause by joining one.

Among the many proposals designed to reduce the size of the Federal budget sits one which is so bone-headed that it merits special attention. And action.

Congress is considering an end to all – yes, every last penny – funding for national service programs. Among others, the cut would eliminate AmeriCorps (the erstwhile VISTA), the “domestic peace corps.” It is hard to imagine a more counterproductive measure.

The benefits which result from Federal support for volunteerism (or close to it – AmeriCorps participants earn a barely livable wage) are enormous. Where AmeriCorps goes, schools educate more effectively, communities grow stronger and more prosperous.

The ill are assisted, the poor elevated, the downtrodden uplifted and when all that happens, we are a better nation for it.

Even if the social return on our investment in national service were negligible, the programs would still yield a commodity all too precious in our society. The experience and the knowledge which flow naturally from service to community create a corps of citizens who care, who learn and understand critical issues and who act and lead. No effective democracy can have too many such participants.

There is a significant economic return from national service as well. Nobody who supports cutting service will acknowledge the fact, but community action generates economic strength. A number of thoughtful and reliable studies have shown that where communities organize and advocate for progress, funds to support their work follow. So do jobs, better wages and a higher standard of living. Advocacy leads to economic well-being.

And, for the record, programs like AmeriCorps generate private support – foundations and corporations provide grants which leverage the Federal investment. The proposal to eradicate AmeriCorps would toss those generous public service funds in the trash.

The total expenditure for national service programs isn’t big enough to take a nick out of the Federal budget, never mind seriously reduce it. The yield from the investment far outweighs the savings.

This proposal is anti-democratic, socially damaging, mean-spirited and, on economic grounds alone, just plain foolish.

If you agree with me, say so: write to Congress, call a talk show, alert your e-friends and allies, cause a ruckus at your next cocktail party, but don’t let this happen.

More than 80 community activists just “graduated” from the Wally Marks Leadership Institute, a project of the Liberty Hill Foundation. It’s a terrific program built on a concept which is all too rare in the Foundation world.

The Marks Institute is a capacity building innovation. Over about a year, the participants attend several group training sessions; at the same time, they are matched with coaches who work through specific, tangible and practical assignments with their students.

The result is a combination of theory and practice which provides the participants with a solid foundation in areas key to success in any nonprofit organization: organizing, communications, fundraising and Board development.

It works.

One of the participants expanded a fund raising event which had netted $300 to one which raised $3,000. Another used organizing skills to streamline her own agency and, in the process, turn it into a vital voice in its community’s government, a voice which is now heard and carefully considered. A third participant developed communications skills which are changing an entire community’s view of equality and justice.

There is an large and growing body of evidence to suggest that nonprofits which enhance their capacity to do their work generate far more for the communities they serve than the capacity building costs. That return on investment alone makes the concept of capacity building a benefit which serves one and all. In the current economy, which forces nonprofits to fill a rising demand for services government no longer provides, stronger nonprofits are vital to our future.

It’s not just communities which benefit from strong, well-prepared nonprofits. Foundations which invest in developing core skills can smartly serve their own objectives. A Foundation dedicated to improved health care serves its mission when it invests in making clinic leaders better at what they do; a foundation which seeks to combat environmental harm advances its agenda when the organizations it supports are more skillful and competent.

There were far more applicants than spaces available in the first year of the Marks Institute. That suggests that the demand for quality capacity building is wide and deep, but the Marks Institute hardly represents the norm in Foundation thinking.

Far too few Foundations are willing to invest in training and education, despite the clear and felt need for it.

Liberty Hill and its Wally Marks Leadership Institute should have lots of competition – there should be dozens of foundations actively encouraging and providing capacity building. The sooner they do so, the better off we’ll all be.

Happy New Year!
There’s no doubt that 2011 is going to present challenges to the nonprofit sector which are all but guaranteed to try the patience and dedication of one and all. As federal, state and local government budgets are adjusted to compensate for declining revenues and deficits, the pressures on nonprofits will grow ever greater. From health care to food banks, from psychological services to the arts, government is going to do less while nonprofits are expected to do much more.

There will be no easy answers, no magic bullets. The economy, even if it continues on the slowly improving trend it now exhibits, will hardly make nonprofits flush with resources. Indeed, the pattern nonprofits have confronted for the last two or three years – lower resources, higher demand – seems likely to remain as it is or get a bit worse.

That doesn’t mean nonprofit leaders can’t meet the challenge. It does mean that nonprofits will have to be smarter, leaner, more flexible and more skillful. To start the year off (and to save you a little time), here are a handful of resolutions which will help.

Increase Your Capacity
Whether you need to learn more about fundraising or communications, allocating limited resources more efficiently or recruiting a larger volunteer base, resolve to invest in capacity building. The more you know, the better your nonprofit will be.

Communicate Forcefully
Spend at least 20 minutes of every other staff meeting exploring every facet of your nonprofit for media opportunities – look for trends, personalities, successes, controversies, evidence of the need for change. Use what you find to communicate with your audiences – your base of supporters and donors, potential donors, key consumers, the public at large – as often as you can. Consider using digital communications tools such as e-newsletters to reach out beyond the “usual suspects.”

Shake Up The Board
If there are members of your Board who don’t contribute as much as they need to in challenging times, gently and politely ask them to depart. Then replace them with new members who will do more, give more and help more.
Corollary:
It isn’t enough, Mr. and/or Ms. Board Member, to write a check and come to most of the meetings – your nonprofit needs more than the usual support and its your job to give it or go get it.

Band Together
Leaders of the nonprofit sector can and should form alliances which can educate the community they serve, pool resources, speak out on vital budget and priority issues and advocate new approaches to persistent problems. There really is strength in numbers – tap it and use it.

My resolution? I’m going to do my best to post about new ideas, thoughts, trends, successes and challenges in the nonprofit sector — I hope I can help.

Among the hot topics in and around the nonprofit world these days are two concepts, capacity building and advocacy.
A number of foundations have lately reexamined what was once an inviolate rule in grant giving. Foundations traditionally insisted that all their grant monies go directly to services or to specific programs, but not to internal strength. In this construction, nonprofits won foundation support for the work they do but no support for their efforts to do that work more effectively – programs won grants, but capacity building was not likely to win similar support.
That has begun to change. A number of foundations are recognizing that by building the capacity of nonprofits to do what they do better, the nonprofits grow stronger and, inevitably, society is the better for it. Since foundations are in the business of improving society, they are more effective when their grantees are more effective. The Weingart Foundation, for example, has just issued an intriguing report which supports this new approach – they believe that capacity building grants are essential to the success of the nonprofit world. Some foundations – the Liberty Hill Foundation and the Ventura County Community Foundation, for example – are engaged in concerted efforts to offer capacity building programs to those they also fund.
There’s a parallel buzz around nonprofit advocacy. A series of reports by the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy are pretty convincing on this topic – they’ve found that organizations which have a strengthened capacity to advocate deliver greater benefits to the communities they serve. Whether nonprofit advocacy leads to increased tax support for vital programs or generates change through legislative action, NCRP’s studies demonstrate that everyone benefits when nonprofits advocate.
I believe that in the current economic climate, these two approaches should be married to one another: It is more critical than ever that nonprofits build and strengthen their ability to advocate their missions and enhance their ability to meet needs which government – local, state, federal – no longer address.
As government budgets grow ever-more thin and mean – everything from healthy school meals to unemployment benefits are being slashed, with consequences which reach far beyond the modest savings such cuts achieve – the burden to fill the gaps falls almost entirely to the nonprofit sector. When healthcare and after-school programs and assistance for the elderly are all damaged by cuts, the need doesn’t vanish – almost always, nonprofit organizations are expected to provide that which government doesn’t.

The only way for nonprofits to be far more proficient as advocates is to give them the capacity and the training to advocate. Foundations should be in the business of building advocacy capacity across the full spectrum of nonprofit enterprise and nonprofits should race to take advantage of opportunities to enhance their abilities to advocate.

A week or so ago, I had the pleasure of spending an evening with a sizable group of nonprofit folks – staff, volunteers, board members – who gathered to celebrate their own greatly expanded capacity to do what they do.
The Ventura County Community Foundation runs a Leadership Institute which is about as good as it gets. They’ve built a program which provides nonprofit leaders – including Board members, about which more in a moment – with a full spectrum of tools. Those who take the full curriculum end up with all the vital tools they need in their work: development skills, communications expertise, electronic and digital training, leadership. The event I attended celebrated the end of a full VCCF training cycle (and a swell party it was).
The VCCF program typically involves a good number of organizations, so it gives those who participate the opportunity to learn from their faculty (my partner and I are faculty members)and from their peers. The end result is a cohort of professionals who are better equipped to do what they do and who have a built in support network, too.
There is one aspect of the VCCF program which I find especially valuable and which I hope more and more organizations (and foundations in particular) will consider:

There is a complete training program for Board members. That is a concept which is at once very smart and all too rare.

One way or another, most staff and line volunteers in nonprofits learn what they have to know. Sometimes by experience and sometimes with formal training, the folks on the ground figure it out. The folks on the Board are in a very different position. They are often recruited for their fundraising capacity or, in many cases, their direct connection to the cause – doctors on clinic boards, educators on day care boards and so forth. Many who come to nonprofit boards do not have a solid background in the operation and governance of nonprofits; often, only years of Board service provide that background.
That’s why VCCF’s program is so smart. When Board members understand that running a nonprofit demands a complex set of skills, knowledge and talent, a lot of good things happen.
Board members who have training can actually pitch in and apply their training to key tasks – drafting a news release, setting up a blog, organizing a 5k – and thus be far more valuable as volunteers.
Board members who have been fully educated about the ways and means of nonprofit operations bring a far better perspective to the management process. An uninitiated Board member who asks why the organization hasn’t gotten any press coverage in the past few weeks serves the organization less well than one who knows precisely how difficult and demanding generating press coverage is. A Board member who understands the basics of budget and finance is going to be far more useful in setting priorities than one who doesn’t get finance at all. A Board member who has an informed view of the countless demands and pressures which buffet nonprofit staff all day every day is a better ally and resource than one who isn’t well versed in those demands and pressures.
So the bottom line, at least for me, is this: if VCCF has built a much stronger and more capable nonprofit community with smart and sensible training programs which include Board training, wouldn’t it make sense of the rest of the philanthropic world to heed the lesson and support capacity building programs? Of course it would, because everybody wins – the Foundation’s desire to support effective programming on the cause it cares about is matched by the nonprofit’s greater capacity to serve that cause.
Check out VCCF’s Leadership Institute – it’s a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Among the many items which move across my screen every day, I see more than my fair share of nonprofit sector job listings. Yesterday, one such offering appeared which I found annoying, so indulge me, if you will, in a modest rant.

The nonprofit job posting sought (paraphrasing): One new executive to raise a ton of money as development director and manage our media and communications operations as PR director. Two jobs, one employee.

I know this particular configuration is extremely common in the nonprofit sector. From the earliest days when my firm started training nonprofit staff and volunteers in the ways and means of effective PR and media, we have always had students in the room who attend to both tasks, fund raising and PR. The logic of this was smartly summed up by one of our One-Person-Two-Job students this way: “My Executive Director said ‘You like people; you handle our PR.’”

The logic of this double assignment completely evades me. It starts from a simply untenable premise, for one thing:

Where the nonprofit has two vital, indeed critical, needs, the decision is taken to make sure neither one gets the attention it deserves.

Moreover, while fund raising and PR absolutely must work together, they are in fact two very distinct disciplines requiring two very different skill sets and approaches. It just doesn’t follow that somebody who can generate donations or membership is therefore qualified to handle the universe of media and communications, nor is the one who can write a great news release or make a speech sing automatically a dynamic fundraiser.

Then there’s the question of time management. I know – ‘cause I’ve been there and done that – that effective nonprofit PR requires focus, attention and hard work. Consider a modest nonprofit PR agenda: find and develop proactive news stories, respond to breaking news, manage social media, communicate early and often with members and supporters, have a crisis plan in place and be ready to use it, develop sound bites, consume as much media as possible AND learn to develop a tone, style and voice which are well-suited to your organization and its cause.

On the development side, the list is just as long and it requires just as much focus, plus a ton of one-on-one time with key donors and Board members who help raise funds.

In the overwhelming majority of instances, one person attempting to do both those jobs is going to be frustrated, challenged, scrambling all the time and behind the curve most of it. It is the perfect formula for a stress-filled job which just about guarantees inadequate attention to one of the two tasks or, worse, directly to burn-out. Or both.

A nonprofit which permits one of development or PR to languish at the expense of the other inevitably creates circumstances in which both yield less than they should. This serves the nonprofit in what way, exactly?

Hire a development director and give that person the room to do their job well enough that the budget eventually has resources for PR. Hire a PR specialist who can elevate the organization’s profile to the point where membership rises or donors get the message and the budget grows enough to add development staff.

But a PR/Development Director? As Jack Benny used to say, “Now, cut that out!”