What’s a nonprofit dashboard?
Why should my nonprofit consider getting one?
And how should we develop one?
These are some of the questions I address in a recent guest blog for The Databank.
In addition, I recently gave a presentation on dashboards for the Nonprofit Network of Southwest Washington. Here are the slides from the presentation.
Check them out and then let me know what you think.
This blog was originally drafted in 2016. A lot has changed on the virtual meeting front since them, although many fundamentals remain the same. I periodically update it to reflect new information. The most recent update was September 2021.
In my consulting work, I’m involved in a lot of “virtual” meetings, often as the facilitator. By virtual, I mean not in-person, so using the phone and/or internet.
I also participated in many virtual meetings over the years running a statewide conservation organization and being on the board of a national network of similar organizations.
I’ve learned some lessons over the years of some things to do and to avoid when planning for virtual meetings.
Before identifying those lessons, it’s important to underscore the two most important challenges posed by virtual meetings.
So if you have a virtual meeting to plan, how do you address these challenges?
First, plan ahead for video technology and don’t take it for granted. There are many options: Zoom, GoogleMeet, Skype, Microsoft Teams, etc.
If you’re trying a new option for the first time, do a dry run with guinea pigs. Also, it’s important to identify someone other than the meeting facilitator who is prepared to deal with any technical glitches.
Second, have an increased energy level as facilitator. It’s human nature to pay more attention when someone is energetic in their tone of voice. Pump people up with your attitude.
Third, take extra steps to make sure everyone is engaged. There are lots of ways to do to do this. Ideas include:
Fourth, think about how notes will be taken and shared during the meeting. If you would have normally used a flipchart in front of the room in an in-person setting, consider using a shared whiteboard/googledoc or the equivalent. This can create a disconnect between those who have multiple screens (one for the video and one for the whiteboard), so factor that in as you facilitate. (If you’re an organization who expects workers to work remotely, invest in their having a second screen; they are really quite inexpensive).
Fifth, as each agenda item wraps up, be explicit about what was decided and who has agreed to any follow-up task. And then as the meeting closes, go through every person and ask them what follow-up tasks have fallen to them.
Sixth, structure the meeting time to include more short breaks as opposed to fewer long breaks. In general, don’t go more than 60 minutes without a 5-10 minute break.
Lastly, get the meeting notes out ASAP.
Of course, all of the above presumes the meeting is otherwise well-organized. If a meeting would be poorly designed in-person, no amount of attention to its virtual elements will overcome that.
What do we mean by strategic planning in the nonprofit context?
In my mind, there are three key distinguishing characteristics.
First, it’s long term. Certainly more than a year. It might be as short as 2 years. For most nonprofits, it generally runs 3-5 years, though I’ve heard of organizations with 10 year strategic plans.
Second, it embraces the entire organization, across functions It covers your program (the ways you’re trying to change the world) and your institutional capacity. One test to know if it’s comprehensive: for any significant activity of the organization, you should be able to point to what part of the strategic plan that it fits within.
Third, it answers a series of big questions about the organization. Put in the simplest terms these questions are:
That’s it. I’ve seen strategic plans as short as 3 pages and as long as 50 that meet these tests. What’s right for your organization, of course, depends on many factors.
Public service announcement: A goal is not an activity, it’s an outcome.
The activity of educating people is not a goal.
More educated people could be a goal, with educating people (or more specifically classes, workshops, publications, etc.) the strategy achieve it.
Another example: Advocacy/lobbying is not a goal. Better public policies could be a goal, with advocacy/lobbying being the strategy to achieve it.
It shocks me sometimes how often people confuse the outcome they are seeking (the goal) with the activity to get there (the strategy).
End of PSA/rant.
Learning to say no is one of the most important skiils for any organizatonal leader or organization.
Oliver Bremerton recently wrote and illustrated a compelling explanation for how this plays at an individual level when it comes to following your personal dreams.
“Our brains behave like a beachball filled with bees. Hundreds of conflicting impulses, pushing us in different directions.”
Successful individuals (leaders, organizations, etc.) learn how to put aside the conflicing impulses and focus on the one, overriding “dream.”
Or in Bremerton’s words, “If you want to follow your dreams, you have to say no to all the alternatives.“
About 15 months ago I created a blog entry: 5 frogs sitting on a log.
Here’s an updated version.
The riddle:
Five frogs are sitting on a log. One decides to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log?
The answer is five. Deciding to jump off is not the same as jumping off, so all five are still on the log.
The five frogs are still sitting on a log. One gets training on how to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log?
Five, of course. Being trained on somethings is no guarantee of action.
The five frogs are still sitting on a log. One decides he’s a lily pad frog and not a tree frog, so he’ll jump off and onto a nearby lily pad. He recently was trained on effective jumping. He’ll jump at sundown. He knows he’ll have been effective if he winds up on the lily pad.
In short, he knows who he is, where he wants to get to, how he’ll get there, and by when.
How many frogs are sitting on the log?
Of course, the answer is still 5. But I’d venture to bet that the odds of it soon being four are very high indeed.
Although the parallels to nonprofit work are clear, I’ll hit you in the face with it: An organizational strategic plan should answer who the organization is, where it wants to go, how it will get there, and how it will know if it’s successful. In strategic planning terms, this is usually a combination of mission/vision, goals, strategies, and a timeline.
The best written strategic plan, even when combined with training, are no substitute for taking action.
But those who are trained and plan are far more likely to take action (and take it effectively) than those who are not.
Instead of thinking about all the reasons groups can benefit from strategic planning, a friend recently asked me: why do some groups fail to do strategic planning?
Here are the top reasons that have been shared with me.
1. Past planning processes are perceived as having failed to yield real benefits. This could be past planning by the organization in question or past planning by other organizations with which board members or staff have been involved.
2. They are too busy. Good planning takes time and some organizational leaders believe time taken up for strategic planning carries too high an opportunity cost.
3. Overconfidence. Some leaders are so confident of their ability to think through challenges on the fly that they just don’t see the benefit of thinking things through ahead of time.
4. Fractured leadership. Some organizational leaders are aware that they have deep schisms either on their board or between board and staff and feel like strategic planning might expose those schisms in an unhealthy way.
5. Not exciting. For some people, the thought of sitting in a room with others discussing strategy is worse than watching paint dry. They want to be “doers.”
For each of these, there are obviously rejoinders. But sometimes given where organizational leadership is, it may just be that it’s the wrong time or cast of characters to plan.
One lesson I’ve learned for certain: if the organization is doing planning to satisfy a funder, but doesn’t actually believe in the value of the planning process, the process will almost certainly fail.
I recently published a guest article for 501Commons on the importance of building a fiscal management system that connects with strategic decision-making.
The main point: you should track revenues and expenses by categories that provide information useful for strategic decision-making. That means moving away from an exclusive focus on a “line item” approach that focuses on things like printing, postage, and salaries and also layers in a way of tracking by functional categories that represent your programs.
Check out the full article on 501Commons website and then let me know what you think.
A friend was recently describing to me a challenge he faced as a new board member of a relatively healthy organization, but one that seemed to have a frenetic culture.
He said the situation reminded him of an allegory a colleague once told him and I liked the story so much I’m repeating it here. (If anyone knows the source of this allegory, please let me know).
Once upon a time, there was a logger who made their living cutting logs into firewood. People kept coming to requesting work, so he got very busy. He complained to his neighbor about how busy he was.
The next day, when he had a lot of wood to cut, the neighbor came by to observe his work and asked him why he didn’t stop to sharpen his axe.
The woodsman replied: “Can’t you see I’m too busy to sharpen my axe?”
Of course, the moral of the story is that the woodsman would actually cut more wood in less time with a sharper axe.
This lesson applies to organizations and not just individuals.
I’ve known many nonprofit organizations with a culture of “getting it done” that are constantly overwhelmed with “stuff to do” so they never take the time to “sharpen their axe.”
In the organizational context, sharpening the axe can mean many things:
So organizational leaders out there as you plot the year ahead, don’t forget to build in multiple ways in which you’re sharpening the axe and not just swinging it.
When talking to organizations about evaluation, I often find myself explaining evaluation on two levels.
These levels ask two related, but different questions.
1. Did the organization take the specific action steps called for in the Strategic Plan?
2. Did the organization achieve the Objectives of the Strategic Plan? This latter question doesn’t ask: did we do what we set out to do? It asks the equally important question: Did doing what we set out to do change the world in the way we hoped?
In evaluating whether Objectives were achieved, organizations need to take into account that some Objectives (eg. those related to fundraising) are easily quantified and thus easy to measure. Other Objectives are more subjective and should be evaluated with the eye of a trial lawyer marshaling facts towards a conclusion.
There will be times when the organization does everything it set out to do, but intervening factors (e.g a recession) will prevent it from accomplishing its Objectives. Conversely, sometimes organizations fail to implement their tactics, but nonetheless achieve their Objectives because intervening forces are in its favor.
In the end, both levels of evaluation are critical. If you fail to determine if you did what you set out to do, an organization will develop a culture lacking in accountability. But if you fail to ask the second question, you may congratulate yourselves on implementing your plan, but learn nothing of value to figuring out what you should be doing in the future.
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