Jonathan Poisner Strategic Consulting

Communications consultant Natalie Bennon recently published 13 tips for email that gets results.

If you’re just getting started in email communications for a nonprofit or if you want a quick refresher, it’s worth looking at her tips.

Email remains the most critical means of communicating with most supporters and potential supporters.  It’s worth your time to ensure you’re using best practices to get the biggest impact from your list.

I was talking with someone recently about the struggle of getting a board and staff to stay aligned around a planned set of activities.

In the course of the conversation, I came up with a theory as to why they were having so much difficulty.

The problem is they had agreed on what to do, but they had never articulated in writing why.  Over time, those differences in why were causing some of the participants to believe a switch should now happen because circumstances had changed.

In addition, they had brought on new board and staff members who weren’t part of the original decision and were only presented with the plan for what they were going to do.  Not knowing why, they were less likely to embrace it.

That’s why it’s critical in plans not just to say what you’re going to do, but to include enough of the “why” to make agreements durable over time.  That means agreeing upon the “lay of the land” or underlying facts driving the decision.  And it means agreeing upon strategic assumptions or a theory about the way the world works to reached a shared understanding of why doing what you’re planning will have the impact you desire and expect.   Sometimes this is organization-wide as a “theory of change.”  Oftentimes it’s more granular, program by program.

This can make plans longer.  So it may be some of this is in an appendix.

Bottom line: articulating “why” along with “what” will make your plans more durable as a means of aligning staff and board.

A riddle that I recently was told (again).  I know I’ve heard this before, but couldn’t remember where/when.  If anybody knows the original source, please let me know.

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.

This is an especially appropriate riddle for a planning consultant.  The best made plans are meaningless unless there is a commitment to action and an ability to hold people accountable to follow through on their decisions.

As a practical matter, that means decisions shouldn’t be considered “done” until it’s very clear who will take action and by when.

In early May 2013, I published my first book.  Why Organizations Thrive: Lessons from the Front Lines for Nonprofit Executive Directors. 

In the first week, more than 100 individuals downloaded it.

If you read it, please give me feedback.

What did you find helpful?  What did you find confusing?

Feel free to just email me at jonathan@poisner.com, or use the comment sections to leave a review.

Thanks!

I recently had the opportunity to read an excellent white paper by Jon Stahl and Matt Price on the topic of Engagement Organizing.

It’s well worth the read.

Here’s the nutshell version:

Engagement Organizing in their words is a set of inter-related practices that are designed to simultaneously use the latest technology to organize and drive real-world personal one-on-one conversations that, in turn, lead to organizational supporters moving up a ladder of engagement in support of the organization’s mission.

Here are 3 points Stahl and Price make that I think are worth elaborating on:

1. You must invest in data management.  Organizations that underinvest in data management are in far worse shape than those that overinvest. And the data management system must be one that everyone in your organization can utilize — not just a database administrator.

2. You must have a culture that emphasizes personal relationships that are built in-person, with the phone a major tool as well.  I’ve seen too many organizers in the last few years who think that organizing begins and ends on the internet.  The internet makes certain things much cheaper.  But in the end of the day, the phone is a critical means of reaching people, and only in-person relationships are the type that generate true organizational buy-in.

3. You must trust your volunteer leaders if you want them to take responsibility to lead.  I like to call this my Spiderman theory of organizing: “with great power, comes great responsibility,” to quote the comic book character.  Organizations that empower individuals outside staff and board to advance their program are more likely to succeed.  And that will only happen if you give them real responsibility.  I recently heard an Executive Director justify a decision to strip away power from volunteers by saying: “we had to do that because the tail shouldn’t wag the dog.”  In my opinion, this is setting the organization up for failure, as dog is entirely the wrong metaphor for an organization.  Organizations that centralize decision-making and control at a time when the world is becoming more networked are setting themselves up for decline.  Organizations that understand Engagement Organizing will get this.

I’ll be curious to hear what other folks think about the White Paper. If you’ve had a chance to read it and have thoughts, please comment here or shoot me an email.