Our February 14, 2012 Executive Director Breakfast Club focused on "How to Love Organizing."

On February 14, 2012, JVA’s Executive Director Breakfast Club tackled all things organization. Guest speaker Julie Gutman, founder of Simplify Me, LLC joined JVA and our group of nonprofit executive directors to talk about personal organization (desks, email, files and more), while JVA’s own Ashley Kasprzak led a discussion about organizing your nonprofit at the board level.

Among the biggest concerns for EDs participating in the breakfast club was meetings. Many wanted to know how to make meetings as effective as possible. Kasprzak suggested that tools like Board Source can help board members prepare for meetings and stay on time. Using a system like Board Source, which allows you to send documents to attendees ahead of time, sets the standard that all participants should be well versed in that meeting’s topics and prepared to either raise questions or vote in a swift manner. This is also a good idea for staff meetings where topics require further discussion or voting. Uploading documents to a server or Google, or even just emailing them ahead of time prevents using meeting time to read and mull over materials. Pose questions in the documents (serious or fun) to ensure that attendees are reading the materials.

In our February Executive Director Academy (EDA), Alyssa Kopf, CEO of Community Shares of Colorado, suggested sending board members an email before the meeting that includes the following: context for the meeting (e.g., “we will be voting on X matter, please review the minutes from X date if you need more info”) and goals (e.g., “to make progress we need to have accomplished X and X goals by the end of the meeting”).

If time is a concern during your meetings, whether you have too much or not enough, come up with creative solutions that fit your organization’s needs. Some suggestions made during ED Breakfast Club were to set a timer, or assign someone to make sure the meeting sticks to the agenda. Other creative solutions from our executive directors include rotating the responsibility of facilitating meetings so each team member develops valuable leadership skills and talking to your team about a schedule for meetings that eliminates redundancy but allows for dedicated time when board or staff members share updates, successes and/or struggles.

Following up after meetings is a great reminder and motivator for people to follow through with commitments made during the meeting, but adding another email to each person’s inbox can be overwhelming. According to Gutman, tools like Action Method Online, used here at JVA, can cut back on the email clutter. Action Method Online stores action items in a system that can be organized by project and date and automatically updates colleagues on the status of an action.

Whatever method of meeting organization you choose, make sure it fits the culture of your nonprofit and that your board and staff are responding to it well. Keeping meeting attendees engaged is the ultimate goal, so make sure they are responding to the organizational changes you make and adjust your strategy as needed.

When executive directors hire new staff members, they want to be sure that the new hire will embrace the established organizational culture. At JVA’s most recent Executive Director Breakfast Club session, participants focused on this topic. Following are some strategies, suggested by breakfast club participants, to ensure that new staff/volunteers understand and embrace your organization’s culture:

• Bring on people who already “get it,” i.e., they have a background in the mission of your organization and/or are passionate about your cause.
• Don’t rely just on the interview; talk to references and use Mountain States Employers Council for prospective employee assessment tools.
• Acknowledge that it takes time to see people’s character—establish clear probationary periods of employment.
• Train staff on processes and culture before you let them loose on their own.
• Model culture for staff by bringing them to public presentations.
• Give volunteers titles and job descriptions so it is clear to them what they are supposed to do. Encourage them to have ownership of the organization.
• Build a team—make sure that all staff and volunteers have a copy of your organization’s core values.
• Share stories with staff and volunteers about those benefiting from your organization and why you do things the way you do them.

Breakfast club participants also shared that a negative organizational culture can be due to several factors: staff who haven’t been trained well enough; staff who have been directed to work independently too soon; staff who haven’t been given enough ongoing support and direction. However, the group acknowledged that failures can provide just as many lessons as successes. The most important lessons: Infusing the organization’s culture throughout the nonprofit is a key role of the executive director.

We all want to appreciate staff and volunteers for a job well done. Yet many nonprofits may not have the financial capability or structures for things like bonuses or incentive compensation, rewards that are used in the private sector as part of performance management systems.

At Tuesday morning’s Executive Director Breakfast Club, we had the opportunity to facilitate a great discussion on performance management with area nonprofit leaders.

When we reached the topic of incentives and rewards, we were so taken by all the innovative ideas our execs had to recognize and reward staff that we wanted to share with all of you on Nonprofit Street. Here are some of the best:

• Give shout outs at weekly staff meetings, being specific about what you’re recognizing staff members for
• Forward complimentary emails about staff and volunteers around the office (at JVA, we post them on a bulletin board and on the fridge as well)
• Have a bubbly non-alcoholic drink in the fridge and pop it open every time your organization experiences a success, large or small
• Invite staff and volunteers for a meal at your home
• Recognize staff by taking them to dinner at a hard-to-get-into restaurant
• Write personalized thank-you notes—one executive director noted that she writes them to her staff and that they’ve kept them for years
• Give your managers a budget of $10 per volunteer/staff member and allow them to use it as they wish to recognize hard work and great performance (this way, recognition can be personalized to the individual—if you know your volunteer loves tulips, you can get them a nice bouquet, or if your development assistant just wrote her 100th successful grant, you can get her a bracelet engraved with the words “Successful 100 Times Over” on it)
• Give a spontaneous day off—a “mental health” day when someone has been working hard

The overall consensus was to be authentic when rewarding staff and volunteers. If you are an ED or manager who believes your staff’s reward is getting to do what they love and get paid for it, don’t send a mushy note if it’s not your style. As one of the participants at  Breakfast Club so honestly put it, if you reward a volunteer or a staff member in a way that is not consistent with your style, “they’ll know you just got back from a how-to training!” We’re not saying don’t reward or appreciate your staff—just do it in a way that is true to you as a manager. Whatever you decide to do to recognize your employees and volunteers should be unique to your personality and theirs.

Are you an executive director looking to connect with others to network and discuss topics, like rewarding your staff, that are important to your work? If so, join JVA’s Executive Director Breakfast Club.