Spokes For Nonprofits, Author at Spokes | Resources for Nonprofits

Managing Conflict

March 28, 2022 by Spokes For Nonprofits

Do you have advice about how to manage conflict on our board? We seem to be in two camps and can’t agree on what to do.

Conflict is bound to arise when a group of people is involved in a common endeavor. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, differing opinions can lead to creative solutions. On the other hand, serious and unresolved conflict can cripple an organization. Here are some suggestions for preventing, managing, and resolving conflict gleaned from some expert resources.

Pointers

In her article “Moving From Dissonance to Harmony: Managing Conflict on the Board,” Jill Sarah Moscowitz offers these basic pointers:

Start by reminding yourselves of your common interest in furthering the mission of organization
Identify the key issues. Even if they seem obvious, take the time to label them and write them down.
Begin with facts rather than assertions.
Avoid taking about “my position” versus “your position.” Instead, seek out your common interests. What do you all want to see accomplished.
Be truly curious. Focus more on listening than having the answer.

Face-to-Face Communication

Writing in “Managing Conflict: A Guide for Volunteer Boards,” E. Grant MacDonald emphasizes that “Confronting a conflict situation almost always can benefit from face-to-face communication.” He suggests holding a series of meetings and offers these recommendations:

Involve a trusted third party to facilitate the meetings.
Insist on confidentiality.
These are private meetings, not board meetings, but they are not secret meetings.
Make sure everyone knows that no decisions will be made in these meetings that bind the organization. The goal is for the parties to agree on recommendations that they will make to the board at large.

Avoiding Conflict

MacDonald also offers these ten practices to help avoid unnecessary conflicts in the first place. Many of them can be part of your board development activities.

Practice good interpersonal communication.
Operate with a strategic plan.
Clarify roles and responsibilities.
Help develop a skilled chairperson.
Learn about conflict resolutions processes.
Establish a code of conduct for directors.
Encourage performance evaluation.
Implement a grievance procedure.
Celebrate agreements and new understandings.
Look to gender and cultural differences as a way out of a mess.

References:

Moving From Dissonance to Harmony: Managing Conflict on the Board

Managing Conflict: A Guide for Volunteer Boards

Short Bylaws?

March 9, 2022 by Spokes For Nonprofits

Do you have a good example of short bylaws? Ours seem so lengthy.

That question came up in our Board Academy Governance session. The key to good bylaws is to cover all the bases carefully and stop there.

Your bylaws need to provide clear rules for how to operate your nonprofit. For example, your bylaws need to specify how many directors you have, how and when they are elected, and the length of their terms. Similarly, your bylaws need to specify what officers you have, their terms, how and when they are elected, and what they are required to do.

That said, your bylaws shouldn’t attempt to “micromanage” your organization. For example, your bylaws might state that your board president “will preside over meetings of the board and execute other duties as assigned by the board of directors.” If you want the president to do more than preside at meetings, write a job description for the president, formally adopt it, and record that in the minutes.

Another example relates to committees. If you have an executive committee, your bylaws should certainly say so and specify what that committee is authorized to do. As for other committees, include in the bylaws how they may be formed and constituted. Every committee needs a specific, written charge but it can be adopted by the board; it does not have to be in your bylaws.

Here are some resources to explore.

Nonprofit Bylaws Made Easy: Tips and Best Practices – Donorbox – clear, straightforward explanation
Sample Nonprofit Bylaws | Nolo – also clear. Reminds us, “When your bylaws do not address an issue that is addressed by state law, your nonprofit must follow the laws of your state.”
The 15 Most Common Nonprofit Bylaw Pitfalls: How to Avoid the Traps – this what “not to do” article also provides guidance in what to do.
BYLAWS OF A California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation – a useful sample

A Nonprofit’s Guide to Online Communication

May 11, 2020 by Spokes For Nonprofits

When you’re part of a nonprofit, the ability to communicate online with your donors, volunteers, staff members, and the general community is integral. More people than ever before are turning to social networking sites while sheltering-in-place. Below is a brief overview of the benefits and drawbacks as well as the tips and features of each of the three major social media platforms. Understanding these platforms will help you make an informed decision about how to use these tools to support you achieving your nonprofit’s goals. Email newsletters are another opportunity for online communication that we will explore.

Facebook

Facebook has the largest number of active users worldwide which will allow you to reach a large range of audiences. The age of Facebook users also trends a little higher than other platforms so it is often where organizations are able to connect with donor audiences, which can fluctuate depending on your donor demographics. If your nonprofit serves clients or members through events or holds fundraising events, even virtual events, Facebook can be a useful tool. Users are able to live stream videos so followers can participate in events from the comfort of their home. Special event listings can be created to invite people and collect RSVPs.

Facebook also offers a very user-friendly and cost effective advertisement feature. It allows you to choose a goal (such as more engagement) and create your ideal audience for your ad. For as little as $1 a day, you can reach hundreds of Facebook users every day. It is important to note that the copy and visuals of your ad should be created in a thoughtful way to ensure it will resonate with your target audiences for the best results.

To gain more organic engagement and interest, you can also create ongoing Facebook stories that will be available at the top of your followers’ pages for 24 hours. Creative content in stories is a way to keep your donors, volunteers and clients informed on what is happening in your organization and can help you stay top of mind.

Instagram

Because Facebook owns Instagram, users are able to post to both of accounts simultaneously and any ads that run on Facebook can run on Instagram too. Instagram also has a similar ‘story’ feature to Facebook, though it has the additional functionality of creating ‘story highlights’ from stories you’ve posted in the past and make it even easier for people to find the information they need. Story highlights are linked to your profile and are often grouped under a similar theme, like FAQs, Wellness Tips, Member Stories, and any other themes that are relevant to your organization. Like Facebook, you can go ‘live’ on Instagram as well.

A drawback of Instagram is that you cannot add links to your posts. The only place you can add a link to a website is in your bio. This can make it more challenging to advertise events (without a ticket link) and make posts about donating to your cause.

Organizations who will most benefit from using Instagram are those who are focused heavily on reaching the millennial generation. It is important to note that to succeed in this platform, images shared must be engaging and high quality so it is important to evaluate your capacity for producing images before committing to using this platform.

Twitter

While Twitter only has about ⅓ of the monthly active users as Instagram, tweeting is still a very quick and efficient way to get information out. It is easy to post and repost other tweets and its profile/bio feature looks similar to Instagram’s.

The main benefit of Twitter is, while Facebook and Instagram allow you to add hashtags to your post, adding hashtags to a tweet allows it to be easily discovered by accounts that don’t follow you. This is the easiest way to gain more followers on Twitter and educate more people about your nonprofit’s goal. A quick tip for hashtags is to make them short and sweet and try to find popularly used ones if possible.

Email Newsletters

Before creating your email newsletter, it’s important to decide on your goal. Newsletters can highlight many things, including relevant articles, upcoming events, testimonials, links to resources, call for volunteers or donations, etc. You can create incentives on social media to encourage followers to sign up for your newsletter and make sure that the sign up feature is prominent on your website.

If you have under 2,000 subscribers, using a website like MailChimp is free to create a newsletter template, link to your social media accounts and import your enewsletter mailing list. MailChimp also offers tools that will allow you to measure how many people are reading your newsletter and interacting with links to see what content is resonating with your audiences and which content could be adjusted. For more tips about how to make your newsletter stand out and some premade templates, visit this blog post.

In using these different online channels, it is important to note that you must be able to create engaging content in order to build an engaged audience. The quality of content matters. Determine what messages and types of content will represent your nonprofit well. Keep the interest of your followers with a majority of engaging (fun, motivating cause strong feelings of affection or compassion, shareable and likeable), and the remaining about 16% of your posts should be practical tips and promotional for your organization. Free photos can be found on sites like Unsplash or Pexels. If you need to create a more custom designed image, free sites like Canva are a great resource. If you’re creating your organization’s first social media account, it is often recommended to start with Facebook and then expand to Instagram and/or Twitter depending on your specific goals.

Now that we have explored outward facing communication channels, don’t miss out on our next workshop in our free Technology series focused on Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams. To register, visit our workshop page.

Three Ways to Increase Productivity During Online Meetings

May 4, 2020 by Spokes For Nonprofits

Here at Spokes, we know that people are going through challenging times. As we all try to settle into the new, virtual workplace, there are bound to be some missteps and your online meetings may not be as productive as they once were in-person. Being in front of a video camera can feel impersonal and can cause many distractions as well. But the work you do is important so it is also important to make sure that your meetings are as productive as they can be. Three ways to do this include creating a clear agenda, keeping the meetings engaging and fun, and decreasing other distractions as much as possible.

Create a Clear Agenda

Sometimes it’s difficult to stay on track during online meetings. This can be alleviated with a clear, effecting meeting agenda. The agenda should include participant introductions (if necessary) and welcome greetings as well. However, the most important part of the agenda is the topics that are to be discussed. You can make sure the meeting stays on track by seeking input about what topics you cover from other staff members to ensure they are all relevant. You should also phrase the topics as a clear question to be answered. This will help dissipate any confusion about what the discussion is about and will allow participants to make contributions that are on topic because they must answer the given question. Once you have your agenda, it is important to stick to it. This can be done by adding estimated time intervals to each agenda topic. For example,

12:30 Introductions

12:35 How can we redesign the website to encourage more donations through our link?

It’s not imperative that you stick to the exact minute that is on the agenda, but it creates some accountability and other members will know they can speak up if the group has been discussing the same topic and getting nowhere for thirty minutes. Finally, it can be useful to send out your completed agenda a few hours/the day before the meeting so participants can go over it on their own and start generating ideas.

Keep Meetings Engaging and Fun

Some structure, like a clear agenda, is necessary, but so is thinking outside the box! In 2012, the Harvard Business Review analyzed hundreds of studies and found what we’ve known all along to be true, that happier employees really are more productive. With the toll that COVID-19 has taken on everyone, it is important now more than ever to make sure your team members stay happy. On a surface level, this can look like changing up the “theme” of each meeting and encouraging everyone to participate. Some ideas include tea time, funky hat day, bring your pets to work day, etc. Just remember that you have to participate as well so others will follow suit! No one wants to log in to the meeting on funky hat day and be the only one wearing their bedazzled cowboy hat. However, it is arguably more important to foster happiness by checking in with your team members and fostering a psychologically safe environment during your meetings. You can offer yourself as someone to talk to and empathize with when being in quarantine gets too overwhelming. When team members are worried, they aren’t very focused. Keeping your meetings engaging and fun can eliminate some of that internal distraction, but what about other environmental factors?

Decrease Distractions as Much as Possible

Attending a meeting in your home office or your bedroom is a much different experience than attending one in a conference room. Other devices may pull your attention away from the task at hand and make it much more difficult to follow along. Making an effort to decrease the prevalence of other devices as much as possible is something that can really help. This includes silencing your phone (maybe putting it in a different room), deleting the other tabs open on your computer, and turning off any television or music playing. However, it can be impossible to eliminate all distractions when some team members are working from a house that has other people and pets living there as well. The attention-grabbing effects of these other distractions can be minimized by encouraging active listening and note taking. This allows you to really focus on what the speaker is saying and it gives you something other than the agenda to look back on if you have a question after the meeting ends.

With these tips, you can take a boring, off-track meeting and turn it into a productive one with happier team members. Sometimes, creating a clear agenda, keeping your meetings engaging and fun, and decreasing other distractions is all it takes to see a boost in productivity. Remember, Spokes is here to support you so please contact us if you’d like any more information about increasing productivity during your online meetings.

Tools to Engage Volunteers While Sheltering-in-place

April 27, 2020 by Spokes For Nonprofits

The situation due to COVID-19 has led all of us to make a great amount of changes in a very short amount of time. While sheltering-in-place is necessary to keep us all safe, it is proving to make running a nonprofit more challenging than usual. Luckily, there are ways to combat some of the difficulties presented by this new reality and keep your nonprofit functioning while sheltering-in-place.

Because of these difficulties, those working with volunteers may find that they are unable to put in as many hours as they normally do. Not all work can be completed from home and volunteers who deliver direct services are unable to do so due to sheltering and distancing. You might find yourself in need of additional volunteers or new volunteers with different skill sets are needed to navigate the next few months. While in-person training has been suspended until further notice, we’d like to highlight other ways to safely and effectively provide prospective volunteers with necessary information and training. For example, one alternative would be to create a training video to send via email or post on your website. The goal is not to create a professional quality video – just a recording of the presentation you normally make at an in-person training. Another option is using an application like Powtoon to create animated training videos that are fun to both make and watch!

A second alternative to in-person training is using a video communications platform like Zoom or Google Hangouts to conduct your training virtually. Visit this Business Insider article for a comparison of the two platforms. One of these options will look the most similar to your normal training sessions and will only require that you invite prospective volunteers to the training, providing them with the information they will need to join the meeting. If recruiting new volunteers is too challenging and yet more help in certain areas is needed, consider cross-training current staff and volunteers to perform key duties within your nonprofit. Now is the time to really utilize the diverse skill sets of your wonderful staff and volunteers! This training can be virtual, as discussed above, or can be delivered in-person to employees who are deemed essential workers under the shelter-in-place order.

Though some counties are exploring plans to reopen, there is no set date for lifting the shelter-at-home mandate and no guarantee that life will return to normal anytime soon. Consequently, it’s imperative to innovate and identify new technologies and solutions to sustain meaningful engagement with your organization’s stakeholders, including volunteers, donors, and employees working remotely. This can be done by hosting virtual social gatherings, creating/maintaining an email newsletter, and establishing a strong social media presence for your organization. A small reminder about your organization’s mission, highlighting a shared love for service, and expressing a desire to continue helping your community can go a long way with your organization’s extended community.

Remember, you’re not alone. Spokes is working alongside you to find new ways to safely and virtually provide the management support and resources you need. Please contact us if you would like more specific assistance managing volunteers and sustaining stakeholder relationships remotely.