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Four Steps To Prevent Stress

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Stress and burnout plague everyone in every sector. Nonprofit employees, however, seem to suffer especially. If we all spent five minutes jotting down the causes of our stress, we’d probably have fairly similar lists: emotionally draining work, constant urgency of needs, limited resources to do the work, low pay, not enough time in the day, etc. And, surprisingly, we’d all miss the only true cause of stress: rumination.

In his article, “Pressure Doesn’t Have to Turn into Stress,” published in the Harvard Business Review on March 16, 2017, Nicholas Petrie explains that the “causes” we would put on our list are actually not stresses but, rather, pressures. We create stress when we choose to react to pressures with rumination – the act of rethinking past or future events while attaching negative emotion to those thoughts.

Different folks can face the exact same pressures but experience very different levels of stress because of their individual reactions. For those who are interested in reducing their stress-levels, this is great news! Your stress-level can be entirely within your control with practice and discipline. Petrie offers the following four steps to help you:

Wake up and be present. Most rumination occurs when we are daydreaming or not focused on our current actions. Try some physical tricks like sitting up, clapping your hands or moving your body to bring you into the present. Get busy and re-engage with tasks at hand.

Focus on taking useful action. Petrie suggests the following exercise: Draw a circle on a page, and write down all of the things you can control or influence inside it and all of things you cannot outside if it. Remind yourself that you can care about externalities — your work, your team, your family — without worrying about them.

Put things in perspective. Petrie suggest three strategies for gaining a healthy perspective of your situation. One is a questioning exercise in which you ask yourself:  “How much will this matter in three years’ time?” and “What’s the worst that could happen?” and “How would I survive it?”.

Let go. Petrie admits that this is the hardest step to take. It has three required components: accept the situation, learn from the experience, and take appropriate action to move through and out of your situation.

Read Petrie’s entire article here and start a stress-free Spring tomorrow!

https://hbr.org/2017/03/pressure-doesnt-have-to-turn-into-stress

Is AmeriCorps Right For Your Nonprofit?

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August will be here in a few weeks and so begins a new AmeriCorps season. Soon, thousands of young people will start a year of service working for our local nonprofits. If you’re not familiar with the AmeriCorps program, it is a division of CalSERVES often described as the “Domestic Peace Corps” (more information about the program on their website). The program is credited with cultivating hundreds of today’s nonprofit leaders.

For nonprofits, AmeriCorps offers a subsidized full-time staff person for a period of 10-12 months. Nonprofits apply to host an AmeriCorps member and agree to pay half of the AmeriCorps member’s stipend. For many nonprofits, AmeriCorps provides critically needed staffing capacity at a greatly reduced cost. However, it is an employment program and, just as in any other hiring scenario, participating nonprofits can suffer AmeriCorps “mis-hires.”

If you are considering hosting an AmeriCorps member, we’d like to offer the following tips and
suggestions to ensure that your organization’s participation in the program is as successful as possible:

1. Have a very clearly defined job description.

AmeriCorps must take the candidates who have applied for positions and match them with hosted positions. You enable AmeriCorps to identify the best possible match for your organization when you can be very clear about the skills and abilities you need. What minimal experience do you need your AmeriCorps member to bring to your organization to serve you well? What day-to-day responsibilities will they have? What end product do you hope they deliver at the end of the service term?

Stay true to your job description. It is your right and privilege to request another AmeriCorps candidate if you feel the first one presented to you is unable to fulfill the defined role and responsibilities.

2. Remember that AmeriCorps members are often new to corporate and business environments.

AmeriCorps members are mostly college students who have had minimal, if any, corporate or business environment experience. Nuances of professional behavior and dress may be unknown to them. AmeriCorps offers some training to support its members, but as a host, you will be required to offer additional training and guidance. If you are asking your AmeriCorps member to help with your marketing you may have less training to do than if you’re asking them to interface with donors or clients. Do you have time to offer the guidance and mentorship an AmeriCorps member will need to serve you well?

3. Read the AmeriCorps contract carefully to understand its terms.

Because “mis-hires” happen, it’s important to understand the terms of the AmeriCorps contracts and the amount of time allowed to exit the contract and receive a refund if the AmeriCorps member is not performing to expectations. You’ll also want to confirm the proper procedure for documenting and addressing performance issues related to your AmeriCorps volunteer and what protocol to follow when there are grounds for immediate dismissal, such as incidents of theft. What recourse do you have if suddenly your AmeriCorps volunteer stops showing up for work? Unfortunately, it happens.

4. Re-confirm that the AmeriCorps program is the right fit for your organization.

After following each of the steps above, take a moment to reflect with your board or colleagues if an AmeriCorps volunteer is the best solution for your organization’s needs. If you don’t have the time to successfully mentor your AmeriCorps candidate or if AmeriCorps candidate presented to you is not a good fit for the job, perhaps hiring a part-time employee with more work experience and the ability to work independently is a better use of your limited resources, both with respect to your available time and finances.

AmeriCorps can be a tremendous boost to your organizations productivity when you do the due diligence to support your success. Use these steps to make sure you do.

Help for Best Hiring (and Firing) Practices

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PICMaybe it’s evidence that our economy is really improving and our organizations have more resources to make long-overdue budget and program to expansions? Or, maybe, as our society ages, more longtime volunteers and donors are making the “ultimate gifts” through generous bequests in support of critical operating needs? Or, maybe, volunteer and employee turnover continues to reoccur and has us looking for solutions to end the cycle that plagues our organizations? Whichever the reason, Spokes has received a rash of recent inquiries and requests for assistance in hiring new employees (especially executive leaders), staff restructuring and mergers. In response to these inquiries, we’re pleased to offer a few quick resources and announce the launch of our new Executive Search Services!

Hiring a new employee can elevate your entire organization when you hire the “right” person. Likewise, it can be downright treacherous and cause lots of expensive and collateral damage for the organization and other staff when you hire the “wrong” person. “Background Checks Vary but Need to Be Robust and Fair” by Eden Stiffman, an article recently published by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, offers some practical considerations for researching a candidate before making an offer. Suggestions include using a third-party to conduct a verified background check and establishing a formal policy regarding if/how social media will be reviewed as part of your candidate evaluation. Read the full article here.

NOTE: If your organization would like to conduct background checks on candidates, remember that the California Association of Nonprofits has discounted services available to its members. Your insurance provider may also have cost-effective options for you. And, if you have a payroll services contractor like Paychex, you may have access to employee screening services through your payroll processor. Remember to budget these checks into your search and hiring costs as they can be expensive.

Often, hiring a new employee is proceeded by the unfortunate reality of dismissing another one. The best practices for dismissing an employee due to reorganization are different from the best practices of dismissing an employee for performance-related issues. Read the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s article, “Advice: How to Know if it’s Time to Fire an Employee” by Pratichi Shaw, to learn what steps are best to take for your specific situation. And, the Chronicle’s article “Terminating an Employee: Handling the Aftermath in Your Organization” also by Shaw offers additional advice to help guide your organization through the after-affects of any employee changes.

Looking for a little more hands-on help? Spokes may have just what you’re looking for! We’ve recently finalized and launched our NEW Executive Director Search Services to assist you in finding your organization’s next great leader. We offer a full suite of services from soliciting and evaluating candidate applications to facilitating your interview and decision-making processes. Services can be provided “a la carte” or comprehensively, based on your organization’s unique needs. For more information, please complete our online consulting inquiry form or call our offices at 805-547-2244.

Support Volunteers Who Drive Your Organization Forward

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CalNonprofits is notifying nonprofits of a little-known provision of the Obama Administration’s 2015 proposed budget: an increase in the rate at which volunteers can deduct the costs of mileage when they drive as part of their volunteer work.

CalNonprofits is encouraging nonprofits statewide to send a letter or message to their Congressional Representatives.  Here’s an easy way to get their contact information if you need it, and a sample letter is below.

CalNonprofits acknowledges that, while there are many issues in the budget that have higher impact than volunteer mileage reimbursement, it’s important for nonprofits to speak out on this issue to collectively raise the profile of volunteerism as an important economic and social force for communities.

SAMPLE LETTER

Dear ______

I/we write this letter in support of the Volunteer Mileage Reimbursement Rate portion of the Administration’s 2015 budget proposal. As documented on page 272 of “General Explanations of the Administration’s 2015 Revenue Proposals,” it states:

“Under current law, taxpayers may deduct unreimbursed expenses directly related to the use of an automobile in giving services to a charitable organization. As an alternative to tracking actual expenses, taxpayers may use a standard mileage rate of 14 cents per mile. This rate is set by statute and is not indexed for inflation or otherwise adjusted overtime. . . .  The proposal would set the standard mileage rate for the charitable contribution deduction equal to the rate set by the IRS for purposes of medical and moving expense deduction [23.5 cents per mile].”

We still believe that when taxpayers use their own cars as volunteers to drive patients to doctor appointments, deliver meals to the homebound, or to get to a Habitat for Humanity worksite, they should be able to deduct the same amount per mile that business owners can — which is currently 56 cents per mile. Nonetheless, an increase to 23.5 cents per mile is a helpful improvement from the extremely low and unfair rate of 14 cents per mile.

As was demonstrated in the recent economic impact study of California’s nonprofit sector — Causes Count — more than one in four Californians volunteer, and California volunteers do the equivalent work of 450,000 full-time workers. In nonprofits of all sizes, there are more volunteers than paid staff. In short, California nonprofits are not only major employers, they leverage the work of millions of volunteers in service of their communities. It makes no sense for a lawyer, for instance, to be able to deduct 56 cents per mile when she drives to see a client, but only 14 cents a mile when as a volunteer she drives to a school to talk about the Constitution to high school students.

We urge you to support the inclusion of this provision in the final bill that is passed.

Sincerely,

Name, Title, Organization

Give It A Break Already! Working too much can hurt productivity.

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What do Americans, Japanese and Korean workers all have in common? They all come from cultures that equate working long hours with high performance and productivity. And, they’re all wrong.

In fact, Japan and Korea rank lowest worldwide for individual worker productivity.  And, the United States is ranked by the World Health Organization as the most anxious country in the world.

The American nonprofit sector tends to take this myth a step further with its chronic understaffing and a pervasive martyr-complex, which implies that creating meaningful change requires great personal sacrifice. As a result, burnout rates among nonprofit employees are rising with 3 out of 4 executive directors planning to leave their jobs within the next 5 years.

For the sake of the public that relies on the programs and services of our nonprofit organizations, it’s time for us to shift our definition of a “good employee.” Would you rather have an employee who works 60 hours in the office to complete his/her tasks, gets bored and cruises social media sites throughout the day and frequently misses work days due to illness? OR, would you rather have an employee who works 32 hours a week to complete his/her tasks and spends more time rejuvenating with friends and family and practicing good self-care?

Brigid Schulte has written a new book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, about why work has become overwhelming for so many people and how nonprofit leaders can ease the burden for their staffs. Her tips include encouraging staff to take regular breaks after each 90 minutes of concentrated work. And, to stop scheduling so many meetings!

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