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Who Can I Add to Our Email List?

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If someone gives me their email, may we add them to our email list? Or if someone has their email on their public website, may we subscribe that address?

We all want to build our contact lists to be sure we get the word out about the great work our nonprofits are doing and how people can be involved. That said, there are legal requirements you need to know and follow.

First, it is simply a best practice, and often legally necessary, to get permission from people before adding them to your list. If you’re having a conversation with someone, ask, “May I add you to our email list?” Odds are, they will say yes. If they say no, you probably wouldn’t want them on your list anyway. The main point is don’t assume because the person happened to share their email with you for some purpose that it’s OK to subscribe them to your list.

What about those email addresses you find on an organization’s website? Clearly, the emails are there for use by the public to communicate with the organization, but that doesn’t give you permission to subscribe them to your email list. You might, however, send them a single email that explains why you think they might want to receive your emails, and include a link for them to subscribe themselves.

Even when you have permission to include a person’s email in your list, be sure each of your marketing emails (e.g. your newsletter, announcements or programs or fundraisers, etc.) includes a link for people to opt out of receiving future emails.

Resources for further information:

Credible Crisis Coverage

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Spokes would like to thank Leslie Jones, Spokes Consultant and promotional marketing consultant for guest-writing this article. 

When a local natural disaster, school-related emergency, environmental or health crisis unexpectedly occurs, is your nonprofit ready to be the “voice of expertise” when the media and community start calling? Do you have an effective, written plan in place that can quickly be implemented? Are you prepared to be a reliable source of information?

Delving deeper into our ongoing disaster preparedness theme, we offer a summary of key steps for your nonprofit to build a “community-in-crisis” communications strategy plan.

  • Choose a primary spokesperson and a reliable support team. Your team can include staff, board members, volunteers, and community members. Explain the individual and collective roles.
  • Ensure that everyone on that team needs to share the same outgoing message. It’s helpful to utilize these questions: Who needs to know? What do they need to know? When do they need to know?
  • Prepare current educational fact sheets and statistics to easily share when a crisis occurs. Remember to keep it tightly focused and relevant to your nonprofit’s field of expertise. At the time of the event, you can add relevant information.
  • Keep website and social media pages updated with changes in services/operations.
  • Reconnect with your entire team after the crisis has passed. Brainstorm and openly discuss successes, needed improvements, and challenges.
  • Revise your written action plan based on that follow-up meeting and update all necessary media materials.

For a helpful media strategy checklist from nonprofitrisk.org, click here.

By preparing now for an unanticipated crisis, your nonprofit creates an opportunity to receive heightened, credible coverage. Most importantly, your nonprofit is able to effectively support and assist your community when it needs you the most. That is a true success story!

Finding Success with a Succession Plan!

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There is change afoot in the nonprofit sector; in San Luis Obispo County and across the country, boards are seeking new presidents, and nonprofit executives are transitioning to new jobs. Even in our Spokes microcosm, the search for new leadership is on. CEO Lesley Santos Dierks is moving to a volunteer role as a board of director and consultant. Using Spokes’ carefully crafted succession plan, Spokes board and staff are reorganizing, facilitating great potential in this next phase of Spokes evolution.

Why does your organization need a succession plan? Succession planning is a discipline that enables organizations to reduce reliance on any one person or small group for critical functions, thereby building sustainability. Infusing an organization with new individuals is a healthy opportunity to expand viewpoints, diversify, and clarify the organizational vision. Considering that only 27% of organizations surveyed by the 2017 National Index of Nonprofit Board Practices reported that they had a written succession plan in place, it’s clearly something that needs to be added to the agenda.

Organizations experience leadership transition for a variety of reasons. At a minimum, best practices require regular turnover at the board level with term limits. Sometimes there is an unanticipated opening on the board or staff or a natural transition of a long-time leader. And, maybe your volunteer-run organization is hiring its first executive staff person. In each case, a succession plan is key to keeping stakeholders confident and preventing service recipients from experiencing delays. Here are tips to ensure your organization’s future transitions are as smooth as possible.

  • Create clear job descriptions and roles for all volunteer, board of director, and staff roles; monitor and evaluate successes (and failures).
  • Put policies and procedures on paper so any new volunteer and/or staff can get up and running quickly and efficiently. Start with a simple checklist, and imagine walking someone else through each step. Developing an operations manual for your processes will ensure consistency and uniformity. For details on creating these policies for your organization, click here.
  • Continually train and cross-train all volunteers and/or current staff to minimize disruption from unexpected changes. Job shadow or utilize Lynda.com to help staff and volunteers learn the new skills and technologies they need to succeed one another. Spokes consulting services can also be a huge assist!
  • Spread the wealth: make sure donors have relationships with more than one person in the organization. At your next event, make it a priority to introduce your donors to more members of your leadership team.
  • Spokes offers classes and resources to help your board and staff learn the best practices of nonprofit management. Allow us to train them on the basics while you focus on teaching them the more nuanced functions of your operations.
  • Take advantage of member benefits like Executive Director Roundtables and Board President Roundtables. At your next board or staff meeting, play Spokes Best Practices in Nonprofit Management video series.
  • And, when an unexpected transition occurs despite great succession planning efforts, remember that Spokes offers Executive Search services through its consulting program. Learn more here.

Communication, Conflict & Collaboration

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Whether it is in the workplace or our personal lives, we’ve all dealt with ineffective communication that has eventually led to conflict. To address these issues, Spokes was pleased to have Steffanie Medina and Kelly Donohue of Creative Mediation instruct one of our most recent workshops: “Communication Conflict and Collaboration”. Some highlights from the class include:

There are five steps in any communication process:

Sender –> Message –> Method –> Receiver –> Feedback   (which goes back to the sender – note: even silence can be considered feedback!)

Although this seems like a simple process, there are many ways in which the communication goes astray – one reason being that the expectations may be mismatched from the beginning. For the message to be clear, both the sender and receiver must clarify and understand what is driving the message. Although an expectation may be communicated, there can many underlying interests and layers within that particular expectation.

Handling Conflict

First off, it is helpful that we recognize our own conflict management style. There are four types of styles: confrontive, persuasive, observant/introspective and avoidant. None of these styles are wrong, but there can be pros and cons to each one. We learned that these styles can be situational based (or change after time). Ex: One may be persuasive during conflict at home, but avoidant in a work-setting. What is your conflict management style? Click here to take the survey!

No matter your style of managing conflict, these tips can be helpful when aiming toward resolution:

-Be honest with yourself, ask the other party open-ended questions to find out their wants/needs

-Pay attention to feelings (as they can be clues to the underlying layers)

-Digging for “truth” or “what’s right” doesn’t produce the best solutions.

During the workshop, attendees exchanged ideas and advice in regard to effective communication and conflict resolution. Catalina Coz, Outreach Coordinator at GRID Alternatives, stated:  “I learned powerful tools to communicate more professionally and productively with peers and supervisors.”

Thank you to Steffanie and Kelly for presenting this valuable material!

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