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The Culture-Building Concept of “Porpoising”

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In our recent workshop, Cultivating a Robust and Collaborative Nonprofit Culture, the Applied Wisdom for Nonprofits leadership team introduced us to the idea of “porpoising.” This concept involves a deep-dive into your organization to uncover valuable insights at all levels. When nonprofit leaders periodically porpoise and practice observant listening amongst the organization’s diverse groups, they can detect signs of trouble before things spiral out of control. To build trust, be present, visible, and respectful when someone shares a problem or issue. To maintain trust, demonstrate action on the information given. Applied Wisdom for Nonprofits suggests that “no news is bad news” and “bad news is good news if you do something about it.” If things are quiet for too long, it may be time to porpoise. And if you find bad news, it presents a great opportunity to find—and celebrate—solutions together.

More information on the Applied Wisdom for Nonprofits principles, including porpoising and the Bad News is Good News philosophy, can be found here.

Does Your Board Work or Govern?

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Do you know if your board is a working board or a governing board? Although we use these terms all the time, this is a trick question! All boards are governing boards. Their first and foremost responsibility is managing the organization: making policy and strategy decisions, overseeing and monitoring organizational performance, and ensuring accountability. Volunteer-run or small-staffed organizations’ board members may also have working responsibilities in addition to governance responsibilities, such as program delivery. Because program delivery is often the most fun part of the job, it’s natural to want to focus your time and energy on direct service.

However, things get sticky when procedures, policies, and roles aren’t clearly defined. When board members disagree on the difference between the “must do” responsibilities and the “nice to do” activities, it can cause friction or result in compliance issues.

It may be time to review your activities and ensure that governance comes first if:
• your board meetings continually go off topic,
• committee updates take more than ten minutes of a board meeting, or
• your board spends more time discussing details than big picture items.

Spokes’ Board Academy provides the perfect opportunity to explore:

• Board Member roles and responsibilities
• Governance to achieve your mission
• Legal responsibilities of board service

Whether you’ve served on your board for one year or ten years, this training will give you new tools and knowledge to make your board function more effectively.

Want to learn more about working versus governing boards? Compass Point has more to say on the subject here: https://www.compasspoint.org/board-cafe/working-board-vs-governing-board

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.

Create Cultural Values, Create Value for Your Nonprofit

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Lots of nonprofit organizations tend to “skip” the creation of cultural values for their organization.  Are you one of them?  If so, you may be missing a valuable opportunity to establish a tool that will help you more effectively identify and recruit board members, staff and volunteers who can best move your mission forward.

Most business management mantras will dictate that having the “right” team members is critical to the success of any organization.  But, how do you know if your team members are the “right” ones?  How do you evaluate or identify if a prospective team member understands and embodies the key values needed to realize your mission if you haven’t yet defined those values for the organization as a whole?

The value of your values may start with building your nonprofit’s leadership, staff and volunteer teams, but that value grows as it permeates every layer of your organization.

Take strategic planning, for instance.  After confirming your vision and mission, it’s important to clarify your organization’s values – the “rules of engagement” for how your team (board members, staff, and volunteers) will treat each other, your donors and, most importantly, the men, women and children you serve.  If your organization is fortunate to have a broad team with individuals independently working towards common strategic goals, its important that they share and abide by a core set of values to ensure that they can a) identify and recruit more of the “right” folks, as needed; b) meet minimal expectations for individual performance and c) create consistency in the interactions they each have with your organization’s various external stakeholders.Remember, too, that the work of a nonprofit (perhaps life, in general) rarely progresses in a linear fashion.  Unforeseen and unexpected events pop up all the time.  Having great policies in place will help you weather the worst case scenarios that may arise from most unforeseen events.  But, what about that exceptional event that falls outside all of your policies?  What then?  Think of your organization’s values as an umbrella insurance policy for the work of your organization.  When all other policies fail to provide adequate direction for a specific circumstance, your organizational values serve as an ultimate guide for each of your team members to help them make the very best decision possible.

Values are most valuable when they are regularly reviewed, modified as needed and disseminated throughout every level of your organization.  If it’s been a while since your organization has reviewed its corporate values – or if your organization doesn’t have any written values – consider allocating 15 minutes of your next board meeting to have a thoughtful review or discussion about them.  Use Spokes’ Core Values Worksheet to help identify what values are most critical for your organization at this point in your history.  Starting from scratch?  Identify at least three core values as a start.  Know that the board is always able to add new values as they may be identified – or rewrite previous ones.

To help you start the conversation about values within your organization, consider sharing this video: http://bigthink.com/videos/culture-at-30000-feet-above-ground from Dr. Frances Frei, Professor, Harvard Business School, and Anne Morriss, Chief Knowledge Officer of Concire Leadership Institute.  (The video is directed to for-profit companies in the service industries; please remind your colleagues that every nonprofit is a service organization.)

Spokes’ HINDsight

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What do you & Spokes do?

I am the CEO of Spokes, a nonprofit organization that provides training and resources to the Directors, executive management and staff of nonprofits to help them better manage their organizations, meet compliance standards and exceed expectations of the public trust.

What was the original goal tied to your HINDsight?  What did you set out to do?

We wanted to redefine the way Spokes measured its programmatic success.  Historically, our organization quantified its success based on the number of workshop attendees or resource libraries.  We could assume or hope that we had some impact on improving the management skills of those we served, but we didn’t know for sure.

The idea was to create an online assessment tool, eventually named the Nonprofit Capacity Assessment Tool (NPOCAT), that allowed nonprofit organizations to measure how they were performing in key management areas.  The tool would gather input from both Directors and staff and provide an easy-to-read compilation report.  Spokes would review that report and, where the scores were lowest, identify and provide resources to improve performance in that area.  Organizations would take the assessment at least annually, and, as their scores (hopefully) increased, we could confirm our impact and success toward our mission.

What actually happened?

I, personally, spent several months identifying well-reputed measurement tools, negotiating partnerships and permissions to use them and working with a hired computer programmer to design and launch the tool. We invested $5,000 into the creation of the tool – a considerable amount for our modest budget. I promoted the new tool widely to our members and throughout our community.

Then we launched it and the first few folks used the assessment.   Lots of folks had complaints.  For some, the assessment questionnaire was way too long and burdensome (approx. 80 questions).  For larger organizations, it was a bit redundant as some already had to conduct similar assessments for their industry certification programs.  For smaller organizations, the majority of our users, there was a major disconnect.  Where we used terms like “Human Resources,” smaller, all-volunteer organizations stumbled assuming that the term only extended to employees.  In our opinion a nonprofit organization’s human resources include all volunteers and staff.   It was clear that the tool was going to need a major re-writing before it would become widely-used and valued.

What was the final outcome?  What did you learn?

Ultimately, we have chosen not to rewrite the NPOCAT.   We may still rewrite and reconfigure it at a later date, but for now, we’ve put it to rest and replaced it with a different, easier-to-use tool – the Standards for Excellence Organizational Assessment and Implementation Planning Tool©.  It will require more effort on our part to compile the results of the tool, but the adoption of the tool will be easier and the ease-of-use for our members will be much improved – and these are critical steps as we seek to measure our success.

In HINDsight, I would not have invested in programming the tool before I did more pilot study.  Although the tools we adopted for the NPOCAT had already been tested and piloted, they hadn’t been tested with our local target audience which is very unique in its number of smaller organizations.  The new tool was created for theMaryland nonprofit sector, which mirrors the SLO County nonprofit sector in both quantity and budget size.  I know to test a survey before implementing it, but I failed to recognize this tool as the survey that it essentially is.  To have tested sections of questions using a less expensive resource like SurveyMonkey, which we already use, would have allowed me to recognize the problems, program the tool differently and improve our chances for a more successful launch of the NPOCAT.  It was an expensive lesson to learn, but one I won’t forget.  There is some more advanced support curriculum for the new tool that comes with a considerable price tag.  Before we invest this time, I am focusing just on the basic tool.  So far, the response has been extremely positive and, if it continues, we’ll be able to make additional investments with confidence.

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