Which Operational Model Describes Your Board?

All boards share a common set of responsibilities. That said, what is the right model for how your board actually operates?  

As a nonprofit leader, you should know and care about the type of board you have and the responsibilities of each member. This information can offer clarity about your important work and help guide key decisions.

Every nonprofit board will fall broadly under one of these two descriptions: a working board or a governing board.

Working Boards

A working board is the typical model for small nonprofits with a limited budget and no or minimal staff. In this model the board does the bulk of the work. A working board is sometimes also called an operational board. 

The duties and makeup of working board members may look different depending on the organization's needs. There will generally be a chairperson and treasurer, along with roles such as volunteer coordinator, marketing coordinator, membership coordinator, and secretary. It is helpful for board members to have expertise in these areas if they fill a specific role. All members should have strong project management skills to stay on top of the tasks required. 

As an organization grows and develops a larger budget and staff, the board typically evolves from a working board to a governance board. 

GovernANCE Boards

A governing board focuses on strategic oversight rather than doing the day-to-day work. Like a working board, the governing board is responsible for ensuring the organization works to meet its mission and complies with required governance.

Governing boards work with the executive director and hold them accountable for their performance. 

Common governance boards include the cooperative governance model, the Patron governance model, advisory board model, and policy governance model (sometimes referred to as the Carver model.)

Board variations

Both operational models may apply to your nonprofit in some combination. Nonprofits may opt for some sort of mixed governance model to suit their specific needs. There are no “rules” for setting up your model, as long as you meet your legal requirements.

For example, some will have a working board and will bring in an advisory council. Or, they might have a corporate governance model but still form sub-committees for things like fundraising. In an age where flexibility and a willingness to pivot have been critical for nonprofit survival, being willing to update operational models has been vital for many nonprofits.

clarity of responsibilities

Regardless of the model, here are some of the key responsibilities your nonprofit staff and board need to have clarity on to operate effectively:

1. Who hires, oversees, and fires staff?

2. Who creates and executes the strategic plan?

3. Who runs programs?

4. Who is responsible for raising money?

5. Who manages our money?

6. Who addresses legal compliance?

7. Who manages volunteers?

8. Who creates and executes marketing?

9. Who manages our facilities?

There are many more responsibilities that could be listed here but the main point is to collaborate on and then document who does what within your organization. 

When executive directors know the key responsibilities of their staff and board, it reduces confusion and improves work effectiveness. When board members know their key responsibilities it leads to good governance. Combining the two leads to a greater impact on your mission.

Conclusion

Board members play significant roles for nonprofits and good governance is an essential success factor for nonprofits.

Your board needs an operational model that allows them to perform optimally. Boards should not be static. They must change and evolve as their organizations do. Finding the most suitable operational model will help your nonprofit run effectively and smoothly.

A Basic Nonprofit’s Guide to Buying Property or Buildings

Does your nonprofit require a physical space from which to work or provide community services?

Many nonprofits must choose between leasing a suitable space or buying one. While the property market can be tricky to navigate at times, you may be in a position to buy, either with cash or via a nonprofit mortgage loan. 

If you decide to purchase property or buildings for your nonprofit, this basic guide is for you. We’re looking at why buying property might be beneficial and some tips you should know about real estate shopping.

Why Would Nonprofits Buy Property?

First, let’s dive into why purchasing property can benefit nonprofits. Here are a few good reasons:

Secure Your Placement

Nonprofits are just as vulnerable to displacement due to hot real estate markets as commercial or residential property renters. If you lease a building, you’re at the whim of landlords and potential developers, especially when your lease expires. This potential instability is a good enough incentive for many nonprofits to purchase a property.

Owning your property gives you control. You get to set up so that you’re best able to serve your community and the mission without the potential of having to redo everything in a new location. 

When owners sell their leased properties, organizations are often priced-out of their areas. Owning your property allows you to continue meeting the needs of your local community.Property ownership can help nonprofits secure their position in vulnerable property markets.

Property ownership can help nonprofits secure their position in vulnerable property markets.

Financial Benefits

Owning your own property can bring a few financial benefits. For example, most nonprofits in a leased property face a 3% increase each year. When you own, you can avoid this environment of ever-increasing property costs.

Additionally, most states will allow nonprofits to apply for exemption from property taxes. This exemption can save considerable funds. In states with high property taxes, proprietors will almost always pass those tax costs to leasees. 

Once you can pay off any mortgage, your expenses go down, freeing up more funds for your programs. Additionally, land appreciates over time, and while you may plan on buying and holding, the equity can be helpful if you need additional lending.

Improve Visibility

Owning your property increases opportunities to brand your space and be more visible in the community. This extra visibility can help draw more people who need your services and potential donors. You can also attract more volunteers to your organization.

Weigh These Benefits Against Potential Downsides

Of course, you should always weigh the benefits of owning property against the potential downsides:

• You’ll be responsible for all needed capital improvements to the property. These can represent high costs, especially as buildings age.

• You’ll possibly have a large amount of debt. Any over-leveraged projects can leave your organization vulnerable.

• All responsibilities that fall to landlords are now yours.

Real Estate Tips for Nonprofits

Here are some tips nonprofits should consider to be successful when buying property:

Conduct a Thorough Evaluation

Every potential real estate purchase should start with a thorough evaluation of the property your organization considers. The review should begin with the financial side – you’ll need to check whether debt obligations or financial restrictions tied to the property may impair a smooth sale.

Of course, you need to evaluate the physical space too. Will the location support not just your needs right now but your vision for the organization in the longer term? If your goal is to grow and that involves more space, it’s a good idea to consider that early when assessing a potential purchase.

Be Clear About How Owning Property Supports Your Mission

Your nonprofit’s real estate goals must align with your overall mission. You need to examine the functional space of the property with this in mind. For example, a soup kitchen that serves people's meals needs a decent kitchen and serving area to support its mission effectively. Your mission should drive each property decision you make.

Determine the Right Physical Characteristics You Need

The building and its location should tie in with your mission and positively impact the people who will use or interact with it. Does it have accessibility features? Is there plenty of car parking spaces (if needed)? Is it in a location that is handy for reaching the community (if that is part of your mission)?

Consider Other Ways to Make Income From the Property

Owning property can give you extra control over your physical presence but also other opportunities to capitalize on ownership. For example, you can generate additional income by leasing out unused portions of your property or renting spaces out for events. You may even be able to leverage real estate assets to strengthen your investment portfolio.

Communicate with Donors

Purchasing property is a sign of the strength and longevity of an organization to its donors. Nonprofits should communicate with donors to inform them about property purchases and how they will support your ongoing ability to serve your mission. This communication can encourage new donations or current donors to increase their contributions. 

Capital Campaigns for Building Needs

Capital campaigns are nonprofit fundraising processes that are often used to acquire or improve a physical asset. Property or buildings fall under this category. They tend to be very time-intensive projects, requiring a strong focus on planning and execution.

Capital campaigns happen infrequently, mapped out within a strategic plan. They should occur based on need and planned strategy, as you mustn’t distract too much from any annual fundraising campaigns. If you ask donors to support one campaign after another, their engagement can wear off fairly quickly. 

Another preferable characteristic of capital campaigns is that you only use them when you need to raise a substantial amount of money. These campaigns are very intensive in terms of time and labor involved, so you shouldn’t use them when you could do some extra planning and use annual operating funds.

Most nonprofits look to raise at least 50%-70% of capital campaign funds from a handful of large donors. These campaigns tend to be highly visible, which in a sense, makes them more high-stakes. It’s essential to protect the image of your organization, and announcing plans to purchase property, only to fail in doing so, can be damaging.

Conclusion

Purchasing property or buildings can provide several positive benefits for nonprofits. From acquiring stability in your location to having a potential new source of income, property ownership can help nonprofits cement their place in a community and move their missions forward.

As with anything you do, you should first look at property purchases through the lens of your overall mission. Be very clear about how any purchases will help you to deliver on your mission, including any goals you have for the future.

Your physical space and how it meets the needs of your organization is typically a part of the vision for a nonprofit. Consider adding any goals for property and building purchases to your strategic plan so progress on them can be properly tracked.

What Size Should Your Nonprofit Board Be?

Is there a perfect size for a nonprofit board?

Your organization needs an effective board to run smoothly. This efficiency tends to rely on the capabilities of individual board members, the systems and processes you have in place, the ability of your members to work well together, and the size of the board.

If you look at the nonprofit organizations in your community, you’ll find that board size varies greatly. According to Boardsource, the average number of board members is around 15, although we maintain that small nonprofits don’t need a large board to be successful.

Given that “what is the right size?” is often a pressing question when determining a board, we’re looking at what that means and how you might find that number for your organization:

What Does “Right-Size” Mean for a Board?

We’ll start by saying there’s no universal “right” size of every nonprofit board. If you’re a small, local nonprofit, it might be difficult for you to fill a 15-person board. A large, national organization may find that a larger board creates roadblocks, while a smaller one can’t accomplish everything needed.

That said, “right-size” means that your board is large enough to be impactful and get the work done that needs doing, yet small enough that teamwork is enabled. Your board should work effectively as a team, with solid communication to manage organizational priorities. For some nonprofits, a 5-member board might be the best fit. For others, you may need 15 or more.

It’s interesting to note that board size and structure have changed significantly as the board's role in governance has become pivotal. If you go back twenty-plus years, boards were often massive in comparison. Nonprofits used to attempt to squeeze in all their major donors. Now, there’s more of an emphasis on boards built based on the competencies or talents of the members. Leaner, more skilled boards are better able to make a significant difference.

Pros and Cons of Small vs. Large Boards

When you’re thinking about what the ideal board size might look like for your organization, you must consider some of the common pros and cons of small vs. large boards. We’ve broken some down here:

Smaller Boards

Pros:

• It’s easier for board members to get to know one another and develop strong working relationships.

• More direct involvement and involvement opportunities exist for board members.

• Communication tends to be easier with fewer people to keep in the loop.

• It’s often quicker and easier to make decisions and get projects or tasks rolling. Smaller boards may be more agile.

Cons:

• Board members may need to take on several tasks. Sometimes this might include things that are outside of their best skills.

• Board members may burn out more quickly, especially if their workloads are too heavy.

• Fundraising duties may fall to just a few people and can become a heavy burden.

• Smaller boards may not be as diverse in terms of backgrounds and experience. They may not represent varied opinions and ideas.

• The board may not have access to the expertise it needs.

• The board may struggle with exerting influence.

Large Boards

Pros:

• More people will share the workload.

• You can form subcommittees; board members can work in areas of their expertise.

• They can represent more diverse perspectives.

• Fundraising tasks are shared.

• There is a greater potential for networks and connections.

Cons:

• It can be more challenging to communicate and bring everyone together as a team. Entire board conversations may be quite difficult.

• Decision-making can be slowed with more people to consider.

• Sometimes, not all members will have the opportunity to be engaged in meaningful work.

• Board members may become disengaged from the board's governing role and may become infrequent participants.

• Sometimes cliques can form, putting some members on the outside; those smaller groups could take over making the major decisions.

One crucial factor to consider at the root of all this is your board's engagement. A board that is not the right size for the organization can quickly see board member engagement drop off, especially if people don’t feel effective in their role. Your aim should always be to maximize the talents and time of your board members rather than having them disengage.

A “right-size” nonprofit board can effectively make decisions and keep members engaged with meaningful work.

How to Find your “Right-Size”

If you look for data on what the “right-size” is for a nonprofit board, you’ll find a range of advice. For example, The Nonprofit Times suggested that seven is an optimal number for boards to be effective decision-makers. They say each additional member after seven decreases decision-making aptitude by 10%.

In practice, we’ve found that smaller boards can be effective, particularly if they work alongside an advisory council. One of our clients has deliberately chosen a five-person board of directors, which works well for them. Having an advisory council to supplement the board and help provide guidance allowed them to reach this smaller number. If you’re considering board size, it may pay to include an advisory council as part of that discussion - it just might create your “right-size.”

You need to answer a couple of critical questions when determining your board size: 1) What do you need the board to achieve? 2) What expertise do you need to achieve it?

These days, board members should be mission-driven, passionate about the cause, and possess the skills to be effective. It shouldn’t be about offering positions to key donors unless the donors in question have the skills needed, particularly around governance.

Part of your consideration should be the overall organization size. National organizations with local chapters might require a larger board at the national level but smaller boards in their regions.

Your bylaws may also play a role in board numbers. For example, some boards operate by giving the chairperson the tie-breaker vote. Others deliberately have an odd number to prevent tie situations.

Consider what size will be conducive to every board member having a meaningful purpose. How will you keep members engaged and moving forward?

Conclusion

There is no universal “right” size for nonprofit boards, but there is a right size for yours. The underlying aim is to have a board that is big enough to get a range of perspectives, experiences, and connections yet small enough to make decisions efficiently and keep board members engaged with meaningful work.

Make board effectiveness a priority by considering what goals you need your board to achieve and the skills needed among members to achieve them.

Tools and Tips for Effective Nonprofit Performance Management

How do you approach performance management in your nonprofit organization?

Many nonprofits find performance management to be challenging. You’ve got a lot on your plates, often spread among a few staff, and performance management can seem like another task on a long list.

However, it’s a critically  important task. When done effectively, performance management strengthens the organization’s culture and ensures that the individuals within it have what they need to succeed.

We encourage all nonprofits to have a robust performance management process as part of their broader strategic efforts. Here are our tools and tips for making it happen.

What is Performance Management?

Performance management is an ongoing process of supporting and developing your team members regarding their performance. It should always align with organizational goals so that you can link individual performance to organizational outcomes.

There are three critical things to keep in mind about performance management.

First, the performance management process should help the supervisor and staff member strengthen their working relationship. This is key. As you may know, the number one reason people leave their jobs is because of a poor working relationship with their boss. 

Second, effective performance management must be a regularly implemented process. It is not a once-a-year review. Annual performance appraisals are just one part of a far broader performance management effort. The best systems ensure that the team member always knows how they’re doing so that their annual appraisal isn’t a surprise. (We outlined how we manage performance at Mission Met here).

Third, performance management is not a one-way process where the staff member takes guidance and direction from the supervisor. Rather, it should be about an employee taking their own professional development into their own hands, self-evaluating themselves, and leaning on the supervisor for guidance. While, of course, the supervisor ultimately does provide an evaluation, the entire process should be driven by the employee’s efforts. In this way, your staff members will be leading their own development and, importantly, the supervisor isn’t tasked with such a large load of evaluations. 

How Do You Measure Performance?

How you measure performance should be unique to your organization. There are multiple ways to measure, so it’s essential to start by choosing metrics that make sense for your people and wider organizational goals.

One vital question is, what does “performance” mean in the context of your organization? What are key metrics that indicate your team is meeting your performance goals? How do you define results from your activities that show meaningful, measurable, and sustainable activity? Should you include metrics that further your mission or ensure your organization’s longevity?

Nonprofits are unique because they answer to board members, donors, and other key stakeholders, rather than company owners or shareholders. They’re mission-driven rather than profit-driven, yet roles such as the executive director still require financial measures.

Nonprofits are mission-driven rather than profit-driven, but performance management is still key.

The metrics you choose should demonstrate how the individual contributes to organizational goals. You can use different metrics, including objective data, where the data provides the basis of the evaluation, or subjective measures, where someone (or the board) evaluates based on what they’ve seen.

As a general rule, objective KPIs tend to be more impactful. They help to demonstrate a fair, balanced approach to performance. It’s simple to measure if an executive director aims to bring in 20% more funding this year than last year. Either they achieved that goal, or they didn’t.

On the other hand, subjective measures such as rating someone on how well you think they communicate or engage with stakeholders may be considered unfair. A subjective measure can be prone to bias during evaluation, especially if there are personality clashes or if perhaps the person evaluating hasn’t spent a lot of time with the team member.

If you let data tell the story, both the staff member and the supervisor will have clarity regarding what the objective is.

What Makes Performance Management Effective?

We can share a few tips about effective performance management in a broad sense:

1. The system is set up so that everyone knows the expectations, how managers evaluate them, and how those KPIs link with critical organizational goals. It is fair and accurate to all those it impacts.

2. As stated earlier, the employee should drive the process for their own development and self-evaluation. 

3. The KPIs directly impact vital organizational goals. Every KPI should have a clear purpose and relevance to your organization to be effective.

4. The performance management system should be an ongoing process, providing regular feedback. It should be efficient and simple when put in place -- you don’t want it to be something that takes inordinate amounts of time to manage.

5. The system should involve formal development, mentoring, or coaching. The idea is that you want your people to succeed and to keep delivering at a higher level.

As Bloomerang put it: "It will undoubtedly mean a little more work upfront, first identifying performance measures and making employees aware of expectations. However, once it gets rolling, real-time nonprofit performance management can pay proverbial dividends by exceeding organizational targets and, hopefully, help create space on the director's plate for new possibilities and opportunities."

How Are Performance Management and Strategic Planning Linked?

Performance management should be part of your broader strategic planning activities. We frequently talk about how strategic planning should involve a cycle of evaluation and development, and performance management should be the same.

Your performance management activities should directly feed into strategy. You should base your individual KPIs on what you want to achieve strategically. A once-per-year performance evaluation isn’t any more effective than having a retreat to create a strategic plan and never looking at it again.

Nonprofits can benefit from adopting a cyclical approach to performance alongside strategy. To make it even more impactful, take a collaborative approach, engaging team members in the process.

We like this extract from SHRM: "As for goal setting, it can be a collaborative exercise. Meet in the middle and agree on terms aligned with organization-wide and team-level strategic priorities.” Having a strategic plan in place will be the best tool to help with goal setting.

When performance management is a frequent exercise, it helps you:

• Monitor your results and check on progress toward goals.

• Be proactive. Sometimes things have changed since goal-setting, and you might need to alter your strategy mid-way through.

• Allocate resources. For example, perhaps a metric is lagging because there simply aren’t enough resources focused on it.

• Keep stakeholders informed of progress.

What Tools Can Help?

There are a range of tools out there that can help with performance management, depending on your needs. Some nonprofits still go for some type of file, either paper-based or via a spreadsheet tool such as Excel. We adopt a lot of ours from the forms found at Manager-Tools.

There are also some performance management tools available in cloud-based software form. We always suggest that if you opt for purpose-built software, you look for something that is the “right size” for your organization. Some tools will be too big and feature-rich. Look for something that meets your must-have requirements without going overboard. Some examples include Monday.com, Leapsome, and Ascender. 

We covered suggestions for choosing software and how technology can help you gather data on performance here.

Conclusion

Performance management is an essential task for nonprofits so that you can directly attribute an individual's contributions to overall goals. This process helps you keep activities on track and ensure that the work your team members do is meaningful.

A key to performance management success is not a once-per-year evaluation activity. It must be a regular task where team members take the lead on their own development and get support from their supervisor. There shouldn’t be surprises at annual appraisals.

Lastly, performance management should go hand-in-hand with your strategic plan. It should be a meaningful exercise that supports strategy rather than a checkbox activity.

How Mission Met Manages Performance

“Leaders become great not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.” — John Maxwell

What I’m about to say should come as no surprise to nonprofit executive directors: It’s important to support your team in their work. While we’ll soon post about the basics of performance management, in this article we explain how we approach it at Mission Met.

Fostering a culture that supports further growth and development with all of our team members is critical. And, our performance management processes are central to that effort.

The combination of assisting our team with their current job responsibilities while also encouraging their personal and professional growth results in the following benefits:

• Improves work engagement

• Contributes to a positive culture of support, learning, and development

• Helps retain team members

Performance management is a topic on which many executive directors are seeking information. Based on my own conversations with customers and recent articles for the nonprofit sector (such as the Great Resignation and employee retention), how to manage performance and keep talented team members is top of mind for leaders of nonprofits.

I’d like to share some of our company’s practices and resources in hopes that this information will be valuable for your nonprofit’s performance management processes.

Twice-Weekly Team Standup

Since our team works remotely, we’ve found it’s important to have a cadence of regular check-ins. Twice a week, our entire team gets together to each share about what they are doing. In particular they answer these three questions:

• What has been your focus recently?

• What are you plan to work in the next day or two?

• Are you blocked on a project or task?

Each team member takes 2 to 3 minutes at most to review their work.

This meeting tends to be task-focused and less about strategy. We keep it to 30 minutes and remind each other that it is not a meeting to sift through the comprehensive list of what everyone has on their plate. It’s only to discuss the priorities of the week and to remove any barriers that might be in the way of that work. This helps all team members prioritize their work alongside others and have a sense of what the team is accomplishing. 

Staff ONE-ON-ONEs

We try to keep our meeting frequency across our team to a minimum. The common meme of “this meeting could have been an email” is regularly shared between employees. However, 1:1 meetings with staff and their supervisors is a staple with our team. They are prioritized and rarely canceled.

We’ve found that the weekly 1:1 meeting is an important, dedicated time (typically 30 minutes) for open-ended conversations. This meeting is where strong relationships are formed via coaching and mentorship (and the occasional venting).

Suggestions for this type of meeting include the following:

• Follow a loose structure, more so than a set agenda

• Managers typically start by asking what the employee would like to discuss

• Create a shared document (could be a doc or in a performance management tool) where you both can enter any topics to be discussed. This is helpful so topics aren’t forgotten.

We’ve written on tips for better employee engagement, and the 1:1 meeting exemplifies many of the tips from that article such as keeping communication lines open, providing regular feedback and support, reinforcing the organization’s values, and celebrating success.

If you need help developing more effective tools for employee engagement at your nonprofit, we recommend reviewing the work of Manager Tools and in particular their work on 1:1s.

Strategy

If your nonprofit has followed our strategic planning method, the CAPE Cycle, you should be a pro at developing and executing your strategy with goals that support focus areas and priorities.

Encouraging engagement from all team members during the development and execution phases of your strategic plan will make your goals more achievable because everyone is a stakeholder and wants to see the success of the plan.

The team at Mission Met creates a strategic plan for our company and we follow our same guidance for meetings about strategy that we provide to our customers. We recommend a monthly champions meeting, a quarterly team meeting, and a strategy development meeting (that includes separate times for leadership and the entire team to provide insights.)

Monthly Meeting

• Who attends? The co-champions of the plan meet monthly to review the team’s performance. 

• What are the key objectives? Champions should get a snapshot of goal completion timelines and review the team’s performance. Champions share their observations and they collectively develop a list of what needs to be shared with the team prior to the next quarterly meeting (such as important dates, reminders, celebrations of success, and agenda for the next meeting.)

Quarterly Meeting

• Who attends? The entire team meets quarterly to review the plan. 

• What are the key objectives? Each team member walks away from this meeting with a clear understanding of the goals they will work toward in the next quarter and any questions regarding the plan have been answered.

Annual Strategy Development

This meeting is similar to an annual retreat for nonprofits. 

• Who attends? The first session is for leadership. A second session is for the entire team.

• What are the key objectives? The leadership reviews feedback from their team and they set strategic priorities for the next year. The entire team helps to develop the goals for each priority.

Software

Executive directors often ask us for suggestions about how to use Mission Met Center as a performance management tool. For that reason, we developed a way for nonprofits to host individual plans for all of their team members (in addition to their overall strategic plan). 

Best practices for hosting individual plans include the following:

• Managers are administrators on their team members' plans.

• Work together to populate the focus areas, goals, and action items. (Some of these items for an individual might overlap with the organization’s strategic plan but in many cases, separate focus areas and goals are documented.)

• The team member regularly tracks their updates/progress and managers can review in times of check-ins or evaluations.

• Don’t be afraid to put personal goals (health, personal coaching and development, travel, etc.) as each team member has their own life pursuits.

This is a great way for managers to encourage both professional and personal growth as we’ve seen individual plans include personal goals such as pursuing further education, work/life balance, and improving upon certain skills that are helpful in both the workplace and life (time management, interpersonal communication, etc.).

Employee Handbook

The employee handbook is a valuable resource for all types of organizations and employee level status and title (new hires, long-term employee, managers, part time, volunteer, interns, etc.). It documents all policies and procedures. It’s also a great communication tool for emphasizing your organization’s mission, vision, values, and practices.

We created our employee handbook with the help of a template from Workable.

We tailored the employee handbook template to fit our needs and continue to develop it as our team grows and changes. It is a living, breathing document that needs to be regularly visited. Additionally, we include our stakeholders, our team members, to contribute their ideas to the employee handbook. You want their input when you’re creating any policy or procedure that involves them. This helps enforce shared ownership of the culture and improvement of our company.

INTERNS: DAILY JOURNALING

It’s vital that you don’t forget about your interns! After all, they are working with your nonprofit to gain experience and part of that experience is learning about what’s expected of them, how they will be evaluated, and opportunities for future growth.

Just as you should be clarifying the workplace policies that apply to your interns, you should also consider how to manage their performance. We’ve implemented a daily journal project for all interns to document their work. 

This journal activity allows them to reflect on the scope of their projects through daily updates. 

Prompts we encourage in the journal for specific projects include the following:

• What is working?

• What is not working?

• What is something they could do differently?

The journal affords an intern time to reflect on their projects weekly. It also allows the intern managers to review the entries prior to meetings so they are most prepared for the conversations. The journal also provides us with documentation after an intern completes their work with us in the event we need to revisit any of the work.

Conclusion

Your performance management policies and procedures can contribute to a positive culture at your nonprofit. We know our work has contributed greatly to ours. Similar to a strategic plan, begin by writing your workplace values and what you think it will take you to get there. Make those items your goals and work towards achieving them. 

As outlined in this article, your performance management strategy can include a combination of meetings, documentation, processes, and online tools. Don’t forget to solicit feedback from your team along the way as this will continue to improve team relationships and show that you value their input.

Technology Tools of the Nonprofit Trade

Technology for nonprofits has transformed how we operate.

There’s no denying that today’s world is faster than ever. Supporting your organization’s mission hinges on keeping up and hopefully finding an edge where you can get ahead of the game.

When you consider the complexity of tasks that you have to address as a nonprofit leader, it raises the question, how can your organization operate more productively? Technology tools can be your secret to success, from efficient communication to finding the right people at the right time.

With that said, you have a lot of options! We’re here to help you uncover some of the best tools to help your nonprofit improve productivity and support your overall mission. Below are some of our favorite tools to keep in mind.

CRM Solutions

CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) systems help you manage your interactions with constituents, analyze key data, and improve your service and relationships. It provides a one-stop shop for managing your contacts, donors, and other supporters.

One of the best advantages of a CRM is that it will help you manage all of your donor data in one place. It becomes challenging to manage data when you experience a system of disparate spreadsheets where your information is in separate areas. You’ll appreciate how easy it is to have all of your data in one place with the right CRM. A centralized view helps you conduct better analysis and utilize that data for maximum impact.

Features to Consider

One thing you’ll find when you shop for any new technology is that you can rapidly feel overwhelmed by the number of features and different options available. We recommend you begin by making a list of your “must-have” features. A list can help you narrow down your options and determine if a tool might be too big for your needs.

These are our suggestions for features to consider:

• Fundraising-specific features. You should be able to create and implement a fundraising campaign and segment your list based on how your donors give or other vital characteristics.

• Donor communications features. Your CRM should provide tools that connect you with your donors in various formats, such as email or print. You’ll want to send thank you notes, receipts, updates, new appeals, etc. If you already use an email marketing platform, it’s helpful to look for a CRM that integrates with it.

• Donor management functionality. You should be able to view fundraising tracking, communications, and other essential activities in one central location.

• Reporting and analytics features. You need to be able to spot trends promptly to take action to improve your results. An ideal system allows you to build, save, and schedule custom reports to easily access the information that matters most to you.

Possible solutions for nonprofit needs include DotDrives, NeonCRM, Salesforce (Nonprofit Success Pack), Bloomerang, and Little Green Light.

Find the right technology tools for your nonprofit to streamline your essential tasks.

Accounting Solutions

Accounting is an area that must be meticulous, but that can be a challenge as you grow. If your nonprofit uses Excel spreadsheets or something similar to manage the books, you can quickly outgrow them. It becomes difficult to keep track and ensure that spreadsheets are up-to-date.

Accounting solutions for nonprofits should focus on your unique needs for reporting, budgeting, and accountability to donors.

Here are some features to look for that can be helpful to your organization:

• Customizable reporting features. You probably have different reporting needs and you need a solution that you can easily configure to help. For example, if you receive grant funding, you need accuracy when tracking it.

• Bill paying and tracking. For nonprofits, a tool that allows you to stay on top of bills and track them is critical to the success of your mission.

• Integrations with key tools that you use. For example, taking payments online via Stripe or Paypal simplifies your workflow if there is direct integration with your accounting tool.

• Pricing tiers. One thing that is good practice across any technology you choose to use is “right-sizing” it. This term refers to choosing the solution that’s just right for your needs. Too big can be too overwhelming, while too small means you can’t meet some needs. Look for tiered pricing and functionality that scales with your needs.

• Accepting and tracking online donations. It’s helpful if your accounting software records these automatically.

• Payroll functionality. If you require payroll, it’s useful to have an accounting system to handle it.

Some possible solutions include Xero, QuickBooks, and Nonprofit Plus.

Board Portals

Board management software provides a collaborative way for your team members to share information, gain access to high-level information about your nonprofit, manage meetings, and store board-related documents.

The goal of board management software is to simplify collaboration among board members and avoid people falling out of the information loop. You’ll want cloud-based software so you know information is always up-to-date, and your board members can access it from anywhere they need to log on.

Board portals can play a pivotal role in strategic planning for your organization. A strategic planning process identifies strategies that will best enable a nonprofit to advance its mission. Ideally, as staff and the board engage in the process, they become committed to measurable goals and approve priorities for implementation. They should also commit to regularly revisiting the organization's strategies as the internal and external environments change.

Our software, Causey, is a simple and effective way to plan and execute goals to strengthen your organization.

Features to Consider

Here are some features to look for in board portals:

• The convenience of the cloud. You can access web-based software anytime, anywhere.

• Accountability. Your solution should show who is responsible for each task and include a goal progress tracker. Automated email reminders to team members with tasks due is another time-saving efficiency.

• Analytics. The solution should have reporting to track data related to your goals.

• Simplicity. Likely your board includes volunteers with various technological backgrounds. You need a solution with a simple interface that they’ll easily be able to pick up and use.

Some possible solutions include Causey, BoardEffect, Onboard.

Productivity Tools

“Productivity tools” is a broad category that covers a range of software to help you get tasks done more efficiently or streamline how you do things. Some universal tools suit any nonprofit, while others might work better for your specific mission.

We’ve compiled a few of the most helpful productivity tools below–and we use many of them at Mission Met!

Email, Document Storage, and More

You probably have email software already set up for your organization, but did you know that you can get reduced or even free licenses for software as a nonprofit? If you sign up for a free TechSoup account, you can access Google Workspace (including Google For Nonprofits), Microsoft 365, or hundreds of other low to no-cost tools.

If you're still deciding between Office 365 and Google Workspace, review all of the included tools, and think about how your team wants to work. There is no right or wrong answer, but not considering the pros and cons of what you adopt is a recipe for disaster.

Video Collaboration Tools

How many video collaboration tools have you used since the COVID pandemic began? Most people have some experience with Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or other tools for holding meetings and collaborating at a distance.

You might already have a favorite, but make sure whatever you choose is easy to administer for you and your team. You want to create meetings, invite attendees, and manage the meeting easily.

Meeting Scheduling Tools

Emailing or calling back and forth to find a mutually convenient time for a meeting is an inefficient use of time, but most of us have done it at some point. Meeting scheduling tools are a significant time-saver, making it easy for everyone to view calendar availability and make bookings for meetings. Scheduling tools can also send automatic reminders to attendees.

Check out tools such as Calendly, Microsoft Bookings, SavvyCal, or You Can Book Me.

Screen Recording and Video Messaging

Options for screen recording or video messaging for nonprofit organizations are abundant. You might want to quickly show a new board member how the board portal software works or send a video message to your team.

If your goal is to send out quick, unedited videos, consider Zip Message or Loom as possible solutions.

If your goal is to produce a longer, higher-quality video that may be useful for months or years, you might need more editing capabilities. Tools such as ScreenFlow or Camtasia provide lightweight video editing features.

Conclusion

Above, we’ve detailed some of our favorite technology tools for nonprofits. As a starting point, we’d advise you to list the different tasks you need to do. You can use this to narrow down your options.

We also recommend checking out some key nonprofit technology resources that provide discounts and overviews of nonprofit technology. These resources include TechSoup, Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN), and Tech Impact's learning center.

Lastly, check out Causey to jump start or better structure your strategic plan. You can get a free 30-day trial here.

Why Your Nonprofit Should Embrace Data

What are your most important goals as a nonprofit leader? Do you want to further the long-term mission of your organization? Boost fundraising? Get your organization onto lists of “top places to work?”

All of the above?

Leveraging data can help you achieve all of these things, yet many nonprofit leaders are missing data-driven opportunities. While 90% of nonprofits gather data, around half aren’t using the information collected to its full potential.

Data-driven nonprofit leaders find that they can optimize how they use their limited resources. They foster a transparent environment where they can trace decision-making back to data points and where donor audiences are well-understood.

The bottom line is that data can – and should – inform the key decisions that further your mission. This article highlights the importance of reviewing data for fundraising, programs, and your nonprofit's culture.

Improve Your Fundraising

What are some of your main challenges regarding fundraising? Like other nonprofit leaders, you may struggle to find the right target audience and keep them engaged once you’ve found them. How do you discover donors who are most likely to support your cause and then maximize their donations?

Access to reliable data empowers you to reach the right donors at the right time. It helps you to understand your audience better – do they have an affinity for your cause? Do they have the ability to donate? What is happening in their lives that makes now a good or bad time to engage with them?

Good fundraising intelligence allows you to personalize your outreach to target the potential donor better. Your communication becomes much more powerful and impactful when you can mention people, pets, places, or events that mean something to the donor.

Additionally, you can identify donor interests and better customize your campaigns to grab their attention. When you’re working with a limited budget for marketing, capturing attention is a big deal. If your nonprofit could target marketing materials only toward the most likely recipients, you could save a lot of money and see a better ROI on fundraising campaigns.

Donor research and CRM software are essential data sources for nonprofits, allowing you to track donors based on specified criteria, including viewing their key interests. You can also note donor history or patterns and use this data to help move them up the fundraising pyramid. For example, you can identify people who have donated more than once in a four-to-six-month period or more than three times in a year and take them through a targeted email campaign.

Improve Your Programs

Analyzing your data can help your nonprofit power up the success of your programs. At a high level, data analysis can help you:

• Maximize your cost-effectiveness.

• Allocate resources efficiently.

• Grow your program base.

• Improve monitoring and implementation of your programs.

• Help guide future program strategy.

• Make so many more data-driven decisions.

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of data-modeling techniques that nonprofits can leverage for good. Let’s say you run a local food bank. Ensuring you have enough resources available at any given time to support the people you serve is a crucial goal. Predictive analytics can help by forecasting the need for food so that you have an accurate idea of upcoming needs.

Data modeling like this can account for several factors that contribute to the need for your program. For example, what if a large local employer was laying off employees? This hit to the community’s income could impact the need for food banks or other local services. The nuances that data modeling picks up will often help with accurate forecasting. Factors like increased local rents or daycare costs are just a couple of additional examples that data modeling weighs.

Data analysis and visualizations uncover patterns that you can use to allocate your resources and make informed decisions. You can identify populations, individuals, or areas that may require your assistance. For example, The University of Chicago's Data Science for Good program used predictive modeling to identify homes in the local area that likely contain lead-based paint, which you could target for repair to reduce lead exposure.

Another example shared by Datakind uses a data modeling methodology called Time Series Forecasting, which Sanergy uses to improve access to safe sanitation. Sanergy has a mission to reach people in dense urban areas who don’t have access to sanitation in their own homes. Their Fresh Life Toilets in Nairobi need to be both available and affordable in order to help avoid the public health risks of poor sanitation. Data gathered on collection volumes helps predict future needs and planned network growth of their toilets.

Foster a Data-Driven Workplace Culture

“Culture” is often conflated with a nonprofit organization's mission, but the two are different. While your mission says what you do and for whom, your culture is more “how we do things around here.”

Organizational culture develops, whether intentionally or not, and nonprofits that choose to foster a data-driven culture can reap multiple benefits. For example, organizations that embrace data tend to be more creative and high-functioning. The data does not constrain them; they leverage it to use their time and resources optimally. They always know how the organization is doing and how the data can help create their future strategies.

Some other benefits include improved transparency and trust. You’re not throwing darts at a board, hoping to strike somewhere near the bull’s eye. You’re nailing the target more often because you have good data to back your decisions. People notice and appreciate the reasoning behind what you do. If someone asks “why?” you’re able to explain clearly.

A discipline of embracing data can lead to a positive workplace culture. A Harvard Business Review survey found that organizations that use analytics reported increased productivity, reduced costs, and displayed faster decision-making.

If you want to reap these benefits of a data-driven culture, simply having the data is insufficient. The data you gather needs action by using it to inform your strategic plan. You’ll need to use it as a driving force toward improved efficiency and effectiveness. In other words, you have to walk the talk. Understanding your data and maintaining a plan to make positive change is one of the first steps to creating a culture that embraces data.

Conclusion

Now, it’s your turn. As a nonprofit leader, it’s up to you to embrace data and encourage others to do so, too. If it’s new to your organization, you don’t have to turn things upside down overnight. Start slowly with a few focus areas you’d like to improve and apply data science.

As an analytical leader, you’ll improve your organization. Analytical leaders have "refined their decision-making processes as part of a data-driven culture and achieved superior financial results.” Additional impacts include attracting more donor dollars and furthering the organizational mission.

There’s usually a happy medium between emotion, instincts, and data science to make informed decisions that will strengthen your nonprofit. Use what you learn to inform your strategic plan so that your organization can continue to build its capacity to effect change.

The Value of Nonprofit Board Management Software

Keeping your busy volunteer board of directors organized and on track can be difficult. You need everyone to have easy access to real-time board documents while avoiding information “silos.”

Board management software provides a collaborative way for your team members to share information with each other, gain ready access to high-level information about your nonprofit, manage meetings, and have the ability to store board-related documents.

If you’re looking to streamline communication and create an efficient, collaborative environment for your nonprofit board, choosing effective board management software should be a priority.

What is Nonprofit Board Management Software and Why Do You Need It?

The software review company, Capterra, provides a useful definition of board management software:

“Board management software is a tool that helps an organization’s board of directors manage their responsibilities of strategic planning and performance reviews. It provides a virtual platform for the board to hold meetings, record minutes, share and review documents, and vote on business affairs. It also acts as a database for important documents and information the board might need to have handy.”

One of the primary reasons that board management software is invaluable for nonprofits is that it can bring organization to an otherwise somewhat disorganized group of volunteers. Unlike managing your work team, who are all familiar with your systems and engage daily, volunteer boards are often made up of people with different technological capabilities and only focus on their board work from time-to-time. When you start asking them to use Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoom, and a selection of other organizational platforms, it’s almost inevitable that at least some will fall out of the technology loop.

A streamlined and focused software package designed specifically for the needs of a board is a simple and “single source of truth.” You can keep your board members better engaged when they don’t have to keep hopping around between systems. In a sense, you’re helping your board to help your nonprofit.

Some Broad Selection Criteria for Board Management Software

If you were to do a Google search for “board management software,” you would quickly become inundated with potential options. Some true board management software are built specifically for the needs of nonprofit boards, whereas others are generic packages that claim to cope with board management.

The remedy to avoid being overwhelmed with options is to set some clear criteria for your board management software. It’s something to invest in for the long haul, so it’s worth taking the time to make the right choice in the first place.

What are some broad criteria should you have? Here are some examples:

• The software should be cloud-based. With your board spread in different locations, the software must be available anytime. Additionally, people should know they’re always looking at the most recent document version, and the software should be regularly updated. Cloud-based software is the solution because everything lives online and is immediately available to all who have access. This makes it much easier to disseminate important information because people will know to check the software as the main repository of knowledge.

• It should be user-friendly. Not all of your board members have the same experience with technology, so ease of use is necessary. The board management software must adapt to each user's skill level.

  One of Mission Met's principles for strategic planning is "simplicity," and that’s evident in the design of Causey, our strategic planning software that also has features that can support board management. This doesn't mean there won't be a learning curve, but the software should be easy to learn.

  Want your board to adopt new software? This is often difficult when the board feels like it’s just one more thing they have to do. One key criterion in selecting your software is finding something simple to use with clear onboarding tools that facilitate adoption.

• There should be a solid support system. The “help” function provided by software makers should never be overlooked. Nothing is more frustrating to a user than when they can’t easily get the help they need. Your choice of board management software should always have a system in place to answer any questions or fix any bugs.

• The software should be collaborative. Your volunteer board will usually be working on their various responsibilities in their own time. You can’t allow information silos, or someone won’t have the full picture needed to make key decisions.

  Collaborative board management software allows multiple people access to work collectively. It provides everyone with access to the most up-to-date information to add their thoughts or use that information to make their own decisions.

• The software should be budget-friendly. Budget is often a primary concern for nonprofits. Consider the cost and ROI based on the software’s features and how it can optimize the efficiency of your organization. Additionally, finding software that offers a trial period can make it easier to determine if the software is the right fit for your nonprofit.

• The software should meet high security standards. Your board management software stores sensitive data, and you need to know it will protect your information. Top software options should always prioritize data security and have robust protocols.

Specific Features Useful to Boards

Once you’ve narrowed your choices based on broad criteria, such as those outlined above, it’s time to get more feature-specific. You’re looking for those must-have features designed to help your board manage their work more effectively.

Board management software can help with leadership development, good governance, and, ultimately, help your nonprofit advance its mission. Here are some features that are particularly useful:

• Document storage. You'll appreciate this if you’ve ever hunted high and low for a certain document. Document storage keeps all the documents the board needs in a central location. No more combing through emails or clicking around through different storage applications. The right board management software can store everything from policy documents to meeting agendas.

• Different levels of access. In most organizations, you want team members to only have access to areas that directly pertain to their work. Board management software with permission controls allows administrators to limit access to various parts of the software.

• Access to the strategic plan. All processes and goals should be captured in the software so that boards always have access to the high-level information they need.

• Board development and recruitment. If you opt for board management software that can manage the recruitment process and keep track of training, you’ll have a true one-stop shop for board members.

Have an Implementation Champion

How do nonprofits and other organizations successfully onboard new software? One invaluable lesson is to have an “implementation champion” or champions. This is a person on your team committed to ensuring that new software is implemented well. They assess what is needed to set up the software and get all users up-to-speed. The champion also acts as a point of contact for any questions or concerns.

Just like strategic planning, the success of adopting board management software is dependent upon having a champion. You need someone who will be relentless about executing the implementation and encourage team members to use it regularly; otherwise, learning and using new software can result in the members’ “something I’ll get around to later” pile.

Causey Features for Boards

Causey has features that support basic board management such as:

• Document Storage and Links. For some of your board members, Causey can be easier to access and utilize than other document-sharing tools like Google Drive and Dropbox. Causey allows you to store documents or links within a set of customized folders, such as:

Board meeting minutes -- organized by date

Committee folders -- keep your committees’ documents organized

Board recruitment -- onboarding processes and documents

Official documents – including bylaws, articles of incorporation, and other documents

Board development – resources and training

Financial information – budgets and spending

Fundraising -- plans and records

• Board Accountability. Causey offers accountability by assigning goals and tasks as part of a strategic plan and sends automated reminders about various aspects of a strategic plan to appropriate team members.

• Key Metrics. Boards typically love to track key metrics to see how a nonprofit is progressing. The Metrics application allows board members to compile important data, progress charts, and measure progress on their overall strategy and goals.

• Document Sharing. You can easily share documents via PDF, spreadsheet, or a view-only link (commonly shared with external funders or potential donors).

Final Thoughts

Board management software can make a massive difference in the overall efficiency of your nonprofit board’s operations. It's a way to gather your critical information in one spot, so no one is left digging around, frantically trying to find the document that could be stored in several systems.

More than that, it’s about visibility across essential strategic endeavors. Board management software provides your board with both the high-level view and more granular detail they need to make decisions. This helps you to advance your mission as effectively as possible.

Best Practices for Onboarding a Director to Your Nonprofit Board

Picture this:

You get hired at a company with little knowledge of what your job will entail. You love the organization and have enough expertise in certain areas that the people in charge thought you’d add value, but you’re a little confused about the specifics.

Your vague, generic title doesn’t help much, and you don’t know anyone in the office to ask for clarity or feel welcomed.

The only thing you do know is that you’re one of the few people in charge of overseeing the whole organization, and you are legally responsible for upholding its values and stewarding it well.

You might be able to work out the kinks over time, but it’d be pretty hard to hit the ground running, right?

Unfortunately, it can feel like this for the new directors added to your board if they don’t have a thorough onboarding process.

We want to help you avoid this kind of confusion, so we’ve created a set of best practices for onboarding nonprofit board members.

An Orientation Overview

All successful onboarding starts with a thorough orientation.

The orientation process should introduce your new board member to their basic roles, responsibilities, and policies while also giving them a deeper knowledge of your nonprofit’s mission and vision.

The trickiest part of the orientation is ensuring that everything gets covered, especially in a world where most meetings happen virtually.

Boardsource has a helpful checklist that helps you stay on track as it highlights key areas like the nonprofit’s programs, organizational history, and strategic direction.

You’ll want to include a comprehensive review of your nonprofit’s strategic plan. This overview will help lay a strong foundation for the new board member and give them an idea of where your organization is headed.

In addition to these high-level concepts, the checklist also suggests covering:

• Finances

• Organizational structure

• Board roles/individual board member responsibilities

• Board operations

The checklist helps ensure that you don’t miss any major steps during the initial orientation, but you should also feel comfortable adapting it to fit the specific needs of your nonprofit.

A board member’s role description tailored to your nonprofit’s board can also help bring immediate clarity to the position. Here’s an example from Boardsource that outlines both the role of the board as a whole and specific board members.

The Council of Nonprofits also advises organizations to “include any expectations about personal giving/fundraising efforts” in the role description to ensure those expectations don’t slip through the cracks. Beyond that, they also suggest covering:

• Special issue(s) that are specific to your nonprofit's vision and mission

• Governance policies

• Accountability practices

• The responsibility to evaluate the performance and compensation of the executive director

Steps to Take Before the First Boarding Meeting

A thorough orientation kicks off the onboarding process, but it’s not like everything just falls into place right after that.

You can take additional steps to orient new members before the first meeting to help ease the transition and set the board up for success.

Send a Welcome Announcement to Supporters

Boardable recommends welcoming the new member into the organization publicly via a newsletter, social media post, or changes on the website. Doing this serves two purposes:

1. Shows the board member that you are excited to have them on your team

2. Gives donors and supporters a chance to stay up-to-date about the organization

Schedule a Visit or a Get-Together with Other Board Members

Board members work closely with one another, and relational dynamics play a big role in developing your board’s culture. That culture will ultimately influence how each person works with the other and how effective your board is.

Hosting an event for your new director to meet and engage with existing board members and key staff can help foster the relationships in a more neutral environment than the first board meeting.

You can get two birds with one stone by hosting the get-together at your nonprofit’s main facility, if that’s possible. By doing so, you have a chance to show the new member around your physical space while also introducing them to other people.

It may not be feasible to get together in person in today's world, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get together. Virtual hangouts or introductions can still make your new member feel comfortable and welcomed at your organization.

Get Their Tech Set Up

As the digital world expands into the nonprofit sphere, more organizations have begun to use tech solutions to help manage their marketing, teams, donors, finances, and other administrative needs.

These tools help the day-to-day operations run more smoothly, but they require a bit of legwork at the beginning. Ensure that your new board member has access to whatever software solutions they need for success early on.

A crucial element is getting them added to the appropriate email lists. Doing this will ensure they receive important communication from the organization, helping them stay connected with what’s going on between board meetings.

Assign a Board Buddy

Have you ever been invited to something and checked the guestlist for someone you know before committing to go?

We do that because we don’t like to show up to places feeling like we don’t belong. A nonprofit board is no different, even when the meetings happen over zoom.

Your new board members may not speak up or contribute much if they feel uncomfortable. Even those that have experience in other areas may struggle to find their stride with your organization at the beginning.

Assigning a board buddy, or mentor, who has more experience around the nonprofit can help the new director settle in. Boardable recommends that a new board buddy:

• Have one-on-one meetings with the new board member

• Connect before the first few meetings

• Have follow-up conversations after the first few meetings to clarify any points or answer questions

Encourage Board Chair Follow-Ups

Board buddies aren’t the only ones who get to follow-up with the new members. The Council of Nonprofits suggests that your board chair talk with your new member after they agree to serve but before the first meeting.

This communication helps clarify any missing pieces to your new director and can also “set the stage for positive communication and a productive relationship with the board chair.”

Ongoing Learning and Development Until Offboarding Begins

Successful onboarding comes down to getting your new board members comfortable with your organization so they can excel in their roles.

But it’s not like there’s some wall we cross over, and a person magically “gets it.” Board members can constantly grow and improve their knowledge about the nonprofit sphere, especially if they don’t have a ton of experience before serving.

Most come in with a passion for the cause or love for the organization but may have little knowledge about the ins and outs of running a nonprofit.

You can help educate your board by offering additional resources or pointing them to learning and development opportunities like conferences, seminars, or webinars. The more they know, the more they can help your nonprofit flourish. Boardsource puts it like this:

“​​Continuous — and collective — learning opportunities will help deepen your board members’ understanding of their roles and responsibilities and of your organization and the environment in which it operates, which, in turn, will increase their effectiveness and value to your organization.”

The ongoing learning will help keep your board members engaged and active with best practices until their time with the organization ends. When that time comes, you can check out our article on offboarding directors.

The Ultimate Benefit of a Thorough Onboarding Process

The more success your board has, the better off your nonprofit will be. Getting a new board member started with a thorough onboarding process can help jumpstart that success.

Yes, it takes time up front to develop your onboarding process. Just like with strategic planning, once you have the process dialed in, you will be able to use the framework to establish a great starting point for any member of your team.

The Building Blocks of Your Nonprofit’s Communication Strategy

Awkward communication encounters are the worst.

You’ve probably had one happen at a restaurant at some point. The waiter told you to enjoy your meal, and you replied with an emphatic, “You, too!” before hiding your face with your hands and hope the server didn’t hear you.

There are quite a few opportunities in nonprofit communication to make mistakes like that but with higher stakes involved. Challenges naturally arise when you try to reach the masses, and overcoming those challenges requires a thorough communication strategy.

We want to help you discover the best ways to communicate your message to the masses. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to designing your nonprofit communication strategy.

4 Basic Elements of a Nonprofit Communication Strategy

Nonprofit communication rarely works without a clear plan and strategy, and the best communication strategies share the same four elements.

Communication Priorities that Align With Your Organization

Setting communication priorities helps you measure your success and drive decision-making. Some common priorities for your nonprofit may include things like:

• Establishing a brand and messaging that stays consistent with everything you share

• Coming up with ways to reach a larger audience and increase brand engagement

• Raising awareness through creative content distribution

• Gaining or sustaining support from donors

• Casting a vision to recruit volunteers

Your communication priorities should always help your organization accomplish its mission. The more specific and targeted you can make these, the better. Goals can help with this, too. They offer more particular metrics that fall underneath the larger priorities to better measure the success of your efforts. You can review our recent blog post about how to set and measure goals.

Think about how hard it is to determine whether or not you “raised awareness” if you don’t have something measurable behind it. Instead, you might think of a goal like “increase social post impressions by 5%” because it gives you specific numbers getting closer to your overall priority.

A Known Target Audience

One of the most critical rules of communication is knowing to whom you’re talking. The broader you make your audience, the less effective you can be in your messaging.

Establishing a target audience allows you to reach the people who will support your organization. But first, you have to know who these people are.

Find out what they read, what they like, and what they engage with online. Send out surveys or do polls on social media. Research similar organizations to see how they’ve attracted followers or what content has had the most significant impact.

The more you know about the people you communicate to, the better chance you’ll have at reaching them with material that excites, educates, and inspires them to support your nonprofit.

Good Stories and Storytelling

People have been telling stories for as long as we’ve been around. Stories pull on audiences’ heartstrings in a way raw data can’t, and storytelling should play an important role in your nonprofit communication strategy.

Stories help your organization:

• Communicate your mission and vision

• Share important data

• Raise support

• Engage audiences through various media

If you want to see some more specific ideas and examples, review our recent blog post about nonprofit storytelling.

Multiple Communication Channels

More than ever, people get their information from a variety of sources. Nonprofits can cast their best “communication net” for their audience by utilizing the most appropriate communication channels.

With so many social media networks, print outlets, and other ways to reach people, though, how are you supposed to know which is best?

5 Best Communication Channels for Nonprofits

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to use every communication channel out there. You just have to pick the one or two that will best reach your target audience.

Below are five of the simplest and most effective channels we see nonprofits use successfully.

1. Email Newsletters

Email newsletters are a stable, long-time pro on the internet’s ever-changing roster.

Despite all the trends and changes that come and go in the digital age, email newsletters have been quietly helping organizations easily reach mass amounts of people. It’s a simple, inexpensive, and effective way to communicate.

Donor Box has compiled seven basic tips for creating your newsletter.

1. Have a clean email list of engaged subscribers

2. Create a schedule for consistency

3. Don’t neglect your design

4. Write a captivating subject line

5. Make your content meaningful and useful to your audience

6. Be concise

7. Repurpose content from other channels into your newsletter and vice versa

Consistently providing your audience with quick, meaningful content will drive up your engagement and keep your audience involved with your organization.

Here are some great examples of nonprofit newsletters that share different kinds of content:

• Show readers how to get involved

• Give updates, celebrate accomplishments, and share news

• Invite readers to upcoming events

• Share impact stories

• Spotlight staff or supporter/volunteer

• Provide fundraising information

• Link out to other resources like podcasts

2. Social Media

If email newsletters are the old veteran, social media is the fiery rookie. It hasn’t been around for as long, but, as you know, has made an incredible splash.

There are nearly 5 billion social media users across the world, each one engaging with an average of 6.6 different platforms. The growth rate is incredible, with no indication of decreasing.

Leo Pedraza – Marketing, Communication, and Brand Manager of LinkedIn for Nonprofits – explains that “with the right social media strategy, your nonprofit can create an engaged, active, and loyal online community that cares about your mission and is ready to help.” Pedraza also shows how social media can bring fundraising benefits, citing a study where 29% of donors online said the channel inspires their giving.

Other key benefits include:

• Promoting awareness

• Inspiring action

• Garnering the attention of more media outlets for features

• Attracting more volunteers

• Sharing your impact

• Creating and distributing educational resources

Build community. Educate the public. Raise funds. Inspire volunteers. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

3. Printed Media

People have been mistakenly declaring print media dead for years, ignoring the fact that it’s still out there and is still a valid option for reaching your audience.

In an article for Donor Box, the author explains how print media can be a great way to thank, update, and help your supporters. They mention items like

• Postcards

• Calendars

• Catalogs

• Brochures

We at Mission Met have seen the impact that a well-designed, informative booklet can have on a nonprofit’s communication strategy.. That’s why we offer our INSPIRE service where we create a beautiful booklet of your nonprofit's strategic plan that you can confidently share with your stakeholders and donors.

Executive directors often report the following benefits of this type of brochure:

• Increased fundraising success with both individual donors and foundations

• Greater organizational pride for the staff and board

• Deeper marketing presence

4. Video Messages

Video is a powerful medium that engages audiences through multiple senses in our visual society.

Greater Giving outlines 6 common types of video messages used by nonprofits:

1. Brand stories, like the one that First Descents created to explain their organization

2. Awareness videos, like this one from Girl Effect

3. Impact videos, such as this one from Vida Verde Nature Education

4. Event promos

5. Community updates

6. Thank you messages

Some videos will combine aspects of different types. Third Way Center has a video that tells a little about their brand, shares their impact, and gives thanks to their supporters.

You don’t need to draw a hard line that separates the categories. You just need to know the purpose behind your video and align it to your overall strategy.

5. Text Messages

Text message communication has become more commonplace for nonprofits in recent years. It’s a great way to get short, succinct messages out to your audience.

TechSoup offers a thorough guide for nonprofits looking to utilize this medium. It covers the importance of:

• Defining your audience

• Knowing what gets them to take action

• Identifying your value proposition

• Getting permission from users

• Preparing to scale

• Testing and measuring outcomes

Closing Thoughts

Your organization needs to communicate with your audience, but you won’t do it successfully unless you have a plan in place.

Following these simple steps will help you design a nonprofit communication strategy that pleases your audience and keeps them engaged.