What we're thinking about...

How much of your time is spent managing others instead of leading change? Are you ready to move from a place of managing people to leading with influence? No doubt leadership development looks very different today than it did a year ago. Here are some of the trends we see emerging in 2021 and some questions for reimagining your agency’s leadership strategy.

In the 2020 workplace, people are fully showing up. Your employees are juggling more today than ever before, attempting to work, parent, teach, and survive—all while isolated from critical community resources and support. In this new working normal, how are you creating an environment where employees feel safe, seen, heard, and respected?

It’s a provocative question, we admit. Yet this is a time when organizations must be wrestling with this question actively. There are three pillars of organizational health - read on to learn more about them!

Given the rate at which we all deal with change on a daily basis, you would think it gets easier, but managing change remains challenging. Why? Because change is an emotional experience.

We cannot afford to overlook the importance of culture. How does culture manifest in your organization now? What culture practices can you aspire to this year to make your organization more inclusive? How can you consciously evolve your culture? Below, we explore these ideas in greater detail.

A global pandemic, an economic recession and an exploding social justice movement are convergent forces calling on nonprofit leaders, funders and consultants to do our work differently going forward. For the first time in modern memory, we have an opportunity to reevaluate all of our assumptions, perceptions, procedures and systems.

Are there just too many nonprofit organizations? Alliances can take many forms. In this post, we’ll detail some of the most common forms of alliances and why organizations might want to use them. The important thing here is to keep your mission delivery at the forefront of your rationale, and to summon the personal humility that brought you to nonprofit work in the first place.

Is it too soon to begin thinking about the “new normal?” Organizations that are not ready to consider how Covid-19 will change our work are risking their future health and sustainability. We are grounding these recommendations in human care and empathy for now, and smart planning for what’s next.

It is likely that many organizations will have to make significant changes to ensure sustainability. If and when that happens (and we wish it didn’t have to), it is important to be smart about how that takes place. Enter: organization design.

You’re riding in an elevator with someone who asks what you do - you have about 3 minutes to answer them succinctly, powerfully, compellingly so they ask you more. What do you say? The role of a mission statement is to describe what you do in clear terms so the listener immediately “gets it.”

Everyone struggles with how to articulate your strategic plan goals so they compel others to join you in your noble quest. How many organizations do you know that spend months and months and thousands of dollars only to roll out a plan with … meh goals? We’d bet the answer is too many. We’re setting out to change that.

Do you know how to map your strategic position? The word “map” here literally means to try to create some visuals to help you picture where you sit relative to other organizations with similar missions. It is a way to help you understand your unique role.

Imagine coming to work every day full of purpose and conviction. The role of a vision statement is to serve as your true north, the motivation for working in the social sector, the difference you are in business to make. Here are some key questions to ask yourself when framing or refining your vision.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to do the work and not have to worry about engaging people? Sure, it would be easier - and a whole lot less effective. How each nonprofit defines its community may vary, but the idea that the organization exists to serve a particular community is at the center of the nonprofit form. Here are some tips for how to manage these conversations.

The best laid plans can be facilitated or foiled by organizational culture - the (mostly) invisible force that guides how people in your organization interact with one another and with those you serve. So if culture is invisible, how do you pay attention to it? Here are some tools to help you be more proactive about building a culture where people want to work with you and do their best work when they’re there: