In previous posts, I listed 10 key strategies that need consideration in the strategic plans of nonprofit organizations. The first strategy is “Embed capacity building into the fabric of your nonprofit". The second strategy is to "Build an exceptional board". The third --to engage in accelerated strategic thinking and planning. The fourth strategy is to "Forge partnerships, alliances and mergers to increase mission impact and sustainability". The fifth strategy is to "Develop board and staff succession plans". The sixth strategy is to "Build capacity for effective public policy and advocacy". The seventh strategy is to "Master use of social media".
The eighth strategy is to deploy targeted volunteer engagement strategies.
One of the most important opportunities for nonprofits today is the potential impact of baby boomers as they now begin to retire. A lot is being written about what boomers will be doing with their volunteer time and their charitable dollars. Also, for a number of reasons, many boomers will put off retirement to continue working in their current jobs or in new part-time positions. Several studies suggest that many boomers, when they think of employment "after retirement", express a preference for work in the nonprofit sector.
All of this represents great news for nonprofit organizations. The problem is that many nonprofits are not thinking about how to capitalize on this phenomenon. They have no coherent strategy for volunteer engagement. This trend and its implications are so important that a strategic plan that doesn’t include concrete strategies to tap into Boomer charitable giving, volunteering and professional workplace skills and knowledge, is deficient in a serious way.
In my work with nonprofits, more and more organizations are looking for ways to maximize their engagement of volunteers to increase mission impact. And the good news? Lots of excellent resources are readily available. Here are several excellent resources including some that focus on engagement of younger volunteers:
• VolunteeringInAmerica.gov. This website hosted by the Corporation for National and Community Service, provides the most comprehensive collection of data on volunteering and civic engagement ever assembled, including data for every state and nearly 200 cities. The data is collected through a partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and has been released annually since 2005. http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov.
• Everyone Ready Professional Development Program in Volunteer Management. Everyone Ready® is a professional development program in volunteer management delivered via Online Seminars, electronic Self-Instruction Guides, interactive discussion boards, and other online resources. To learn more about this innovative approach to training, go to: http://energizeinc.com/everyoneready.
• Calculating the Economic Impact of Volunteers. The Economic Impact of Volunteers Calculator created by the Points of Light Foundation estimates the appropriate wage rate for volunteer time based on what the person does, the value of specific tasks according to market conditions as reported by the US Department of Labor. Organizations can use the Calculator to determine the value of the time their volunteers give doing a wide variety of volunteer jobs. Go to: http://www.handsonnetwork.org/tools/volunteercalculator.
• Sample Volunteer Job Descriptions. The Community Services Council of Newfoundland and Labrador whose mission is to encourage citizen engagement, has created an excellent resource for the development of volunteer job descriptions. To learn more about creating job descriptions for volunteers, go to: http://www.envision.ca/voljobdesc/example_form.asp. To view a variety of sample volunteer job descriptions to help determine the type of volunteer you are looking for, go to: http://www.envision.ca/voljobdesc/description_form.asp. Then to create volunteer job descriptions, you can use an interactive template. You can view your job descriptions online, print them or email them, go to: http://www.envision.ca/voljobdesc/example_form.asp.
• The New Volunteer Workforce by David Eisner, Robert T. Grimm Jr., Shannon Maynard, & Susannah Washburn. Stanford Social Innovation. http://www.ssireview.org.
• Reinventing Aging. Harvard School of Public Health–MetLife Foundation Initiative on Retirement and Civic Engagement. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu.
• Resources on Baby Boomers. The collection available at the website of the National Corporation for Community Service originally complied by Temple University in April 2008, offers a list of resources for those who have had limited experience with this population, or anyone who would like to learn more. http://www.nationalserviceresources.org.
• The Boomers’ Guide to Good Work. Ellen Freudenheim is the author of a new guide to help boomers find public service jobs in the second half of their lives—the preference of most boomers in their 50s, according to a new national survey. Both the guide, The Boomers’ Guide to Good Work: An introduction to jobs that make a difference, and the survey, MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures New Face of Work Survey are available free online at http://www.civicventures.org. The MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures New Face of Work Survey is available at http://www.civicventures.org.
• Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever. Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber. Free downloadable book at http://gen-we.com.
• Youth and Students in Service Resources. Collection of resources that includes volunteering by young people - children, teens, and college age - plus service-learning and family volunteering. http://energizeinc.com.
Showing posts with label planning for your nonprofit's future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planning for your nonprofit's future. Show all posts
Monday, September 19, 2011
Monday, January 19, 2009
Examining Our Mental Models: A Key to Breakthrough Thinking
In his book "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", author Peter Senge describes five thinking tools or disciplines. One of these tools is the discipline of “Mental Models”. Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, beliefs, generalizations, or images that influence how we see the world and how we take action in it.
Very often we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our thinking and behavior, including how we go about strategic planning.
For example, if our mental model of a library is that of a building where the community keeps its books, we will spend much of our time thinking about adding shelf space and buying more books. On the other hand, if we view the library as the community’s gateway to an expanding world of information, we will think and act very differently. Mental models of what can and cannot be done in different management and community settings are no less deeply entrenched.
Here’s the point: if we proceed with strategic planning without examining our mental models, we run the great risk of creating a plan based on assumptions and beliefs that are, in whole or part, obsolete. A plan based on faulty thinking is not going to lead to the kind of impact we desire.
The discipline of working with mental models starts with turning the mirror inward: learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world and our work to bring them to the surface and hold them up to tough questioning. It also includes the ability to carry on "learningful" conversations in which people expose their own thinking and make that thinking open to the influence of others.
The discipline of mental models is a key to understanding how organizational learning takes place:
• We begin by unfreezing ourselves from currently held beliefs, knowledge, attitudes or mental models. We determine which mental models are still valid and provide true pictures of the world and which mental models no longer work.
• Next we absorb new or alternative attitudes, beliefs and behavior.
• Finally, we begin to make decisions and take actions based on the new state of mind.
Of course we will repeat this learning process from time to time as some of the new mental models become outdated themselves.
At a recent conference, nonprofit leaders were asked to identify some of the mental models, paradigms and assumptions that they operate from that influence how they act internally and externally. The list of mental models included the following:
For one nonprofit engaged in racial justice work, some of the mental models:
• Racism is so huge we can't possibly effect or impact or end it.
• The corporate world is resistant to racial justice work.
• Only people of color can do effective racial justice work.
Other nonprofits identified the following mental models:
• Our identity as an organization is our current building.
• More money will solve all of our problems (if we only had more funding . . .).
• People find fundraising inherently distasteful.
• We are a flat organization so we cannot provide internal opportunities for promotion and advancement.
These mental models represent ways of thinking that will limit our stratgeic thinking in significant ways.
During the conference workshop, participants then began to examine these mental models by applying the following questions:
• Does this mental model represent an accurate picture of the world? Is it still valid and what is the evidence that the mental model still works? (Are we sure?)
• Is this mental model obsolete in some way and if so, how? Again what is the evidence that the mental model no longer works?
• How will this mental model affect our strategic planning efforts?
• Can this mental model be improved?
• How can a new mental model increase the mission impact of our work in the future?
If you’re interesting in exploring the discipline of mental models further, here are two good resources:
• Working with Mental Models by Roland Boettcher
• Mental Models: The Second Discipline of Learning Organizations by Marty Jacobs
I’d like to end with a few quotes that help to make the point about the importance of understanding the impact of mental models on our work:
"You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- Buckminster Fuller
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we’ve done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.… We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive”. -- Albert Einstein
And on the eve of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration, the words of Abraham Lincoln:
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present…. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew.”
Very often we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our thinking and behavior, including how we go about strategic planning.
For example, if our mental model of a library is that of a building where the community keeps its books, we will spend much of our time thinking about adding shelf space and buying more books. On the other hand, if we view the library as the community’s gateway to an expanding world of information, we will think and act very differently. Mental models of what can and cannot be done in different management and community settings are no less deeply entrenched.
Here’s the point: if we proceed with strategic planning without examining our mental models, we run the great risk of creating a plan based on assumptions and beliefs that are, in whole or part, obsolete. A plan based on faulty thinking is not going to lead to the kind of impact we desire.
The discipline of working with mental models starts with turning the mirror inward: learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world and our work to bring them to the surface and hold them up to tough questioning. It also includes the ability to carry on "learningful" conversations in which people expose their own thinking and make that thinking open to the influence of others.
The discipline of mental models is a key to understanding how organizational learning takes place:
• We begin by unfreezing ourselves from currently held beliefs, knowledge, attitudes or mental models. We determine which mental models are still valid and provide true pictures of the world and which mental models no longer work.
• Next we absorb new or alternative attitudes, beliefs and behavior.
• Finally, we begin to make decisions and take actions based on the new state of mind.
Of course we will repeat this learning process from time to time as some of the new mental models become outdated themselves.
At a recent conference, nonprofit leaders were asked to identify some of the mental models, paradigms and assumptions that they operate from that influence how they act internally and externally. The list of mental models included the following:
For one nonprofit engaged in racial justice work, some of the mental models:
• Racism is so huge we can't possibly effect or impact or end it.
• The corporate world is resistant to racial justice work.
• Only people of color can do effective racial justice work.
Other nonprofits identified the following mental models:
• Our identity as an organization is our current building.
• More money will solve all of our problems (if we only had more funding . . .).
• People find fundraising inherently distasteful.
• We are a flat organization so we cannot provide internal opportunities for promotion and advancement.
These mental models represent ways of thinking that will limit our stratgeic thinking in significant ways.
During the conference workshop, participants then began to examine these mental models by applying the following questions:
• Does this mental model represent an accurate picture of the world? Is it still valid and what is the evidence that the mental model still works? (Are we sure?)
• Is this mental model obsolete in some way and if so, how? Again what is the evidence that the mental model no longer works?
• How will this mental model affect our strategic planning efforts?
• Can this mental model be improved?
• How can a new mental model increase the mission impact of our work in the future?
If you’re interesting in exploring the discipline of mental models further, here are two good resources:
• Working with Mental Models by Roland Boettcher
• Mental Models: The Second Discipline of Learning Organizations by Marty Jacobs
I’d like to end with a few quotes that help to make the point about the importance of understanding the impact of mental models on our work:
"You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- Buckminster Fuller
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we’ve done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.… We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive”. -- Albert Einstein
And on the eve of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration, the words of Abraham Lincoln:
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present…. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew.”
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
New Planning Resources for a New Year
Yes We Can!
As the New Year begins, I'd like to recommend a few excellent resources to support your strategic thinking and planning efforts.
First, another great article from the Harvard Business Review. Appearing in the December 2008 issue, there is an article entitled Delivering on the Promise of Nonprofits by Jeffrey L. Bradach, Thomas J. Tierney, and Nan Stone. The authors, associated with the Bridgespan Group, propose that nonprofits wanting to dramatically increase their mission impact need to address five interdependent questions: Which results will we hold ourselves accountable for? How will we achieve them? What will results really cost, and how can we fund them? How do we build the organization we need to deliver results? These questions provide a framework for change that combines elements of theory of change, outcomes measurement, strategic and business planning, and organizational development. Included in the article, are a number of case examples drawn from the work of the Bridgespan Group. If you don't subscribe to the Harvard Business Review, you can purchase an electronic or hard copy of the article at www.hbr.org. Order Reprint R0812G.
The second resource is the Severson Center Trend Website. The Severson Center, a division of the Alliance for Children and Families, has opened their trend website to the general public, allowing access to a library of information in a user-friendly format. No login is needed for the website, but some reports are password protected for access by members of the Alliance. Trends and their impacts are organized under the following categories: Business/Economy, Education, Nonprofits, Technology/Science, Demographics/Population, Health, Social Service Issues, and Work. No question about it: this is the only resource of its kind and an invaluable resource for nonprofit strategic planning efforts. Go to: www.alliancetrends.org.
The third resource is Designing Your Future: Key Trends, Challenges and Choices Facing Associations and Nonprofit Leaders published in August 2008 by ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership. According to the authors, Designing Your Future “began with the analysis of several hundred trends. Association leaders and other experts and practitioners have winnowed the lengthy list of impacts to the most critical trends ranging from social to economic to political to environmental to technological impacts likely to affect associations.” Here are some of the chapter headings: Key Challenges: 10 Strategic Priorities Association Leaders Must Address, Key Choices: a Strategic Decision-Making Framework, 50 Key Trends, Scenario Analysis Workshop, Trend and Trend Analysis Workshop. Click here to preview this publication on Amazon.com.
And don't forget to check out our listing of Key Trends included in our weekly feature Nonprofit Picks Of The Week.
Happy New Year!
As the New Year begins, I'd like to recommend a few excellent resources to support your strategic thinking and planning efforts.
First, another great article from the Harvard Business Review. Appearing in the December 2008 issue, there is an article entitled Delivering on the Promise of Nonprofits by Jeffrey L. Bradach, Thomas J. Tierney, and Nan Stone. The authors, associated with the Bridgespan Group, propose that nonprofits wanting to dramatically increase their mission impact need to address five interdependent questions: Which results will we hold ourselves accountable for? How will we achieve them? What will results really cost, and how can we fund them? How do we build the organization we need to deliver results? These questions provide a framework for change that combines elements of theory of change, outcomes measurement, strategic and business planning, and organizational development. Included in the article, are a number of case examples drawn from the work of the Bridgespan Group. If you don't subscribe to the Harvard Business Review, you can purchase an electronic or hard copy of the article at www.hbr.org. Order Reprint R0812G.
The second resource is the Severson Center Trend Website. The Severson Center, a division of the Alliance for Children and Families, has opened their trend website to the general public, allowing access to a library of information in a user-friendly format. No login is needed for the website, but some reports are password protected for access by members of the Alliance. Trends and their impacts are organized under the following categories: Business/Economy, Education, Nonprofits, Technology/Science, Demographics/Population, Health, Social Service Issues, and Work. No question about it: this is the only resource of its kind and an invaluable resource for nonprofit strategic planning efforts. Go to: www.alliancetrends.org.
The third resource is Designing Your Future: Key Trends, Challenges and Choices Facing Associations and Nonprofit Leaders published in August 2008 by ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership. According to the authors, Designing Your Future “began with the analysis of several hundred trends. Association leaders and other experts and practitioners have winnowed the lengthy list of impacts to the most critical trends ranging from social to economic to political to environmental to technological impacts likely to affect associations.” Here are some of the chapter headings: Key Challenges: 10 Strategic Priorities Association Leaders Must Address, Key Choices: a Strategic Decision-Making Framework, 50 Key Trends, Scenario Analysis Workshop, Trend and Trend Analysis Workshop. Click here to preview this publication on Amazon.com.
And don't forget to check out our listing of Key Trends included in our weekly feature Nonprofit Picks Of The Week.
Happy New Year!
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