Summing it All Up- Professionalizing the Non-Profit Industry

Over the last 12 weeks I have explored many different elements involved in protecting the mission of non-profit organizations. Throughout this exploration I came to realize that instead of these different small changes, moving forward I am going to work on developing a way to professionalize the industry as a whole. To me professionalizing the industry means:

•  Creating an industry that people would be happy to work in for their entire careers. Currently many non-profits focus on young professionals, individuals looking for a second career and truly passionate philanthropists. How can we expand this definition and therefore increase the knowledge and talent pool participating in the industry?
• Use a systems approach to grow the industry by collaborating with all of the different stakeholders involved. We need to be working in conjunction with non-profit employees, participants, community members, funders, local governments and local business.  
• Create a shared vocabulary and set of expectations.
• Develop strong leaders who work to grow the next generation of leaders within the industry. 
• Provide organizations and leaders with the time, funding and space to clearly outline every organization’s purpose and strategy.  
• Focus on innovation.

I think through all of these steps, as well as many that I look forward to discovering over the years, we will be able to build a professionalized non-profit industry. This industry is able to listen to and react to the needs of its community and also allows for individuals to grow professionally and support their families and communities in the process. Thanks for reading and please feel free to reach out if you are also passionate about area, want to work with be in making change or just want to throw ideas around. My email address is alisoncorey.brown@gmail.com. 

Bringing Funders into the Conversation

This blog has been focusing mostly on what non-profits and other mission-based organizations can do to protect their mission and improve the quality of the services that they provide. Today I found an interesting article that brought the funders into the conversation. Room for Improvement: Foundations’ Support of Nonprofit PerformanceAssessment is a report released by the Center for Effective Philanthropy that shows how non-profit organizations are interested in focusing more on outcomes, but that they need support from the foundation community to do so.

I appreciate this article and argument because it is starting to take a systems approach to protecting your mission. Like it or not non-profit organizations are in partnership with a lot of different people: participants, community members, donors, funders, local governments and staff. Understanding how these stakeholders work together and what each of them can do to support the overarching goal will allow for a stronger movement and more effective changes. I think that the most powerful element this article presents is  the opportunity to for collaboration. Non-profits voiced their need for support and hopefully foundations are hearing this call and will find a way to provide financial backing and also technical assistance to support this growth.

What ways can you see foundations supporting non-profit organizations in developing stronger metrics? What barriers might come through this partnership? 

The Importance of Shared Vocabulary

I think at this point in the blog that we all agree that it is important for non-profit organizations and their leaders to have and truly understand their missions in order to properly protect them. Although this seems like a relatively simple concept, I am realizing more and more that it might not be.

I recently came across this article in the Harvard Business Review Blog. The post presents the idea that a non-profit’s mission is as important to profits in the private sector. Private sector business judge their success on increasing profits and spend a lot of time and energy in creating system to guarantee this success. Do non-profit organizations spend the same amount of energy on their mission? Although this debate is fascinating, I am going to leave it to another blog post. The element of this blog post that stuck out to me was the definition of a mission, the author provided the following definition, “An effective mission statement must be a clear description of where an organization is headed in the future that distinctly sets it apart from other entities and makes a compelling case for the need it fills.”

Is this how everyone in the industry defines the concept of mission? Not in my experience, or in the experience of the commenters of the blog.. I am currently working with two organizations on strategic planning and we have defined the mission as, what the organization is currently doing. This discrepancy is a bit concerning to me. If we are trying to professionalize and grow the non-profit industry, why don’t we have a shared language? How can we support the development and protection of missions if it is unclear what a mission is?  

There are many potential ways to address this issue but in my opinion the systemic changes of building a cohesive and collaborative community is a good first step. By collaborating, leaders will share their ideas, learn from one another and build a shared vocabulary and industry standard.  

What is your organization’s mission? How did you determine it? Are you working in collaboration with others to create and fulfill it?  How do you think that we should build this increased collaboration? I would love to hear different opinions on the topic.

Learning From Others: How do we increase collaboration?

One of my fundamental values is cooperation and working in partnership with others. I think that by sharing ideas, brainstorming with others and learning from one another we can create a greater end product. Because of this value I spent some time this week seeing what other people are blogging about how they are communicating. Here are three blogs I found and what I learned from them:

Katya’s non-profit marketing blog

I found this blog on a list of the best non-profit blogs and I like it. It has been around for six years and has continued to develop with the industry. It was interesting comparing the difference between some of the first blog and the later ones. Throughout the blog, Katya does a good job of sharing simple ideas. Each of the posts is relatively short and focuses on just one idea. She also uses a personable style that I felt I could relate to.

Beth’s Blog

I am looking forward to following this blog. A couple of things really jumped out for me. First, it deals with issues of measurement and data analysis. These are two things that I think a lot of non-profits hesitate to talk about because it requires a different skill set. I also like how she organized the blog. Each of the posts is categorized and it is visually easy to look at it.

Seth Godin’s Blog

I like that Seth’s blog focuses on a variety of issues from innovation, to types of customers to holding events. This diversity of subject matter is interesting and allows for different types of people to connect with the blog.

Each of the bloggers, as well as the many others that I have been checking out, provide great resources to the community and their writers are a wealth of knowledge. A couple of trends I observed:

• Many of the blogs focus on non-profit’s presence on the Internet and in social media rather than the operations of the organization. 
• Almost all of the bloggers are consultants who are also trying to sell their services. How does this affect collaboration and idea sharing?

What do you think about these blogs? Do you read other blogs in this field? How can we continue to push for online collaboration? 

A Thanksgiving Example

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. To me it is a time to get together with family and friends, cook delicious food and celebrate the bounty of the season. This year my partner and I hosted our two families at our house and it was wonderful, but not without its challenges. All of the people who came and celebrated with us had their individual needs and expectations for the holiday. It was on me to find a way to balance each of these needs with my own mission for the weekend. Finding this balance reminded me a lot what non-profit organizations have to do, while balancing the needs and desires of their different stakeholders.

Here are a couple examples from the weekend. My brother and dad, true Midwestern men, traditionally have spent most of thanksgiving watching football and cheering for whichever side was loosing. Since we do not have a TV, I suggested they find a local dive bar to watch the games as we cooked. Although none of them were open, we did not change our plans around Thanksgiving for their needs. Another challenge I faced was the needs of my partner’s mom. She has her own expectations around Thanksgiving including particular recipes and dishes to serve. In order to balance our needs we separated the items on the menu so that she could preserve her traditions, while I was still able to serve the new local recipes that I had found. Although these examples seem simple, overcoming them was an important step to guaranteeing that the weekend was wonderful for everyone involved. My experience of needing to protect my own mission this weekend highlighted three themes I have been discussing throughout this blog:

1.  Establishment of strong structures. I knew what type of experience I wanted to build for the weekend and I put the structures in place to make it happen. Before any of our guests arrived we did a lot of the grocery shopping at local farmers markets and made a plan for the weekend that supported the mission. 
2. The power of education. As we cooked each dish I spent the time explaining why I had chose that specific recipe and how it helped me to protect my mission. One example is that we used celeriac root, sweet potatoes and squash to support local farmers and to provide an alternative to the starchy mashed potatoes since I have been eating a paleo diet recently.
3. The importance of compromise. Although I had a strong mission for the weekend I realized that I needed to include the ideas and needs of others to make it a meaningful event for everyone.

Thinking about my blog in this new and different away allowed me to understand the idea of protecting your mission at a deeper level by looking at it through a new and different lens.