As with many ranking systems, the 100 Best Nonprofits to Work For in Oregon is a survey-based process. It combines the rankings of self-reported, staff survey responses and an employer benefits survey.  The scores of the organizations are then parsed into categories or small, medium, and large nonprofit agencies.  According to the Oregon Business Magazine, 170 nonprofits participated in the survey with over 5,500 individual employee surveys received from participating agencies.

Underneath the “contest element” of the 100 Best ranking, is a very important organizational management tool. From the perspective of those I spoke with at the recognition event, the ranking of “100 Best” was, indeed, the expression of an organizational culture of continuous improvement rather than a “bragging rights” contest.

Perhaps this thinking was best captured in a conversation I had with an Executive Director of an organization that has been on the list for three years.  Clearly animated she said, “The survey has each of my employees giving us feedback on our work environment, our management, and communications, along with their opinions about how well we are doing on mission, goals, career development, and compensation. The information is way more valuable to me and my board than the award” (A bit later in the conversation she did concede that the award was also important in fundraising, marketing and her agency was glad to have received it).

As I pondered the “best of event” my mind began to wander into thinking about continuous improvement as an organizational mindset.  As my consulting practice is based on nonprofit performance improvement, my first stop down the road of thinking was to do a quick math calculation.  There are almost 16,000 public charities registered in Oregon (source) and yet only 170 agencies participated in “100 Best” survey process.  That means only 1% of the nonprofit organizations in Oregon were considered for the designation of “100 Best.”  I am not suggesting that only 1% of nonprofits are interested in being named among the “best” but the statistic does beg the question, “how many nonprofits intentionally strive to be among the best?”  In this post, I want to reflect on the role of a “best thinking mindset” for nonprofits and offer some practical strategies for getting started on a continuous improvement process.

Engage Everybody: One of the first principles of continuous improvement is that it is not a “solo practice” or even a top down “management event.”  Continuous improvement is foremost a shared culture and only secondarily is continuous improvement a practice. Here is a simple diagnostic. Stop and think about how often in a board or staff meeting did you hear the question, “What can we do to improve…?”  How many different people ask the question?  Does the question relate to your agency’s programs, operations, evaluation –or all the above?  If your self-reflection suggests that continuous improvement is not as active as a value as you would like in your organization, then start a conversation about the critical need for continuous improvement in the nonprofit sector today.  A few reasons for continuous improvement include: a) growing demands for services require high quality services delivered effectively, b) funders are increasingly demanding continuous improvement, c) high performing organizations are more stable and thriving work environments. (here is an interesting masters thesis on the topic)

Self Assess: Once you have a critical mass of interest in continuous improvement then it makes sense to identify the opportunities for improvement. One way to assess your opportunities is to facilitate a conversation using an appreciative inquire approach that identifies your Strengths, Aspirations, Opportunities and Results (see here & here).  This can be either preceded or followed by a more detailed assessment using more formal assessment tools (great online tool database here).  With an assessment complete, prioritizing your needs is an exercise of determining which of the needs map with your organizational aspirations and hold the greatest potential of a positive return on the invested time and energy required to make the improvement

Develop a Focus: At this stage of the process, it is important to develop a way to focus the energy and attention of the entire organization.  Focusing organization attention can be accomplished using tools such as a written workplan (see here & here) or a visual organizer (see here).  Further, developing a focus includes creating a tracking process to ensure process is being made on performance improvement plans developed.

Rapid Cycle Test: Performance improvement is operationalized with the use of an iterative process to create, measure and monitor changes over time.  One such process is to frame change as a “rapid cycle test” that is a four step cycle of Plan, Do, Study Act (here is a great primer).  In short, this process suggests change is: a) planned, b) implemented as a pilot (do), c) followed by a study of the results, and d) the results acted on (either further implementation of the change or revision of the change in another cycle of piloting).

As this performance improvement cycle becomes an embedded cultural practice, your organization will become stronger. Indeed, operationalizing a performance improvement culture is clearly the mark of a “best of” organization.  I would like to reiterate,  performance improvement is a critical nonprofit management competency to master and increasingly is not optional. The rapidly changing times demand that nonprofit organizations focus myopically on developing the highest level of organizational functioning and still reach higher. Borrowing from the iconic Harry Potter books, getting to where you want to be requires, a clear destination, determination to get there, and deliberate effort.  Performance improvement requires no less.

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

“If only those nonprofits had the luxury to speak the truth to those upon whom they rely for money, they might say something like this: “The last thing we need right now is to devote yet more time to gathering data that won’t affect your decision one way or another—even if you bothered looking at it, and that cannot be used anyway to build up a coherent or useful body of research for grant making.”

As anyone with preteen and adolescents will immediately understand, this nonprofit rant demonstrates a clear external locus of control. In case your unfamiliar with the concept of locus of control, it is a theoretical construct that suggests an individual (or organization) can be externally oriented –seeking approval, guidance, direction and –well, control from the outside. The converse, an internal locus of control is where an individual or organization is self-directed, with self-mastery and an internal sense of power and control. Indeed, the parenting task of the early adolescent years is to help kids grapple with (and hopefully master) an internal locus of control and independence, rather than clinging onto childhood dependence on external caregivers. Unfortunately, the fundamental flaw with the article about the futility of measurement is that it gets the locus of control all wrong. While I agree with the premise of the author that it is detrimental for an organization to merely collect program level accountability and evaluation data to simply meet external requirements, it is at this point that my agreement with Schambra parts way. As I stated in my last post, program evaluation planning is an internal strategy that is peer to strategic planning and resource planning. Until an organization is clear on this point, and creates an operating culture that values program evaluation as strategy, data collection will remain an externally controlled and driven process with limited relevance.

So the question that remains is that “When an organization decides to treat program evaluation as strategy, what exactly does that mean?” I would suggest that the answer is in being intentional about addressing three fundamental domain questions: 1) What did we do? 2) How we did we do it? and 3) Did it matter? Implied in each of these questions is strategy that can be summarized by the table insert. As you can see, each of the evaluation domains has a related metric, audience & purpose and should be aligned with your program approach, logic or social impact model.

Creating an evaluation table forces an agency to think about the strategic questions related to the internal and external ecology of its program. The evaluation grid is not intended to tell you what to think rather it is intended to suggest how to think about program evaluation.

I personally believe that if the three macro questions and supporting strategy questions can’t be answered by an agency, then it will be increasingly difficult for the organization to retain its place in the social-citizen sector. We are in the early stages of what will be an endemic underfunding of social services. With demand for social programs and services continuing to be high and resources stagnant and, in some cases, rapidly regressing, a new “survival of the fittest evolution” is at hand. In this new evolution fitness will not be determined by the size of one’s reserves or endowment but fitness will be determined by the ability of nonprofit to be evaluative, transparent and networked. All three of these attributes are connected to evaluation strategy and become the points of an organizational internal locus of control.

Evaluative: Increasingly, relevant nonprofits are focusing their strategic intention on performance improvement and developing a culture of organizational learning. It is impossible to have a twin focus on performance improvement and learning without commitment to evaluative thinking and acting. For those organization striving to be on the leading edge of impact through systamically learning and improving will embrace evaluation as having ongoing evaluative data is the only meaningful way to support how well an organization is doing in meeting its mission.

Conversely, one only needs to look at the Federal Department of Education’s Student Mentoring program to see the folly and peril of resting on “no evaluation” or equally detrimental, relying on “historical evaluation data.” While youth mentoring has long been ascribed the status of an “evidence-based” youth intervention, the Department of Education lost its entire $47 million budget for the student mentoring program, when the impact evaluation found the initiative to be ineffective and that the program was deemed to be duplicative of other Federal programs.(1) This incident left dozens of youth mentoring programs with lost revenue and some programs ceased to operate. Such data-oriented decision-making foreshadows a move towards a more disciplined “performance-based” grant making model that dramatically increases the need for nonprofits to think strategically about evaluation.

Transparent: If the first internal motivation for developing and evaluation strategy is for performance improvement and organizational learning, the second motivation is to strengthen transparency. Elsewhere I have written about organizational transparency but at the program level, transparency also matters. Take, for example, the model of transparency set by the Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF). In a recent published report, the NWAF takes a brutally honest look at its programs and practices of a decade and reflects on both the successes and failures of their strategy, programs, and services. Transparency opens the opportunity for dialogue, support and change. Adapting the ideas expressed NWAF’s President & CEO Kevin F. Walker, I would like to suggest that “sharing lessons learned – not just trumpeting success stories, but also examining missteps and false starts – has yet to become one of the [social sectors] core strengths.” Government, philanthropy and nonprofits are increasingly looking for ways to examine and discuss data and such transparent conversations generate ideas for the improvement of the entire sector. And, as Walker concludes, “given the difficulties facing our society in this decade, philanthropy is duty-bound to evolve toward ever-greater effectiveness.”

Networked: A third internal driver for evaluation is considering the network in which an agency operates because the “unit of change” is rapidly moving away from the nonprofit organization to the local nonprofit network or ecology. Just last week I was sitting in on a dialogue between a nonprofit and a potential funder. The questions being asked by the potential funder were less about the individual nonprofit and more about the nonprofit’s relationship to others working on the same social issue. “How do you fit in with others?” “Where are the points of intersection?” Leverage? Scale? “What do you know of others successes and challenges and what do they know about yours?” Such a network and shared understanding is created in the context of data. A network is not simply a group with a shared passion for a cause, rather, a network is defined by the collective and tangible action in the direction of change. It is action and not affinity that causes change. As such, program evaluation plays a central organizing role in defining actions and the results of the action.

In both my last post and this one, I have suggested that the bar for program evaluation has been set too low. While foundations and funders might not be using evaluation data consistently or effectively, it is not an excuse for nonprofits to relegate evaluation to a lower-tier organizational functioning. Indeed nonprofits that embrace evaluation as strategy will be driven by internal excellence rather than an external locus of control. Nonprofits that embrace evaluation as strategy with strengthen not only their organizational core but the centrality of their place in solving social needs. Together, strategic planning, resource planning and evaluation planning comprise nonprofit strategy. With such a three-legged strategy. an organization will not only survive as an organization but will demonstrate leadership and be positioned for growth and stability in social citizen sector.

As always, your comments are welcome.

(1) Office of Management and Budget. (2009). Terminations, reductions, and savings: Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2010. Washington, DC: OMB.

As a starting point, I want to create a visual for the concept of nonprofit program accountability. Among the technology assets in the empire of Google is a tool called NGram Viewer. Using this tool, one can enter a word or concept and graph the use of the word over time (using as a reference the database of Google Books). I recently used NGram Viewer to graph the concept of nonprofit program accountability. As you can see in the figure, nonprofit accountability first emerged as a concept in the late 1970’s and bumped along until the early 2000’s. It was at that point that the term began a steep incline with nonprofit program accountability becoming a living, breathing, much talked about idea. Note: please don’t overestimate the value of this word picture as I am not suggesting there is any rigor to the underlying data –its just a illustrating concept. With such a steep growth, one would expect nonprofit program accountability and evaluation to be a priority within nonprofit organizations. Enter conceptual and practical disconnect.

Quick story. I was once talking with a nonprofit board about program accountability and evaluation. At one point in the conversation, a board member sitting back with his arms crossed asked, “is there any reason to think our funders have a problem without performance?” The response was “no, our funders are happy.” The second question of the board member was, “Does the agency staff think we’re doing what we need to be doing?” The response to this question was definitive, “Yeah, we’re doing great work.” The third question began to sound like the case was being built question by question, “So, is anyone asking us for greater program accountability and evaluation?” The third answer was more tentative, “um, no, we aren’t being asked for anything new.” With an air of pronouncement came the board members final rhetorical thought. “So why are we having this conversation about program accountability and evaluation?” Needless to say, program evaluation got little traction that evening.

When we turn to the literature, we fare no better. For example,  a series of articles published by smart academic  Joanne G. Carman and her colleagues, support the notion that the practice of program accountability and evaluation varies tremendously among nonprofits. Abstracting one statement from the studies illustrates the theme of her and her colleagues work.

“The picture that emerges is one that is decidedly mixed, illustrating a range of behaviors that challenges the current perception that most, if not all, funders are asking nonprofit organizations for more evaluation and performance measurement data.”(1) - emphasis mine

Even more recently, The Center for Effective Philanthropy published a report titled, “Grantees Report Back: Helpful Reporting and Evaluation Processes” that concluded, “On average, grantees do not find current reporting and evaluation processes to be very helpful in strengthening their organizations and programs.” In differentiating the use of evaluation and reporting, the study concluded that “Grantees who report discussing their report or evaluation with their funder perceive the reporting or evaluation process to be more helpful — yet nearly half of grantees say no discussion occurred.” -emphasis mine.

The conceptual and practical disconnect between program accountability and evaluation and the perceived usefulness of such efforts is clear. While we talk about nonprofit accountability and evaluation, the practice of such efforts is uneven and inconsistent. If this is the state of field practice, the next logical question we need to ask is “what are the barriers that get in the way of program evaluation?”

First is the wall. Money –or more appropriately the lack of it. Many will say that the disconnect between evaluation talk and practice is directly connected to the lack of resources. “We can’t afford to do evaluation.” is the typical response to the lack program accountability and evaluation data. However, I suggest that you can’t afford not to. I personally believe that the day is rapidly approaching when funding agencies and donors begin to say, “The emperor has no clothes.” I have written before that, at the organizational level, transparency and accountability are becoming increasingly important. Without supporting program level accountability and evaluation data, I also believe that nonprofit organizations will come under greater and greater skepticism. So while at face value the barrier of “no money” may be true, the wall must come down and every organization must make it a priority to dismantle this barrier. A final thought is that the wall of “no money” actually hides the real barriers to program accountability and evaluation, of which, I believe there are three:

Skills, Support, Confidence & Value: I believe that a significant barrier that prevents many organizations from seriously addressing program accountability and evaluation is found in the alchemy of “lacking skills” in evaluation and “lacking the support” to conduct evaluation. Too often the leadership of organizations fails to invest in developing the organizational skills and support to conduct evaluation. Skill development and support does not have to be costly. There are a variety of online resources that are a Google search away. Relationships can be built with local colleges and universities or seek out a qualified consultant.  Finally, if you need money, then raise it. Enough of the excuses.

The second part of this barrier is the lack of confidence and values. Some have labeled these two variables as core motivation. If one understands the value of a task and has confidence that they can do the task then there a greater likelihood that the task will become a priority. Putting these pieces together, to overcome this barrier, an organization should develop an approach to understanding and resourcing evaluation that builds confidence and create a culture and an organizational value that supports evaluation and the use of the resulting data.

Missing or Misaligned Incentives Another barrier to program evaluation and accountability is found in the area of incentives.  To start, ask yourself some inquiry questions such as

• When was the last time that your organization celebrated a data report that demonstrated program effectiveness?
• When was the last time you presented program evaluation results in a public venue?
• When was the last time that your major funder provided you with adequate resources to conduct an evaluation?
• Have you ever been penalized for having or not having evaluation and accountability results?
• Has anyone ever asked for your program accountability and evaluation results?

These are a just a sample of questions that can be used to probe where the incentives for evaluation are (and are not) for your organization. Exploring the incentives, lack of incentives, or misalignment of incentives is another way to, not only identify an evaluation barrier, but to dismantle it. As a result of this inquiry, an agency should clearly be able to identify positive incentives for program evaluation and, if they can’t be identified, they should be created.

Fear that We are the Emperor: Perhaps the largest barrier to program accountability and transparency is the fear that evaluation outcomes would reveal that we are the proverbial emperor. “What if we measure and the results are negative?” can be a paralyzing specter if our mindset is one of fear. However if we want to develop ourselves into a socially innovative nonprofit organization we must dismantle fear and embrace inquiry. We need to understand that program accountability and evaluation is the source of power and empowerment. Without evaluation how can we improve or measure progress? Program evaluation is the stuff that makes program giants, changes things, and disrupts unmet needs.   Conversely the lack of data simply perpetuates the myth of nonprofits as nice organizations doing good in the community.

What I am arguing for this is post is the need for nonprofit organizations to consider their relationship to program accountability and evaluation. The literature and practice might suggest that the field of the social-citizen sector talks about accountability and evaluation but at the same time, also suggests that we have been less than successful at operationalizing that talk with any consistency. However, I would argue that this is case where field practice does not matter. I believe that socially innovative nonprofit organizations are those that invest in the development and implementation of a solid plan for program accountability and evaluation. As illustrated by the Venn diagram, organizational strength and impact is more durable in the presence of a solid evaluation and accountability approach that is connected to strategic and resource planning.

Program accountability and evaluation strengthens internal practice as a focus of continuous improvement and serves as an external benchmark to proclaim an organizational commitment to excellence. As nonprofit agencies continue to look for ways to innovate in a resource-constrained environment, building and implementing strong strategic plans, resource plans, and evaluation plans will position agencies well to effectively meet compelling community needs.

A always, your thoughts are welcome.

(1) Carman, JG. (2009). Nonprofits, Funders, and Evaluation Program Accountability in Action. The American Review of Public Administration 39: 374-390.

Based on literally dozens of conversations with nonprofit leaders, I find that many organizations are looking for a simpler framework for strategic planning.  In this post, I want to outline a strategic planning process that is versatile enough to guide an organization or team as they seek to engage in the thoughtful work of strategy.   In summary, the framework that I most often follow, is the process of 1) establishing the critical social need, 2) creating a compelling vision of how your agency can create a positive social impact by addressing that social need, 3) developing a relevant organizational mission, 4) developing system’s focused program strategies, and 5) creating measures and  outcomes to guide the plan implementation.

Establishing the Critical Social Need:  Every nonprofit should exist only in response to an unmet critical social need.  Unlike the private sector where the market may support companies selling consumables that may have little value, no value, or even a negative value, the nonprofit sector can only afford to support organizations that are positively impacting compelling social needs.  As a result, strategic planning begins by defining the unmet social need.  Such a community needs assessment can be based on existing data, expert opinion, surveys, a systematic environmental scan, or ideally some combination of these data points.

Creating a Compelling Vision of Tomorrow:  I have written before about the relationship between vision & mission and critical social needs.  Within the nonprofit sector and the philanthropy community that supports the nonprofit sector, there is an increasing trend towards defining and working towards a compelling social impact.  The focus on social impact makes it  increasingly less tenable for agencies to simply run “good programs” without creating social change. In this context of strategic planning,agencies should ask themselves, “what is the better, more just, and equitable tomorrow we are tying to create?”  A vision, in essence is the BIG WHY that defines the reason for the existence of an organization.

Developing a Relevant Mission:  An agency’s mission statement should represent a the “tactical  orientation of the organization that is closer to the social need being addressed address.   The questions that get to the heart of an agency mission might include ones such as: What programs and services is our agency trying to excel at?  What qualities of culture and community are we seeking to create?  How do we want to be known in the community? If folks seek us out, what are they seeking us out for?  By creating a clear mission you are answering the fundamental questions of the “What and How”  of the agency.

Designing System’s Level Strategies:  In between your vision of tomorrow and the mission you declare today is the “white space” of programs and services.  Strategic plans are not intended to the entirely fill the white space by fully designing programs  but rather is the space where an organization declares its commitment to strategies designed to create its vision of tomorrow.   The strategy “challenge” is to think systematically and systemically about the opportunities to foster change at the individual, community, and policy level to create a synergistic effect that magnifies the benefits of each individual program. It is also important for an agency to develop capacity strategies that will grow the organization’s ability to create a larger social impact.  For many organizations that implement “programs” the shift to thinking about community impact and public policy can be an exciting process of discovering new potential.    Indeed, the creative energy of designing solutions to compelling social needs has the potential of giving renewed inspiration and aspiration to an organization.

Creating Performance and Outcome  Measures:  It is only worth the time and energy to create a strategic plan if an agency is willing to ensure that the document is living, breathing and is used as the organizational compass guiding and anchoring decisions.  Ideally, as program strategies are created, the organization also takes time to establish  corresponding performance and outcome measures.   Answering the question of how an agency will monitor progress toward the objectives should be integral to strategic planning.  Similar to developing program strategies, the purpose at this level is not to create the actual performance measurement system (i.e., dashboard or report card) but to establish the benchmarks that will help provide assurance that the agency activities will stay focused on the strategic design. Later you can fully develop programs and outcome measurement more precisely based on further study and design.

I purposefully presented in this post a simplified strategic planning process. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, I have seen (and heard from frustrated potential clients) how an overly complex process of strategic planning gets in the way of successful strategic planning.  Too often the textbook approach to strategic planning is cumbersome and emphasizes precise sequential steps, prescribed analysis measures (i.e., SWOT), meaningless revenue projection exercises and other artificial exercises that constrain thinking.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that strategic planning is a process that requires intentionality, reflection and analysis –none of which are easy. However, I am a firm believe that social sector strategic planning requires a simpler more aspirational framework as represented by the five slightly imprecise and  iterative steps identified above.  Unlike a standardized corporate strategic planning approach Nonprofit and social sector agencies requires a social impact planning model that can dynamically address a wide range of social needs and accommodate a variety of organizational cultures.

A strategic plan that reflects the process from need to to vision and offers specific strategies and measures to guide implementation, will establish a framework to help an agency achieve success.  To be useful in creating such a strategic plan, a facilitator needs to, as Simon Sinek (external link), so clearly articulates create a compelling why, a disciplined how and a consistent what.  Applied to a strategic planning framework it suggests that a simplified approach to strategic planning coupled with a systemic facilitation process can assist nonprofit agencies to improve the social impact of their organizations.

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

At the risk of over generalizing, many references and books discussing vision and mission have the tendency to describe the two concepts as if they were distinguishing between goals and objectives.  I have written about the differences between goals and objectives and suggested that a goal is the “upstream activities” necessary to create “change that matters” and that an objective is the work in front of you that gets you to start moving towards your goal. While there is a parallel short-term and long-term thinking associated with the discussion of vision and mission, it would be a mistake to use the paired concepts interchangeably.

There was a time when a vision might have been thought of as nothing more than a lofty goal.  In the business sector such a mission might have been something like, “We want to be the first choice for luxury cars purchased in America,” or in the social service sector such a vision/goal might have been, “We strive to be the preeminent substance abuse treatment provider in the region.”  However, I firmly believe that equating a vision with a lofty goal is inadequate to clearly define the aspirations of an organization today.  In the private sector “vision” is increasingly framed in the language of a triple bottom line, “people, profits and planet.” In the nonprofit and social service sectors, a vision of organizational success must give way to the larger “upstream” thinking that boldly proclaims the deep social impact created by the agency.

As a result, a facilitator needs to assist the organization of today in identifying a clear and compelling vision statement.  Such a vision is the response to the social need and context in which an agency operates.  For example, if an agency is working to decrease the “youth violence” then a vision statement is about more than providing youth diversion activities because the prevention of youth violence inherently is not only about youth “behavior.”  In addition to behavior, youth violence is also about many socio-economic and geopolitical disparities which also need to be within the organization’s “field of vision.” I have written previously about strategies for facilitating the development of a social impact model, but the point applicable here is that  a compelling vision starts with a current and urgent social need and tells the story of how the social need of tomorrow will be different than it is today.

So if the function of an organizational vision is to declare the future social impact of the organization, what purpose is served by the organizational mission?  A mission is also connected to the social need but is the proximal response the changing landscape.  While the core of a strong mission is grounded in the principles and values of the organization, it also references the strategies that are used to confront the compelling social needs. A mission statement is the head and the heart of an organization and serves as the lens through which organizational programs and strategies are viewed.  As such, a mission statement should be closer to the social need rather than the visionary social impact.   A mission statement evolves as the social need evolves while also remaining anchored to the vision. In this context, a facilitator also has a role for helping an organization understand its mission as well as its vision. This need to clearly define and differentiate between the concepts of vision and mission becomes apparent when one introduces program strategies.

In between the mission and vision, is the “white space” where the organization builds its program strategies.  The following illustration creates the linear process:

Social Need ==> Mission ==> Programs/Strategies ==> Vision of Social Impact.

While a bit oversimplified (there are feedback loops and outcomes in the model), the point that I wanted to make is that there is conceptual “distance” between a vision and mission.  For those engaged in strategic and business planning, this spatial relationship is entirely practical.  By situating the mission close to the social need and anchoring the vision to the social impact, a facilitator has the room to help an agency orient its programs and services more strategically. The program strategies become the link between the organizational mission and the organizational vision.  By placing program strategies between mission and vision, the strategies can be more effectively assessed relative to how they well they serve as a the causal link between two. In other words, it is only if you are clear about the social need, the mission and the vision, can one assess the appropriateness of the program strategies.

Again, as I scanned some of the blogs and websites that discussed the differences between Vision and Mission I was struck by how often the differentiation between the concepts was ignored or oversimplified. I have contended in many of my posts that the highly effective nonprofit organizations think systemically and strategically. Facilitating meaningful differences between Vision and Mission is a critical dimension of a systemic and strategic facilitation process. Mission, supported by strategic programming moves an organization towards their true vision and, in the end, such movement is the core of a strong facilitation process.

As always your feedback is welcome.

As I have written previously, a functional board is comprised of members capable of serving four functions that include 1) governance, 2) capacity support, 3) content expertise, and 4) resource development.  This is a critical framework to understand as it serves as the foundation of a functional board. However, a high performing board requires a different level of operating. High performing boards are based on “the highest and best use” of the talents and skills of board members.  Most nonprofit organizations seek to recruit board members who are talented individuals who are often business leaders, critical thinkers, and community activists. Unfortunately, more often than we would like to admit, the use of such  talented board members is limited to review of policies and procedures, looking over budget reports for accuracy and assisting in fundraising events. While such board activities might define some of the duties of a functional board, a high performing board is defined by engagement in ongoing strategic thinking and strategic action. Reviewing meeting minutes, agency financial reports, and blessing changes in HR policy are necessary duties of a Board but if the balance of board meetings is consumed with such pedestrian administrative tasks, then the “highest and best use of board talent “is likely missed.

A classic Harvard Business Review article published over a decade ago, suggests that high functioning boards, discover, focus and organize around “what matters” (External Link).  According to this article, what matters is “harnessing the collective efforts of accomplished individuals to advance the institution’s mission and long-term welfare.”  It goes on further to suggest that the board’s contribution is meant to be strategic, “the joint product of talented people brought together to apply their knowledge and expertise to the major challenges (and I would add, opportunities) facing the institution.”  So, if this is the description of a high performing board, what does it take to create such a board?  From my experience and a review of the literature, I would suggest five starting points.

Assess where you are and define where you want to be.  The first task of developing a high performing board is to figure out where are the gaps in performance.  A Google Search will unearth several board self-assessment tools that range from overly simplistic to overly complicated. Such tools might be useful to help a board think about its governance functions, member commitments, or help identify “holes” in a board’s operating structure.  Such a self-assessment can be a good place to benchmark the strengths of your board operation but many of these assessments do not have a strong strategic intent.  An alternative assessment would be to benchmark practices against the variables presented in the Grant Thornton 2009 National Board Governance Survey for Not-for-Profit Organizations (External Link).  In my opinion, this survey offers a timely and more strategic perspective on board operations. A third approach to assessment is to shift away from a narrow assessment of the board and conduct a larger capacity assessment.  I have written elsewhere about capacity assessments and in that article I linked to a useful assessment spreadsheet (External Link).  A capacity assessment would help the board not only reflect in its strengths and opportunities but would also be useful in discovering the “what matters.”  Whichever route you take, knowing where the board is now will help identify the performance gap related to where you want to be.

Build the Board’s Skills:  I have argued before that board development starts at a board orientation but continues as an ongoing process of raising the skills and competencies of board members.  The reality is that board members become effective as they engage their heads, hearts and hands in the work of the organization.  To me, this calls for a meaningful development agenda that includes a) ongoing board training on topics related to governance and strategy, b) opportunities for boards to get their “hands dirty” in the work of the organization, and c) learning about the larger service context in which the nonprofit agency works.  Building board skills is a strategic and long-term process that is not segregated into an annual or semi-annual training event.  Ideally, participating in a strategic agenda for board skills building should be built into board practices and be built into the expectations of board service.

Engage Strategically:  A simple yet useful exercise to help gauge the strategy of a board is to do a quick content analysis of two sources.  First, examine the pre-meeting packets sent out to board members for the last three or four months and sort the contents into the two piles of administrative and strategic.  Second, review the meeting minutes for the same time period and highlight everything that is strategic in yellow.  The balance of the piles and the presence or absence of yellow highlights will give a board a good indication of how much of the board’s time is spent in administrative review and how much of the time is spent engaged in strategy.  The second part of the exercise is to ask the question, how much of the historic content was actually dependent upon face to face meeting?  For example, could board members review and approve fiscal statements and other administrative approvals after a simple review of emailed documents?  The answer is likely to be yes.  I am not suggesting that boards should conduct business by email rather I wanted to create a perspective of time.  If board members can read and approve by reviewing email attachments, then the time allotted at board meetings should be proportional. Simple administrative review should be done in advance of meetings and, when there are no concerns about the subject matter, such tasks should take relatively little time at a board meeting. Unfortunately, too many boards are conditioned to process the nuances of organizational administration, mistaking such administrative processing for strategy.  Board meetings need to be oriented around strategy and board members engaged in the work of solving big challenges of the agency and thinking strategically two and three years out.   Performance of boards would improve dramatically if administrative review were limited to a tightly narrated quarter or a third of a total board meeting time.

Measure Performance:  Another starting point for improving board effectiveness is to measure performance.  Too often a board will measure the performance of the agency and neglect measuring their own performance. At best, many boards’ self-performance evaluation is limited to evaluating the start and end time of meetings or the quality of the takeout food served at the event.  High performing boards create meaningful measures of board performance. While it might be tempting to measure performance by attendance, percent of board members donating to the agency, and the on-time completion of the executive director performance evaluation, these are fairly un-strategic measures. Strategic measures go further and might track such benchmarks as the regularity and content of executive or planning sessions, engagement of members outside of board meetings, or the percent of meeting time spent in strategy versus administration. Additional measures might be tracking the time required to recruit skilled board members or membership retention.  For many boards shifting to performance-based board management can represent a sea change in culture and is likely only achieved after carefully facilitated strategic conversations and thoughtful planning.

Get the Right People on Board:  A final starting point is to conduct a thoughtful review of board recruitment strategies.  Does the agency have clear board member job descriptions?  Are members sought out individually for skills and expertise? Do board members invest time in cultivating potential board members?  Many small to midsized nonprofit agency have difficulty staffing their boards let alone staffing their boards with highly qualified community leaders.  Having worked with many such boards, I will not underestimate the challenge of this task.  However, establishing a clear recruitment strategy and creating a meaningful board structure with the expectations of continual learning, performance-measurement, and strategic engagement will become reinforcing cycle that raises expectations and organizational optimism.   Energy and engagement creates energy and engagement.

Developing a high performing board is not a trivial task.  Indeed, I would contend that for many agencies, creating a high performing board may an intentional process that spans a year or more. However, despite the challenges of reinventing a board, facilitating a process to develop a high performing board is critical as nonprofits seek to thrive in the continuing economic uncertainty and instability.  High performing organizations of  tomorrow are those that develop and maintain high performing boards today.

Recently, I have been working on several projects that involve helping agencies articulate a plan for growth and sustainability.  None of these groups have visual models of impact and it becomes a powerful exercise to help these teams create a visual representation of their social impact. While there are likely many paths to creating a visual social impact model, I would like to outline four models to introduce the concept.

Pathway Model:  One of the more generic processes of creating a social impact model is to describe the pathway between the current reality and the future vision. For example, if an agency envisioned a community where 80% of children are reading at grade level in 5^th grade and the current statistic was that only 66% of students met that benchmark a pathway approach would anchor 66% of kids at one end and 80% of kids at the other end.  The facilitator would then lead the group through an open-ended conversation to describe what happens between those anchor points as the pathway steps that would close the gap.  If facilitated well, creating such a pathway would reveal if there is capacity in the agency to create the desired social impact. The weakness of a generic pathway model is that it is open-ended and prone to subjectivity because it does not lock groups into thinking in a structured cause-to-effect process.

Logic Model: While somewhat academic, developing a logic model is an excellent way to visualize social impact. One of the reasons a logic model works well is that it offers a framework for working sequentially from resources to impact.  Here is a link to an excellent guide on creating logic models developed by the WK Kellogg Foundation. Developing a logic model starts with creating the linear categories of: Input, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impact.  The facilitation process can start with either end of the continuum and moving either forward or backwards.  So if your Impact vision is that 80% of 5^th grade children reading at grade level, then the first backward question is “What Outcomes do you need to see as milestones towards that Impact?” Outcomes that support the impact might include improved test scores, policies changed, number of school institutionalizing programs.  Moving one more step back to Outputs, the group would then describe the service delivery indicators that could cause the Impact. Output indicators might be such things as the number of children participating in programs, number of parents being engaged in the process, etc.  Further back, Activities describe what the organization does to cause the Outputs and, further back still, the Resources describe the assets that the agency has to dedicate to the task.  Conversely drawing a logic model can start with Resources and move forward to Impact.  Logic models work as a visual orientation because it forces a team or an agency to consider the relationship between resources and impact.  Are the resources adequate to produce the activities, outputs and outcomes that create the desired impact?  If not then the choices are to either scale back the impact or increase the resources dedicated to the change effort.

Outcome Mapping:  Another model for visualizing social impact is an outcome map. Similar to a logic model an outcome map sequentially considers the organizational process from strategies to impact.  A useful guide on creating an Outcome map comes out of Organizational Research Services’ experiences evaluating an Annie E. Casey Foundation projects. One difference between using outcome mapping and a logic model is that outcome mapping has been used extensively to describe social impact in the context of community driven processes. Outcome mapping is better tailored to encourage full participation of stakeholders and the community.  An excellent in-depth exploration of a community and participatory approach to outcome mapping can be found at the International Development Research Centre.

Social Impact Model™ A fourth visual representation of Social Impact can be found in the trademarked model of describing social impact that was developed by Root Cause.  The Root Cause model, bridges the gap between problem and solution through the clear representation of the Strategies and underlying Operational Model iteratively informed by clear Social and Economic Indicators and Organizational and Performance Indicators.  A full description of the Social Impact Model is found at the Root Cause website.

The point of outlining four models for describing social impact is not to suggest one approach over another or to prescribe how visualizing social impact “must” be done.  The purpose is to introduce several models that can frame the concept of making explicit the connection between the mission, vision, and program structure of an organization and the Social Impact of the organization.  In an age of accountability and the focus on outcomes and change, organizations need to be able to clearly articulate what social impact they influence or cause.  Finally, while describing social impact may appear to be a “nonprofit” concern, the increasing focus of private sector companies on a “double” or “triple” bottom line suggests that describing social impact is a model for any social enterprise.

It is my belief that the effective organizations of the future are those who are clear about their purpose and their social impact and can draw the picture to illustrate the connection.  As a result, facilitators need to be skilled in the process and visualization required to help organizations create a social impact model.

A community engagement process such as developing a community coalition or an advisory group  typically has the dual purposes of achieving a specific program outcome (such as advocating for funding or policy change) and attempts to build social networks between participants.  Coalitions or advisory groups are convened typically because each participant comes with very different perspectives, assets and power with the goal of achieving through collective effort what individuals cannot achieve on their own.  By fostering collaboration, it is the classic systems view of the “whole being more than the sum of the parts.”  So when a facilitator tracks the progress of the group, in addition to measuring process and outcome, s/he needs to measure the strength of the network. So what does measuring a network look like?  I would like to offer three frames that might serve as network measurement.

Measuring Social Networks:  The concept of measuring social networks basically identifies the extent and intensity of social relationships among the individuals and organizations in the community engagement process.  Using qualitative tools to take “snap shots” of individual and organizational practices over time, this evaluation approach can be used to describe the size and structure of networks, positions, roles and communication and interaction patterns among members. Measuring social networks is a way to estimate the “effect” of the coalition with the assumption that when a network is growing in scope and depth then there is likely a positive network effect being created by the engagement process.  There are software tools that can help in measuring social networks and there is a large literature base describing social network measurement.  A case study that I have found very useful in illustrating this methodology is a report of the Reclaiming Futures National Program Office (disclaimer: I do development work for this organization but had nothing to do with this evaluation).

Measuring Social Capital:  There are many ways of looking at the concept of social capital some of which overlap social network measurement.  In this context, I would like to suggest that social capital measurement differs from social network measurement in that social capital is not only interested in the breadth and depth of networks but also considers the power distribution in that network.  Some of the best resources on measuring social capital come from the international community and, from all places, the World Bank.  Using works like trust, solidarity, collective action, and inclusion, a social capital approach suggests greater attention to the power dynamics of a coalition or advisory group.  It asks not only if groups are working together but also asks if there is equity and balance in the power and relationships.

Measuring Entrepreneurial Actions:  Back in 1978 I cam across a paper that discussed the concept of measuring entrepreneurial behavior in nonprofit agencies.  This paper influenced how I thought about capacity in nonprofit agencies by offering a way to think about measuring the creative force of an organization.  I have pondered if there are implications for coalition measurement.  In other words, could we use entrepreneurial intent as a marker for measuring coalition strength?  Zooming ahead a decade, there is increasing discussion of the concept of “industry clusters” as a regional economic engine (I introduced clusters as a collaboration model in another post).  Associated with this economic development theory are emerging models for measuring “regional entrepreneurship capital.” Such measures look at physical capital, cooperation, human capital, knowledge capital and social capital.  For coalitions, a measurement framework might identify a collection of indicators related to these “capital” domains, aggregate the indicators for all coalition members, and track those indicators over time.  Growth in these indicators would indicate that the coalition “market sector” is growing by leveraging joint actions of members or by expanding the network.

As I stated in the beginning of this post, measuring progress as one facilitates community engagement needs to include an assessment of process and outcomes.  Those twin measures are the basis of ethical facilitation practice.  However coalitions and advisory groups convened for interdependent long-term action also requires measuring the social network and capital effects of the convening.  Unfortunately, network measurements takes additional time, resources and are often beyond a project scope.  However, there is a deeper point than lecturing about the need to do an evaluation that often cannot be afforded.  The point underscores the premise of the first post, which is that facilitating community engagement requires more than group facilitation skills. In designing community engagement processes, facilitators need to consider the power of convening community partners. That power is inherent in the relationships that can be cultivated by the facilitation process and measured (formally or informally) over time.  If this power is ignored or underutilized it can result in a coalition that is weak and ineffective.  Conversely, if capitalized on, nurtured and measured, the collective power of the network can expand capacity in ways that no one agency could achieve alone.  If a formal network evaluation cannot be an “action,” due to budget or scope constraints, it still must remain a frame of reference for the facilitator. Having a network measurement focus going into a community engagement process distinguishes a community engagement process from mere meeting facilitation.

Step 1 Assess the Value Proposition.  As I have shared in another post, assessing the value of a task is at the core of any facilitation process (and consulting relationship).  There needs to be a clear relationship between the value of any performance improvement process and the effort that goes into designing the process.  In the case I briefly outlined above, the operative concept was that the workplan was the basis of a major quality initiative that would ultimately impacting future budgeting processes, performance measures and work-practices.  With the expectation of “implementing a major quality improvement initiative,” developing a workplan in a single meeting would be a stretch for all but the most experienced teams.  So the first step is to assess the task and allocate the resources appropriate to the expected return on the up-front “investments” of time, money and staffing.

Step 2 Establish Clarity around Goals and Objectives. Elsewhere I conceptually discuss goals and objectives in more detail. It suffices to say that workplan development begins with being clear about the world-changing goal and the tactical objectives required to make the change a reality.  In the case described above, the goal was nothing short of a “seismic change in the organizational culture where quality improvement was to become the institutional norm.”  The objectives would be the activities and tactics that the team needed to achieve the goal and the workplan would be roadmap to get them to the goal.  Typically the clarification process to distinguish the goals from objectives is a two-step facilitation process. In the first step the team needs to come to a consensus around the goal statement.  In the second step the team needs to brainstorm and sort the list of tasks required to achieve the goal.  At this stage you write the goal that is clear and complete and identify conceptual objectives that you will further detail in step four.

Step 3 Establish Owners, Team Members. Resources and Approval Process.  The success of workplan implementation is dependent upon someone owning the plan and having the authority to ensure that the plan is implemented.  At this point in the process it is critical that for each conceptual objective is assigned an owner who is accountable for the objective and supporting workplan.  There are occasions where a task may require co-owners (for example, if there are separate implementation and fiscal functions) but co-ownership is only successful when the co-owner roles and authorities are clearly spelled out.  Once an owner is designated, the implementation team, resources and constraints of a task need to be assigned.  Finally, teams need to be clear about the decision-making or approval process associated with the objective.  The purpose of this entire step is to establish the implementation expectations for each conceptual objective.

Step 4 Develop SMART Objectives. At this point, the team takes each conceptual objective and creates a clear tactical objective statement.  One of the most common formatting acronyms for Objectives is “SMART,” where the letters stand for

Specific: Answering “who, what, and how much,”
Measurable: Defining what it looks like when you get there,
Achievable:  Ensuing the activity is within the capacity of your organization and the authority of the team,
Realistic: The cousin of achievable is ensuing that the resources available to support the objective, and,
Time-bound: defining the objective’s ending point.

Step 5 Create Action Steps.  Teams are now prepared for the hard work of developing actions steps that guide the progress towards the objective.  The essential framework is to identify the action steps, due date, team lead, and accountability measures or milestones.  Accountability measures and milestones often get left off of workplans but are critically important because these become the monitoring tools for the workplan owner.  In the process of creating action steps teams need to develop a common understanding on how detailed and deep does the team go in the action steps? Does the team list primary tasks only?  Subtasks? Sub-Subtasks? The balance point will differ from team to team and may take some experimenting by team members.  The balance you are looking for is to be able to monitor the forward motion of the process, ensure communication and accountability without creating unrealistic expectations of documentation and reporting.

Step 6 Create the Workplan.  The final step of the process is to create a formal workplan.  In another post I elaborated on the concept of workplan documentation and point you to that entry for ideas and workplan templates.

As the opening step suggests, implementing this six-step process to create a workplan will scale from a 1-2 hour exercise for low value projects to perhaps several hours for high value initiatives.  While the six steps outlined here may seem like a lot of work, much of the process can actually be summarized on a single worksheet (such as this template).  Whatever the scale of the workplan development process, those teams that invest the attention, focus and resources in working through these six steps will reap the benefits of improved performance.

Recently, I was asking a team for their feedback on the goals and objectives for an approaching  meeting and one team member emailed me, “I always get confused by the differences between goals and objectives but here is what I want out of the meeting.”  As I read these words I had one of those fleeting thoughts of “If I only had a nickel for every time I have heard that comment, I’d be rich.” Many teams don’t get hung up on the distinction between goals and objectives and meetings seem to work for them.  Again, depending on the meeting, some folks can get away with blurring outcomes.  However, at other times failing to keep a team focused on goals and objectives as distinct outcomes can be disastrous.  I once was on a committee where paid facilitators failed to make the distinction between goals and objectives in a process where such distinguishing was important, strategic and vital to the outcomes   In this particular case, the  failure to recognize the difference between goals and objectives truncated the vision of the team, caused confusion, and resulted in delays as the team lurched towards the end point without clear guidance.  Let me underscore my belief.  One of the critical roles of a process facilitator is to help teams clarify the differences between goals and objectives and manage the process in a way that ensures that the team seamlessly navigates between the two.  Clarifying goals and objectives is a critical systems thinking competency.

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A quick Google search will yield dozens of websites detailing the difference between writing goals and objectives and many offer tools and frameworks (like logic models) to help define and operationalize the two concepts as they work in tandem. However, as a way to think informally about goals and objectives, I would like to offer the following working definitions that have served me well over the years.

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A Goal is the expression of the desire of your team, company, or nonprofit to change the world. Goals are about going far enough upstream to create performance improvement or change that matters.

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An Objective is the work that is in front of you to help you achieve your goal.  Connect the dots between objectives and you start making progress towards your goal.

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Let me give you an example of how these two ideas work in real life.  One of the principles of my consulting practice is to purchase locally and make purchasing decisions that have the lowest environmental impact.   As most new businesses, I needed to go through the process of developing the basic identity tools such as letterhead, business cards and other print products.  The obvious choice was to print on recycled paper (looking for a high post consumer waste content in the recycled material) and preferably print using non-petroleum based ink.  As I sought out a local printer I ended up talking to a couple of printing companies who said that they could accommodate the use of recycled papers and choice of inks.  Then I encountered a printer who stopped my in my tracks when he said, “when you ask about recycled paper you are asking the wrong question.” He then proceeded to walk me through the printing workflow from — prepress — to plating — to production and equipment maintenance — and ended up with recycling practices.   His bottom line was that choosing recycled paper is a great symbolic act on the part of the consumer but that in reality printing was an energy intensive process that involves many toxic chemicals, paper waste and often inefficient equipment, all of which are costs hidden to the consumer.  He then detailed the massive re-engineering that he has taken his company through in order to dramatically decrease their environmental impact not only in terms of saving trees but also in terms decreasing the toxic waste stream, decreasing energy consumption and increasing the health and safety of the work environment.  He then said, “your objective might be to purchase recycled business cards but our goal is to save the planet.”  In short, not all recycling symbols are created equal and if I get stuck on the objective, I may fail to recognize the goal.

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This story brings me back to questions I have asked my clients to clarify goals as distinct from objectives.  Do you really want to write a job description or do you really need to rethink your entire job classification system?  Do you need to write a grant or do you really need to rethink your resource development plan? Do you really need someone to facilitate a meeting or do you need to rethink the performance capacity of your team?  In other words, are you going far enough upstream to make a difference?

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Keeping goals and objectives clear, distinct and separate, helps us be clear that our present activities always keep the larger “world changing” goal in context. Without a systems view, I would be carrying business cards that my not represent any practical meaning in terms of environmental responsibility.  In the same way a community-nonprofit or government agency that is content counting social services provided to some client base fails if it is not also working on the larger goal of changing the social and geopolitical context that creates the need for their service in the first place. So goals and objectives matter?  Only if you want to change the world.

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