It’s one of the toughest jobs that nonprofit CEOs have to face… the need for organizational staffing changes. Over the years, while serving as a CEO of different nonprofits, I have found myself often looking at an outdated organizational chart (if they had one!) and wondering – “What do all these people do?” and “How are they adding value to our mission?”

It’s a tough question and, candidly, not a question many leaders want to ask because when we do, we are faced with the reality that some of those positions are no longer needed to support our missions or are no longer relevant in today’s ever-changing environment.

And this ever-changing nonprofit environment means we need new roles and skills to drive our mission that couldn’t even be envisioned 20, 10, or even 5 years ago.

There’s nothing tougher than telling committed and passionate employees that their roles no longer help the organization move forward. And worse, if they’re a long-tenured employee, you’re faced with knowing that you’re sending a dedicated and loyal employee out the door.

It’s a dilemma for many nonprofit CEOs, but one we need to face head-on. As nonprofit leaders, we have a stewardship obligation to our organizations to do what’s right for our missions and we have a fiduciary obligation to our organizations and donors to ensure their donations are being put to the “highest and best use”.

As callous as it may sound, you are not an employment agency.

With the exception of job placement nonprofits, your organization’s role is not to employ people for the sake of employing people. It is to accomplish your mission and deliver value to your constituents. And that means making sure you have the right people in the right roles doing the right things for your mission.

While the transition of staff out of an organization is never easy, you can minimize the disruption to the organization while you’re going through it.

Here are some simple tactics I used while leading big organizational shifts as the CEO of two different nonprofits: 

1 // Acknowledge that just because a role is no longer needed, doesn’t mean the person occupying it did anything wrong. Sometimes the needs of the organization just change and it’s nobody’s fault.

2 // Ensure that the person delivering the news to the affected employee about their termination has been trained to deliver the news with as much dignity, respect, and empathy for the person as possible.

3 // Provide as much transition support for the affected employees as the organization can afford. These items can include things such as: outplacement assistance, payout of leave balances, training, extension of benefits; paid COBRA coverage, and job referrals to similar organizations.

4 // Thank the people affected for their service to the organization. While this may seem like it could come across as trite, I’ve seen time and time again in organizational changes that if you genuinely let people know that the decision was about the mission and not about them personally and truly thank them for their work over their years of service, more often than not, it’s appreciated.

5 // Communicate transparently with the remaining staff. It’s also a reality that while those not affected by staff changes will feel a sense of relief; they will also feel guilt that their colleagues and friends are no longer with the organization while they still are.  Share the rationale for the changes, reiterate these were business decisions and that the impacted employees did nothing wrong, and let the staff know what the organization did to help their colleagues transition (such as outplacement support).

6 // Share your thoughts with the remaining staff about how the changes help the mission moving forward and paint a vision of where the organization is headed into the future and how each of them will play an important role in that future. It always eases people’s anxiety if they feel they know why a decision was made, and more importantly, that there is a plan and a vision for the future.

No doubt, nonprofit and social sector leaders have tough jobs. 

We’re called on to address some of the world’s toughest problems and in doing so, sometimes we have to make some of the toughest decisions. Just know that if you always do what’s in the best interest of your mission and treat people with dignity and respect throughout the process, you’ve done what many nonprofit leaders are too afraid to do – even though the future of their missions may depend on it!

All Nonprofit CEOs have conflict. Sometimes people say I am crazy, but I don’t believe that conflict is necessarily a bad thing.

Maybe it is because I spent nearly a decade managing national conflict resolution programs at the United States Postal Service.

Or maybe it is because my life story has been shaped by some powerful experiences of reconciliation.

But whatever reason it is, this is what I know: conflict can actually be very positive.

Conflict raises important issues to the surface.  Often times conflict is the only way that the truth can emerge. Key learnings about the issues at hand happen because of conflict.

It is how you manage conflict (or don’t manage it) that can make it a problem.

Here’s the thing… most of us want to be happy.

We want to live and work in an environment where everyone likes us and where our contributions are valued.

Most of us want to walk away from our family life, our jobs, and our friendships feeling better for them and vice versa.

So, when conflict arises—whether it be because of miscommunication, differences in personality or work style or a multitude of other reasons—so many of us try to avoid the conflict instead of addressing it head-on.

We’d rather live in denial than to have our circumstances be made worse (we think) by bringing up the issues.

And it is this fear of conflict, especially for those of us in positions of leadership, from which deeply embedded problems emerge.

I didn’t come to these realizations without a lot of pain and CEO coaching throughout the year.

Recently, I was sitting down with a friend who was a newly hired CEO to a nonprofit who found herself with a human resource crisis on her hands.

Several of her executive team members fought constantly. She felt like nothing was getting accomplished particularly with one of her department heads.  

There seemed to be a constant swirl of drama among a few members of the executive team and it was affecting the morale of the team and the staff.

It seemed the conflict kept the team from truly focusing on the mission.

When this nonprofit CEO listened to all parties involved, it became very clear the problem stemmed from one person on the executive team.

The work style of one senior member could be summed up as combative, territorial and manipulative.

Soon the CEO learned that on numerous occasions, this team member circumvented her, going directly to the board complaining about internal management issues and ideas and policies the new CEO was implementing.  

Logic would say, of course, it was time for this team member to go.

But of course, such big personnel shifts are not easy – especially so early in a new CEO’s tenure.  Many CEOs are afraid of making sweeping changes. I totally understand. I’ve been there, too.

The CEO shared with me that if she terminated this senior executive team member, she knew all her political capital with the board would be spent.

She equally worried about how her other senior staff would respond. But she also knew something had to give.

This is what I know: leaders who refuse to deal with conflict will not have long tenures in whatever place they are seeking to lead.

So for all of you conflict avoiders/haters out there, here is part of what I shared with this CEO during her time of need:

1) Do not be afraid to talk to the person with whom you have the difficulty.

Clear the air.

Take them to coffee.

Seek to find common ground.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do is fill the void of conflict with silence. Making an effort can go a long way to the ultimate resolution.

Often when you begin to hear the person out (even if it hard to do so), you at least gain more compassion as why they are exhibiting unacceptable behavior.

2) When you can’t find common ground, do not talk badly about this person to others.

Though it could be very comforting to belittle, demean or judge the person with whom you have a conflict in group settings—DON’T.  

Remember YOU are the CEO.

There’s nothing more annoying for a CEO than to deal with than organizational gossip and backchanneling so you definitely should not be involved in participating in backchanneling and gossip.

If you can’t act professionally, how can you expect your team to do so?

3) Consider your own personal responsibility in the conflict.

Often times our first reaction to a dispute is to blame the other person, taking ourselves completely out of the picture.

But, don’t. There are always two sides to every story, two perspectives to any situation.

So, spend some time in self-reflection with a willingness to say that you are sorry for your part of the blame.

Maybe you haven’t explained your expectations clearly or given adequate time for projects to be completed. Whatever it is, take responsibility—your team will respect you for it.

4) Keep the end goal in mind: new understanding. One of the best gifts any relationship can be given is conflict.

Conflict can be a catalyst for deeper connection, stronger appreciation, and mutual admiration.

You might actually walk away from a contentious discussion with greater respect for the person that has caused you such grief.  

This all can happen if you are committed to the process, no matter how long it takes! Sometimes this means calling in a professional mediator or having a CEO coach that you can bounce things off.

Other times it means making team building a priority.

Or other times, it’s coming to a mutual understanding that it is time to part ways (please note: if you rush too quickly to parting ways, it might be more difficult than it needs to be especially if you haven’t given the individual notice of their behavior and time to change)

Bottom line: conflict is not bad.  

It’s all in how you deal with it!

Don’t hide from it.  Take baby steps if you need to. But you must do something. The worst approach of all: ignoring it.  

Furthermore, like I recently shared, long-term gain comes when we deal with the short-term pain.

Conflict can be painful, yes, but often it is only the way we can truly move forward. 

How many times have you opened your inbox to see an email from a nonprofit that starts something like this:

“If you give just 15 cents a day, nonprofit X  can save the life of a child living in poverty.”

Or, “Nonprofit X is the best steward of your dollars. 95% of your donations go to programs and that means less than 5% of your donations go to our overhead costs.”

Or, “ Nonprofit X gave away one million pounds of food last year to feed the homeless.”

Practically, there’s nothing wrong with these statements.

These are factual declarations. They tell more about the impact of the organization’s mission.  It’s what a donor may want to know about an organization before making a first donation.

Also, you could argue, they speak to a culture of transparency—of organizations that want to stand out in the wide arena of charitable giving—communicating to their donors the good work they’re doing.

IT WORKED FOR THE BOOMER GENERATION

Nonprofits love to use this language because for decades now, that’s exactly what the Boomer generation of donors have wanted to hear. They’ve wanted to know that the organizations they support are institutions they can trust.

If you take a step back, what you realize about these appeals is that they all come from a position of:

Consider us. Look at how good we are. Look at how much good we’ve done. Look at our low overhead rates. Look at how well we manage your dollars.

It’s the kind of information my mom likes to know about when she’s going through the various direct mail appeals that end up in her mailbox each month.

When I asked her about it, she tells me she wants to know whether or not her funds are being used as she intends.

She wants to get proper receipts when she does make a donation that accurately reflects her information and donation amount. And she wants to hear some good news reports as the organization grows in its mission.  

“SOME reports” she says, “But not too many.”  

MILLENNIALS VIEW IT DIFFERENTLY

Yet, the millennial donors that so many nonprofits are turning their attention towards these days want to be spoken to differently.

They want to be part of the story and they want to be part of the solution to the issue that the nonprofit is tackling.  

They want to know that by giving a piece of their hard-earned cash to you, they are having impact. Real impact.  Impact that is direct, noteworthy, and that helps them feel good about themselves.

Recently, when I was chatting with a younger donor, she told me she regularly gave to nonprofits, even with the meager resources at her entry-level salary.

My young colleague and her friends, she said often gave to places like Charity Water, organization that makes the bold promise of “100% of your money brings clean water to people in need.”

If you think about it, why wouldn’t you want to give to an organization like Charity Water?  

You immediately know that 100% of your money is going to bring clean water to people in need.  

It’s a direct link between the donor and the impact. Yet, it also begins to make the shift from putting the nonprofit organization as the hero of the story. The donor is the one who makes the difference.  

PIVOTING TO MAKE THE DONOR THE HERO OF THE STORY

I would assert that the move may be a subtle one, but one that will continue to gain traction as nonprofits begin to remove themselves as the hero of the charitable story and ensure that the donor becomes the hero instead.  And if you fundamentally think about it, it makes sense.

Nonprofits only exist at the desire of their donors who entrust them to work on their behalf to tackle some of the world’s toughest problems.  

As you look at your own fundraising appeals, where is the organization in the story?  

Who is the donor?

Do you tout all the great work that you do?

Or do you tout all the great work that your donors do?  

If it’s the former, how might your organization begin to make this pivot of making your donor appeals less about you and more about your donors?

The use of “we” language is a good start.  Yet, while the use of “we” language still can highlight the organization, it also begins to reflect the collaboration of the donor and the organization in the accomplishment of the mission.

For example, Partners in Health tagline on their homepage says this:

we go. we make house calls.
we build health systems. we stay.

The use of “we” is much better than I (insert the name of the organization) did this. I changed many lives.

But it must go a step further.

Consider Food for the Poor, a nonprofit whose mission is to work in communities devastated by poverty by providing food, clothing and emergency relief.

On their impact page, they focus on the donor. One section contains this block of text:

Your Impact in 2019 . . .

You built 540 homes

You shipped 413 containers

You provided over 26 million meals.

(As of February 28, 2019)

The donor feels spoken to directly and knows that they are the ones who made all that great work possible.

For example, Food for the Poor gives the donor the credit instead of taking it for themselves.  The donor becomes the hero of the story.

YOU ARE IN THE PAIN SOLVING GAME  

Just like your work as a nonprofit CEO is to solve the pain of the beneficiaries of your programs (we all call this “impact”), it is important to think in a similar way regarding your donors. What pain are you solving for them? What impact are having upon their lives?

Arthur Brooks, CEO of the American Enterprise Institute, summed it up very well in an OpEd he wrote called Why Fundraising is Fun.  He speaks directly to this ‘pain’ that you are solving for the donor and what creates the magic when you are working with donors. He says:

In [my] role [as a fund-raiser], I have found that the real magic of fund-raising goes even deeper than temporary happiness or extra income. It creates meaning. Donors possess two disconnected commodities: material wealth and sincere convictions. Alone, these commodities are difficult to combine. But fund-raisers facilitate an alchemy of virtue: They empower those with financial resources to convert the dross of their money into the gold of a better society.

As a nonprofit CEO, you are helping your donors find meaning in their lives.

When you create the conditions, for example, that allow for a donor to build a bridge between the “dross of their money” into behaviors that have impact on the world, you will win.  

IT’S RARE TO SEE THE DONOR AS THE HERO OF THE STORY

However, when you look around, examples of putting the donor as the hero of the story are hard to find.  

Go to the first 5 nonprofit websites that you can think of and test it for yourself.  

It’s likely you’ll find a narrative of how great the nonprofit is and how much they have accomplished.

I understand. We’re all human. And sometimes that makes it’s hard to give others the credit, but I pose the question:

“What would your revenue and impact look like if you made the donors the hero of your nonprofit’s story?”

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a junkie for the latest trends in business or leadership books. I am the kind of person who loves envisioning ways to enable cultures to thrive and processes to be more efficient and effective. Honestly, whenever you’re hired as a turnaround CEO with nonprofits facing financial shortfalls and burned out staff, you need all the help you can get.

Recently, my friend Dr. Amy Butler, former senior minister at The Riverside Church in New York City, asked me to be a guest speaker during her doctoral seminar entitled, “The Vulnerable Leader.”

One of her students asked me the question, “What is the best leadership advice you’ve learned that you can share with us?”

Here’s some of what I said:

Short-term pain is often necessary for long-term gain.

When you are leading a nonprofit — which is, after all, a human organization full of all kinds of people — it is easy to become so wrapped up in personalities that you don’t make decisions that are in the best interest of the organization.

You can say to yourself, “This is too hard. Maybe it can wait until next year” or “If I make this decision then it’s going to create a lot more work for me now.”

But great leaders pull band-aids off problems no one else wants to talk about. Then they act with decisiveness, precision, and lead others toward healthier practices. Don’t you love a leader who models the characteristics they want to see in their team?

Serious leaders are able to weather the storm when it comes (and it always comes).

Leaders are designed to see the future, not the past. Their job is to paint a picture of that future and take people there!

To do this, it often means that you as the leader must take yourself out of the equation. Don’t take the worst days personally. I’ve seen some of the best leaders I know crumble in moments when their organization needed them the most because they’ve made the problems all about them. Or they’ve taken their cues about how they feel about themselves from how the organization is doing.

If we want to lead something great, then we have to know there are days that we’ll all struggle. But this is never the full story. Long-term gain is on its way if we can just hold on.

I love the Maya Angelou quote, which says, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

Leaders must learn to listen to their gut. We have intuition after all. We must pay attention, not only to the words spoken, but also the words unspoken beneath the surface. The best leaders I know are those who can walk in a room and sense the mood without even having one conversation.

Sometimes the hard truth is simply….. NO.

Yet when we begin to take the pulse of people, we as leaders can often second guess ourselves saying, “Well, maybe I should give this initiative a 3rd, 4th or 5th chance to succeed.” Or, “Maybe in time so and so will change.”

While I believe in extending grace and giving people the benefit of the doubt, there are often times and situations that will never change if we don’t trust our gut and chart the course differently.

Leaders must let their people in on the “why?”

Gone are the days, I believe, when people just go to work with contentment because it is what they do. Employees long to know that no matter their role, they have a part to play in making a difference in the long haul at their organization.

A recent poll stated that, “Of the country’s approximately 100 million full-time employees, 51 percent aren’t engaged at work — meaning they feel no real connection to their jobs, and thus they tend to do the bare minimum.”

When leaders ask employees to change course, especially if the path they are changing from is a long-standing tradition, resistance will come if no one knows the “why”.

One of my biggest pitfalls I’ve made as a nonprofit CEO is not fully explaining why we are making organizational transitions at that particular time.

Being a big picture guy, where everything is clear in my head, I’ve forgotten that the extra time needed to explain the “why” is well worth it.

Learn from my mistake. Learn to speak that way to every person who works in the organization from the support staff, to the mid-level management, and to your direct reports. The time you take to both learn how to and speak directly to those under your care will give tenfold results, especially as significant organizational pivots are made.

If you asked me what kind of leader I was 5 years or even 10 years ago, these wouldn’t be the same lessons on the list.

Leadership is a work in progress. No matter what kind of position you hold – if you lead a group of 2 or 2,000 or 20,000, you must keep personally growing.

None of us should ever feel like we’ve arrived. There’s always an opportunity to learn and grow. John F. Kennedy said it best, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

So, if we want to be in the business of leading others, then you and I need to constantly be improving our craft and sharing the wisdom we’ve gained along the way.

What is the best leadership advice you have to share?

At Thrive Impact, we are building a community of nonprofit leaders that believe that we as nonprofits need to thrive so that we can have the impact our communities need from us. We need to soar to our highest potential together for the sake of our people.

If you’re a nonprofit CEO or Executive Director, we’d love to hear your best leadership advice. Let us know here by filling out this (very) brief form! Then, over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the best pieces of we receive from nonprofit leaders over on Instagram and Facebook.

During my tenure leading charitable organizations, there is one thing that I quickly noticed. It was happening in my organizations and when I looked around, I saw it happening in other mission focused organizations as well. The “it” I’m referring to is that we sometimes treated our donors like they were ATM machines. When we needed cash, we’d hit them up and then dutifully give them a receipt and then the next interaction we had with them was when we wanted money again and we would hit them up again – expecting that they would reliably spit out cash and then we would respond again with a beautifully written tax donation receipt.

In fairness, I can’t take credit for the analogy, I borrowed it from my Chief Development Officer, but I have continued to use it over the years in countless staff meetings in several organizations where I would emphasize the need for creating a customer experience. Our donors are, in fact, consumers. They are consumers of our missions and they contribute to help support that mission, and unfortunately, all too often only hear from us through our financial appeals.

I firmly believe that today’s donors want to have an “experience” with us. They want to know what they’re investing in and that requires us to communicate the impact that we are having as organizations. It means we need to do better story-telling and we need to use new technology to connect and engage with our donors. But at the end of the day, I assert that equally, and perhaps more importantly, what matters is how we make our donors feel in the process. In the words of Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

And that’s why I believe mission based organizations need to focus on the “experience” a donor has with us. And that experience encompasses everything from the way we answer our phones, how quickly we send those donation receipts, the content of our appeals, how we thank them, how much control we give them in how frequently we communicate with them, and understanding why they give to celebrating their gift.

I’ve seen it work and have a profound impact on donors. In one organization I had the opportunity to lead, we launched an organization wide program around the donor “experience”. One of our new values was “Value Every Donor” and we launched brand training on what this looked like to the donor. Our internal call center was renovated to be bright and filled with imagery of our mission. We implemented new technology and processes for tracking donor issues and responses to them. We re-named our internal call center and it became the Global Experience Center. We put pictures and stories of long term donors in our hallways and interviewed them on why they supported us. We communicated to everyone on the staff how their role supported the “experience” — from our fundraising staff, to our event teams, to our finance department to our mail room. Yes, even the mail room – because our data indicated the faster we got the donation receipt out to door to our donors, the higher likelihood the donor would give again in the next few months. You see, everyone in an organization plays a role in the “experience”.

And while I would like to tell you, we did the “experience” right every time, we didn’t, but we tried to learn from our mistakes and when we did make them, we used the “recovery” opportunity to show our donors how much we valued them.

In the end, it was worth it — in more ways than I had imagined. Our donor retention rates improved. Our annual gift value improved. Our recurring monthly gifts increased. And internally, our morale improved because everyone knew how they supported the donor experience. And those committed staff members working in the Global Experience Center, who were our front lines of communications and interactions with our donors got new titles….they became CEOs, Customer Experience Owners.