Question: My board of directors and staff are working, doing their jobs in the day to day, but they don’t seem to have the energy or interest in the overall mission and future of the organization. We need to develop a plan for the future, but I can’t seem to muster up their enthusiasm and creativity for the effort. How can I increase engagement in order to lay strategic groundwork for the future?

A friend of mine once gave me a card that pictured a crisis center, on fire and afloat on a river, about to fall over a cliff.  I was the director of a crisis center at the time, so it was amusing and a bit true to my experience.  Unfortunately, the portrayal of a crisis center in crisis is not so farfetched. The day-to-day work of nonprofit organizations is often so demanding, the big picture is often overlooked in response to the daily “crisis” of staying afloat.

It is tough to transition from daily demands to thinking about five years down the road or the organization’s long term future. There are tools and methods available to help transition and engage the creativity of your stake holders.  The first step, however, is to make planning and forward thinking a priority.  Management guru…

There is a long history of nonprofit organizations partnering with the government, usually at the state level, through contracts to help provide for and respond to community needs. Through this powerful partnership, local services have improved, such as: enhanced human services, increased community development, greater economic development, and superior environmental protection.

Although these positive developments are possible, the Urban Institute Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy and the National Council of Nonprofits are well aware that there are many challenges and problems that have wormed their way into the system. In 2010, the Urban Institute conducted the first comprehensive national survey of nonprofits to assess the problems with government contracts and nonprofits (view the full report here).

Here are the problems they found:

Unreasonably complex applications and reporting: The contracts are ridden with endless amounts of red-tape, bidding complications, and unavoidable inefficiencies that occur through complex bureaucracy. When the applications and reporting requirements are so complex, staff productivity, time and money are spent needlessly.

Changing terms mid-contract:…

Illustration by Jocelyn Ruiz

Relating well and as often as possible to donors is far and away the best foundation any nonprofit can build; better than the best website or the wittiest tweets. How you make your supporters feel about their social investment in your organization is paramount.

One of the necessary parts of this relationship building process involves thinking of yourself as a detective solving a puzzle: How can you make people feel that their acts of support for your organization are magical - and needed and special.

If you are at arms' length from them (constantly sending them electronic or snail mail communication) you can't possibly begin to know them. Can you become best buddies with every person who donates time and money to your organization? Not likely.

But what you can do is to reach out to people immediately upon their involvement.  Make a quick phone call to thank them - yes, I said it.  Sometimes you actually should pick up the phone instead of emailing, e-blasting or tweeting! And there's always the wonderful hand-written note.  Nothing says that you are thinking about someone quite like that.…

"There is one thing all radically successful people have in common: their ferocious drive and hunger for success makes them never give up."
- Bernard Marr, business author

In a recent blog post, Bernard Marr gave several examples of business leaders who have persevered to become wildly successful. On his list he included such people as Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates. He pointed out that all had experienced multiple failures before hitting the jackpot.

This got me thinking about those who work in the social sector. I wondered who might qualify as a "radically successful" person in that world. Marr's list didn't include anyone from this group. And, as I thought about possible candidates, I considered how best to decide who qualified. All of the individuals touted by Marr had generated vast wealth as a result of their perseverance. That measure just wouldn’t cut it for those working in the social sector. 

So, I decided to base my selections on those who had never given up, and ultimately had a huge positive impact on the world. Impact is not so easy to measure, but I think we can all agree that we know it when we see it. So here is my initial stab at a list of “radically successful” people from the social sector:

Enhance your leadership skills…

After 22 years in the fields of volunteer program management and nonprofit administration, I’m often asked by colleagues in the sector for advice on how they can improve the volunteer program in their organization. Before responding, I ask them questions about the roles they have for volunteers, how they recruit volunteers, how volunteers are “on-boarded” to the organization, who supervises them and how, and how successful they are at retaining volunteers.

The feedback that I then give almost always follows a consistent theme – “Your program has the potential to be dramatically improved if you stop needing and using volunteers.” This usually elicits some looks of shock and surprise until I elaborate further and explain that I’m not proposing that they cease to engage the community in their work through volunteerism but, rather, that they modify how they think about volunteers in their organization. The simple, but profound, key is to change the semantics – to talk in terms of “wanting” and “engaging” volunteers rather than “needing” and “using” them.

During the introductions in my workshops, I always ask participants to share with me two or three adjectives that describe how they felt as the result of a particularly rewarding experience that they have had as a volunteer. A small sample of the positive words they have shared include: empowered, humbled, motivated, grateful, awed, helpful, effective, connected, valuable, and inspired. Not once…