Skip to main content

Dis-integration

Image
By
One of the building blocks of nonprofit life is connection to community. The community and its needs are what nonprofits serve; in turn, the community’s support is the lifeblood for the nonprofit’s work. We know that the most successful nonprofits build themselves around addressing unmet needs. They offer programs and services to individuals that ultimately make their communities livable and sustainable.

Believing this, I’m always a little disappointed and frustrated when I meet up with organizations where the community (individually or collectively) is never addressed in mission statements or strategic plans, or consulted with in program development and evaluation, or used as a barometer of shifting trends or as a metric for success. This “dis-integration” from the public may have been the prevailing standard, particularly in the formation of cultural nonprofits, of another century, but it certainly holds no ground in the 21st.

The two big questions every nonprofit must answer are: why is it important that we do what we do? and who are we doing this important work for/with? For many organizations, these two questions seem to be the most difficult to answer.

Some hallmarks of organizational “dis-integration” are:

· board members hail from the same social set, similar professions or neighborhoods (staff and volunteers, too)
· vision and mission statements don’t address the two big questions – why? and who?
· stakeholder voices are not evident in strategic planning and resulting plans
· organizational plans that lack benchmarks for community interaction
· stakeholders have no regular role in programmatic decisions or program evaluation
· no vocalized recognition among board or staff that the community could/should have a voice in the services and programs the nonprofit offers to the public
· the “public” or the “community” is seen and/or treated as a monolith
Labels:

Comments

howardlevy said…
You make some very good points that nonprofits would be wise to heed. I think another big question that seems to escape social service organizations is “What impact do we want to achieve?”

Providing various forms of relief services is a noble endeavor, however, it often overlooks the actual results that the organizations make on the populations they serve. Too many nonprofits cite the number of people they have helped as their standard for success, rather than the elimination of the cause of the social ill.
July 31, 2009 at 6:25 PM
Anne W. Ackerson said…
Great point, Howard, and thanks for sharing it. A lot of nonprofits talk a good game about impact -- include it in their vision and mission statements, as well -- but fail to develop the types of yardsticks that will help them measure their real impact. It's hard to do (much easier to simply count the number of people through the door), but it's critical to organizational decision-making and to external support.
August 1, 2009 at 8:41 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Would Make You Turn Down an Invitation to Join a Board?

By
THERE'S SO MUCH WRITTEN ABOUT RECRUITING BOARD TALENT, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about it from the prospect's point of view. Clearly, there are boards where the line is long to get on them. But what would make you turn down an invitation? Here's a short list to get the conversation started: 1. You've had no prior exposure to the organization. Your immediate reaction is "did you pull my name out of a hat?" (Is that lady in the picture the head of the Nominating Committee?) Seems as though there must be a hidden agenda at work (like you're rich and once you become a board member you'll pour all your resources into the organization) or the organization is simply looking for any warm body to fill a seat. 2. The organization doesn't have a good reputation. There's something to be said for street cred. An organization that's floundering may be strengthened by your participation or you may find yourself sucked into...
16 comments
Read more

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

By
If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for?  This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.)  Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although ...
28 comments
Read more

What to Do With Dead Wood on Your Board?

By
MY POLL ASKED WHAT ONE BOARD DYNAMIC YOU would change this year and the top response was "remove dead wood". For my first post on this topic I'd like to start with two obvious facts: 1) most boards have some non-performing or under-performing board members AND 2) most boards already have mechanisms in place for removing dead wood...or at least the non-attending dead wood. Those mechanisms are found in the Bylaws and perhaps in a board job description. Few boards, it seems, invoke these mechanisms, mostly out of fear of offending the offender. We end up side-stepping the dead wood, dancing around it, ignoring it, wishing mightily it would go away. Oh, and complaining about it. So, even though the dead wood isn't doing much, it's sapping the energy and focus of many others. (There must be a Law of Physics about this!) Where to start and how to implement? While removing dead wood is not the most pleasant of responsibilities, it does not need to be -- and s...
2 comments
Read more