10 New Year Resolutions for Non Profits and Cause-Related Organizations

This time of year it is not uncommon to write down resolutions for the next year – things that we might do better, do differently, or just plain do. As you consider your organization, whether it be a non-profit, cause-related community, or a for-profit company with a socially responsible initiative, here are 10 resolutions to consider making as you head into 2009. They’re in no particular order, number ten isn’t the least and one isn’t the most important. But all will add to your ability to make a significant difference in the important work you do.

[NOTE: If your organization excels at any one of these let me know. I'd be happy to highlight your work in an upcoming blog.]

1. Competitively define your mission.
   Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said it best, “You don’t want to be considered the best at what you do. You want to be the only ones doing what you’re doing.” How is what you do unique, special, and essential. If there are too many providers of the same thing, people will see most of them as unnecessary. What is it that only your organization does? What will the one big thing that your organization will do in 2009 that sets you apart as different from all the other causes?
   
   
2. Showcase your success stories, not just your needs.
   Consumers expect that non profits have needs and that cause-related organizations are usually scarce on resources. It’s okay to ask for things, but make sure that you also showcase your successes. What is the outcome of the work you do? What is the outcome of that? Sure you may serve meals to homeless, provide medication to the poor, or even find childcare for single parents who need to work. But what happened because you did all those things? Showcase the outcome of your work – what happened because you did all those things you do – and give consumers a bigger picture of your organization’s performance.


3. Create single-shot service opportunities.
   According to ASAE, Americans devote more than 173 million volunteer hours each year - time valued at more than $2 billion - to charitable and community service projects. But for as much as that amounts to, there are untapped millions of hours still available. Create opportunities for service that don’t require more than an hour, or a particular task. Let people dip their toe in the water before you ask them to dive in to the deep end.


4. Create ways for your entire community to engage in conversation.
   Technology has changed the way we interact with one another. Twitter grows by an estimated 3-5 thousand new users each day, there are an estimated 70 million blogs, and 8 billion text messages are sent every day. Not participating in this online conversation leaves your organization out in the cold. It’s not so much that you get reporters talking about your organization, you need to get every day people talking about you. Your organization needs to find ways to connect the various constituents with each other – beneficiaries to donors, board to public, staff to public, public to donors, etc. Create ways for conversations to happen and let them happen. No control, no micro managing. Just get people talking and then listen.


5. Investigate relevancy.
   So much is lost and wasted by well meaning non profits because the person writing the gift request letter didn’t make it relevant to the recipient, or the Web site home page is targeted to the wrong demographic. Make 2009 the year of getting to know your community members inside and out. Research your audiences and write profiles for each group, what makes them tick, what they like, don’t like, what they respond to and why. Find out what’s important to them and validate it. Relevancy drives meaning in communications and credibility in relationships. It also drives response rates to your messages.


6. Glocalize.
   Boundaries have little meaning anymore. Technology enables connectivity between once-kept-apart groups. Thus, your cause related organization can now operate with a global mindset, tapping into peoples and organizations around the world. But in doing so, as you take your message beyond your borders – whether they be community, city, state or even country -- But in doing so, find ways to translate your messages and outcomes into relevancy. Make your cause real to those new groups by linking it to their world, their community, and their issues.


7. Fight mediocrity.
   In non-profits it’s easy to get into the mindset that doing well is good enough. That the long hours, the people served, and the low pay should free you from responsibility of any sort of mistakes or poor performance. Jim Collins’ wrote, “Good is the enemy of great.” Make sure in 2009 to raise the standard and strive for being great.


8. Deepen relationships.
   I wrote in a blog entry earlier this month about the need for non profits to build relationships with people prior to asking for a donation, and this notion ties in to the resolutions for relevance and engaging in conversations. Deepening the relationships with all your constituents is the cornerstone element for increasing your capacity to do the good you do. Your for-profit counterparts collectively spend several billions of dollars each year trying to establish the level of emotional intimacy that your organization could very easily tap in to. This should be such an important part of your efforts, you might even consider adding it to your strategic plan and creating metrics around this initiative.


9. Build out your infrastructure.
   Lately I’ve come across a few online conversations where contributors have decried the failure of non profits to appropriately build out their technology and operational infrastructures. I strongly believe that given the sparse resources in most organizations available dollars should go to people and not process improvement. But I also believe that with efficiency comes effectiveness. Taking time to build out your infrastructure can pay huge dividends down the road due to decreases in wasted time, increased effectiveness and clarity, and more powerful tools applied to your cause.


10. Train the next generation.
    Rarely do I find an organization that is working not only to reach current donors and volunteers, but the next one as well. What could happen to stem the desperate needs of the world if important messages and service opportunities were generated and sent down the pipeline to youth and young children? How much more could your organization accomplish in ten, twenty, or thirty years if you worked today to train a new generation of savvy and capable contributors to you cause?

-- David Kinard, PCM

A Tradition of Giving

A close friend recently noted that my family has a lot of traditions. I didn’t think we did, but I guess my wife and I have always tried to build some sense of recurrence and significance to our family activities. For instance, whenever we travel across the state to visit Grammy, we always stop at a little Mexican restaurant about half way through the trip for dinner. Not only does it help to break up the nearly six hour drive, the tradition of making this stop helps to mark milestones in our memories of various trips.

Another tradition we have is during December – we have an advent calendar where each day we have an activity that sets the tone for the season as well as provide opportunities for loads of family memories. Some are from my wife and my own childhood – watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas cartoon, or Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. They were aired on TV when I was a kid; we now watch them on DVD. But either way they are markers of our time together.

This past weekend, we celebrated one of our other holiday traditions. Throughout the year we save all of our spare change and put it in a jar, and the kids save up part of their weekly allowance for “sharing”. Then, on a Saturday morning in December we head out to the grocery store and shop for the local food bank. We team up – my son and I, and my daughter with my wife – and set off on our search to buy enough groceries for a full day’s worth of meals for a family of four. We typically cheat and add in a few extra boxes of this and packages of that along the way, then the kids pick out one ‘treat’ to top it all off. After cashing in our coins and paying for our purchases, we load up the car, travel to the food bank, and drop off all the food. It’s the culmination of a year’s worth of saving and intentional giving. Each time we drop our change in the jar throughout the year, it’s a little reminder of the food we’re going to put on someone’s table.

Of course this is the time of year when need can be most keenly felt – by those who have need, and those whose heart’s may be touched to provide. And it is often more easy to give during this season to the bell ringer on the corner, or to the toy and food drive at your local fire station. But I hope that your giving is not limited to the cold dark days of December, but that you can find a way to make giving a tradition for your own family. How can you build recurrence and significance into your life and create a tradition of giving?

-- David Kinard, PCM