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News Update:
Tips of the
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| Editor's Note:
Most nonprofits have been tightening budgets
across the board. While some sector conferences have experienced
double-digit declines in attendance, others have sold out with
people scrambling on the wait list.
We want to hear from you. What makes a
conference hot or not? Are your conference choices made by
budget constraints or are some conference topics no longer
appealing?
Please take a minute to fill out this survey
- and feel free to forward it to friends and colleagues in
the sector. As always, thank you for your
participation.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=enn8ZQ_2bnOQbR2HKl3G_2f1Ig_3d_3d |
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Nonprofits Employ Tougher Measures as Downturn
Deepens
The negative effects of the economy on
nonprofits has accelerated during the past six months, according
to responses from nearly 100 nonprofit leaders participating in
a Bridgespan study initiated in November 2008 and updated this
past May.
The percentage of nonprofits that have
resorted to layoffs, broad-based programmatic reductions, and
reserve draw-downs has increased measurably. Nevertheless,
nonprofit leaders appear to be optimistic about the future.
Almost half of the respondents reported that they believed their
organization would be on stronger financial footing in a
year’s time.
To read
the complete article click here... |
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Management ...
Independent
Sector releases free workbook for governance,
ethics
Independent Sector has released
a new tool to help nonprofits, foundations, and corporate
philanthropy programs examine and improve their governance
practices. The Principles Workbook: Steering Your Board
Toward Good Governance and Ethical Practice is designed to
help the nonprofit community meet its commitment to upholding
the highest standards of accountability, and do so in a
cost-effective way.
Independent Sector developed
the Workbook in partnership with BoardSource, both in
Washington, D.C., to expand and elucidate the Principles for
Good Governance and Ethical Practice: A Guide for Charities and
Foundations. The principles, which were developed by the
Panel on the Nonprofit Sector in 2007, provide a list of 33
recommendations that organizations can use to analyze their
practices. The Panel has been dedicated to finding ways to
strengthen governance, transparency, and ethical standards at
nonprofits and foundations since it was convened by Independent
Sector in October 2004.
“Thousands of
organizations across the nonprofit community have already used
the Guide to make important changes to their governance,”
said Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector.
“This new tool will further assist boards of directors and
key staff in assessing the areas where their organizations are
doing well and where there is room for
improvement.”
“Nonprofit and foundation
boards bear the primary responsibility for ensuring that
organizations live up to their legal and ethical obligations to
donors, service recipients, and the public,” said Linda
Crompton, president and CEO of BoardSource. “The Workbook
will further support the development of successful and effective
board leaders.”
The Panel on the Nonprofit
Sector initially brought together leaders from across the
nonprofit community in order to develop more than 150 thoughtful
recommendations, contained in its Final and Supplemental
Reports, for improving government oversight and strengthening
practices at organizations of all sizes and missions. It then
focused on how the nonprofit community could advance the state
of governance and self-regulation in its organizations, a
process that led to the creation of the
principles.
The Workbook is available for free
download at www.independentsector.org.
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Human Resources
...
Have you started a plan for
succession?
Break out the kazoos and the
party streamers – someone’s retiring. But before you
can make the old-geezer cracks and cut the cake, you better have
a succession plan in place.
Dee Vandeventer, Justin Tolan
and Sharon Will, from ME & V Fundraising Advisors based in
Cedar Falls, Iowa, explained that party planning should take a
backseat to succession planning while speaking during the annual
Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) international
fundraising conference in New Orleans.
Here’s what you should
know before you throw a retirement party:
-
The Boomer bust.
Weren’t prepared for the financial crisis? Well get ready
for the human capital crisis – where people of retirement
age will outpace the overall work force growth in the next 10
years. Competition for this seasoned talent will be rough.
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Analysis. Look at key
positions in the organization and see if those employees are
hitting retirement age.
-
Selection. Identify current
employees that would work well in the positions that may
potentially open. Expand your search to candidates outside the
organization if you must.
-
Development. Start to train
the candidate. Set up some time for mentoring between the person
who might be leaving soon and the recruit.
-
Transition. It would be
great to plan a transition – but unexpected events do
happen. Have controls in place for accurate internal and
external communications. |
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Volunteer Management ...
The 4 keys behind
volunteer motivation
Why do people volunteer? There
can be almost as many reasons are there are volunteers, but very
often it is possible to offer some kind of generalizations as to
volunteer motivation.
Marc A. Musick and John Wilson
offer insight into what draws volunteers and volunteering in
their book Volunteers: A Social Profile. They quote
Daniel Batson, who has written extensively about altruism.
Batson includes four “classes” of motivation for
involvement in community improvement.
-
Egoism. This might seem
surprising, but the ultimate goal with this group is to increase
one’s own welfare. Self-benefits include material
well-being, social recognition, praise and avoiding guilt and
shame. One risk with this group is that if another instrument of
self-interest occurs, volunteer work will be abandoned in favor
of it.
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Altruism. The goal here is
to increase the welfare of another person. Altruistic behaviors
are driven primarily by emotion, sparked by empathy and
compassion. Empathy might not always be reliable, however,
because it does not really explain why someone would volunteer
for an anti-pollution campaign, for example.
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Collectivism. Batson
believes we can be motivated to volunteer in order to increase
the welfare of the group. This is certainly true if the
volunteer identifies with that group.
-
Principlism. This is the
motivation to uphold some moral principle. This is a common
mobilizing force in advocacy volunteering and is often linked to
an appeal to morality. |
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