My part time gig takes me to the 8th Annual National School Foundation Association conference this week.  I’ll be presenting on the work I’ve been doing in the form of a workshop “Start to Create a Culture of Giving.”  The workshop is about reinvigorating or starting a fund raising plan.  I’ll be sharing how a nonprofit organization can grow relationships with individuals and businesses by focusing on three key areas; a plan, communication and community engagement.

Although I’m not new to the world of education foundations, I am new to NSFA and this will be my first conference with them.  I look forward to catching up with PA ed foundation people and meeting new folks.

I recently encountered two tough nonprofit situations. 1) two executive committee member resignations and 2) governance issues related to high turn over of executive staff.

I’ve created a solutions for situation #1. The solution is to convene existing executive committee board members and identify new ones. In this case, there are people interested in taking on additional responsibilities and the resignations presented an opportunity to move forward with new leadership.  The lesson here is to work with people who want to do the work and not convince or change people so the work gets done.

Situation #2 is a bit tougher. In the new political environment there will always be room for highly skilled people in the nonprofit sector. The issue for boards is to be able to retain leaders. Leadership retention is important to the stability and sustainability of an organization. Especially in small organizations where only a few people are known to donors and volunteers.  Although organizations should never be about one person, when an organization experiences repeated (2+) changes in leadership in a short amount of time (<5 years), instability arises.

In the case I’m working on, high staff turn over has resulted in board members playing the role of both operations and governance. In an ideal world, nonprofit board members should focus on governance and the staff should focus on operations. Both working collaboratively to fulfill the mission, thus creating public benefit.

The people involved at both the board and staff level need to get clear on roles and responsibilities. This starts with open and honest communication. It also helps to recognize and focus on the strengths of the people involved.

Additionally, change needs to be acknowledged and fostered. Obviously, operating in the same way is not going to work for all parties involved. When you are directly involved, the focus on change is not as obvious. As Jack Dixon said, “if you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.”

Stayed tuned, I plan to share some of the results.

What if Peter Pan were a nonprofit executive director/CEO and the audience was the board of directors.  I’m in both roles and to be honest I hope for more creativity in the nonprofit world.  After all, we’re trying to make magic happen every day.  Really.  Think about the child sitting in an after school program run by a parks and rec department, boys and girls club or name that youth development organization.  The child is safe, has food, caring adults willing to teach and a group of volunteers who sit down on a regular basis to consider the key strategies it will take to make this happen for this kid day after day.  Magic, right?

The story of Peter Plan incorporated many of the same values shared in the nonprofit sector.

That’s the magic I wish for the nonprofit sector.  The magic that Peter Pan inspired in the characters in the movie and those of us who fell in love with the story.