Do you consider yourself a thought leader? Perhaps you shouldn’t, and here’s why.
Katrina VanHuss
Turnkey runs many peer experience sharing groups for C-Suite social good executives. In those private rooms, leadership talks about struggles with workforce issues regarding where and how people work. Here’s what we’ve heard.
The Great Resignation has hit the C-suite — maybe yours. This phenomenon had been slowly percolating for years. Millennials, Gen X and Gen Z put “happy” at the top of their priority lists even before the pandemic. And, let’s be frank, we made fun of them.
The motivation that gets someone to take the first step to support an organization (donating or volunteering) is quite different from their motivation to continue to be engaged. We do not need any further proof of this than the lousy retention rates that nonprofit organizations suffer year after year.
Our Groundhog Day conversation starts this way: “What activity should we pivot to right now?” We are going to make several arguments, most of which you will probably hate.
Chapter or affiliate, disaffiliations happen for several reasons that are spoken aloud. Typically, some significant change is a catalyst for the conversation. Often the change is toward unification, streamlining in some way, or a significant program change.
Community building is the climate change of social good. Building a community delivers future value as rewarding as the survival of humankind. Building and nurturing a community ensures your mission’s success.
The ultimate expression of transactionalism is assuming that people will not support your mission with their money or time if they are not directly impacted by whatever it is your mission fights.
Lack of alignment can happen at any level because subordinate employees do not have the tools to see if their work aligns with the strategic plan. They may know their nonprofit needs to raise $14 million, but not the organizational goal of retaining more event participants and transitioning them to sustaining donors.
Instead of getting great at running events, we should have been systematizing and improving methods that foster community. Providing peer-to-peer participants with a way to communicate with each other is key. We have been shouting at constituents instead of building ways for them to talk to each other.
One of the hurdles that organizations that depend on volunteer fundraisers must overcome is people’s aversion to asking others for money on the organization’s behalf. It isn’t just money by the way...
We regularly speak with clients about how they talk to supporters to activate or “prime” their identities as people who support their organizations. We’re often asked if reminding donors that they are a “donor” or a “volunteer” is a good idea...
We thought events were the point and that the event’s success would drive our success. Doing our business that way means we have to acquire 75% of participants each year. That path means we don’t retain many donors. In effect, we are letting our prospective constituents use the community clubhouse for a party, but we’re not making sure they move into the community...
We’re going to review the Facebook Fundraising Benchmarks Report 2020 by GivePanel. Let’s clarify what “Facebook fundraising” refers to. It’s probably exactly what you think it is: when someone on Facebook starts a fundraiser to support your nonprofit. But there’s some fine print here...
Helping nonprofits in their sincere efforts to make the world a better place makes one very sensitive to organizations that use their nonprofit status for purely financial gain. There is one group that comes to our attention as particularly egregious. We’re talking about the National Collegiate Athletic Association—the NCAA...
