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Engaging and Supporting Your Staff with a Retreat

Engaging and Supporting Your Staff with a Retreat

As we rapidly dive into the second half of the calendar year, summer can be a good time to reflect on your organization’s progress, engage in team building, and chart a path for the immediate future. We often hear from nonprofits about the challenges of staff engagement right now. From burnout to remote work to new roles hired during the pandemic, many teams are new and/or working together in new ways. One potential answer to these engagement challenges is to hold a staff retreat.

Over the course of the pandemic, the Catalogue for Philanthropy has seen its nonprofit partners pivot operations in numerous ways, such as transitioning to a completely virtual office, hiring new staff, or pausing strategic planning efforts. Taking a moment to evaluate your organization’s mission, values, and goals through a staff retreat can help ensure that your team feels energized and supported in the coming months, especially if you have new members on your team.

Defining the Purpose of a Retreat

Though staff retreats look different across the nonprofit sector depending on the size of your team and the goals of your organization, a retreat typically has four broad goals:

1. Show staff you appreciate them.

From programming to fundraising to communications to operations, nonprofit staff engage in critical and challenging work every day. It’s important to recognize your team’s passion and dedication to the mission of your organization, as well as to appreciate the skills and experiences they bring to their work.

When organizing your staff retreat, don’t forget to create space for gratitude. Set aside some time to celebrate both individual and team achievements, including surprise successes, hitting a goal, impactful stories, making some much needed progress, and exciting developments. Make sure you “shoutout” the strengths and wins of each team member both publicly and personally — you can even involve the praise of clients, board members, volunteers, or fellow staff members.

2. Discuss difficulties and challenges.

This one might be less fun than #1, but it is equally important. Before looking ahead to the next year, it’s crucial to evaluate the progress of your organization and conduct an honest assessment of the areas in which you want to improve. A staff retreat should provide room for your team to raise any concerns they have, whether it be about programming or the flexibility of your nonprofit’s work arrangements.

If you have yet to hold a staff retreat since the onset of COVID-19, be prepared to address questions about how your organization plans to proceed with hybrid work, events, or programming, as well as questions about work-life balance and employee wellbeing. With the boundaries between our personal and professional lives and spaces blurring, and with many nonprofit staff feeling burnout and dealing with personal difficulties, it is especially critical to have open conversations about how they may or may not be feeling supported by your organization so that you can co-create a plan of action moving forward.

Listen to your staff, allow them to surface and discuss their pain points, proactively ask them to reflect on how staff policies and workflows have been a help or hindrance for them, and remain open to receiving transparent feedback. Use the retreat as an opportunity to gather your team’s ideas on how to best care for them, be it through offering bonuses, more time off, purchasing new equipment, organizing more happy hours, and so on.

3. Set big picture goals for the next year.

It can be easy to get lost in the throes of a nonprofit’s day-to-day work. An annual retreat is a chance for your organization to recommit to its values, mission, and goals at a higher level. Spend some time getting everybody on the same page about why your nonprofit exists to reaffirm the purpose of your team’s daily tasks and set the foundation for examining what has worked well and where you can improve.

Let your team dream a little. Give them a chance to get excited and to re-engage with why they do the work. This can get buried in the endless to-do lists, especially when working remotely.

If there are specific questions about the strategic direction of your organization that you want staff to explore during this retreat, send them these questions ahead of time so they can prepare for a fruitful discussion. When setting goals, be clear about what you can realistically achieve and be specific about the time frame in which you’re aiming to achieve them. Prioritize your goals based on your organization’s values and then establish the metrics your team will use to measure your progress against these goals.

Given the uncertainty we live in, and have been living in for a while, it’s important to also acknowledge that long-term goal setting can be difficult. If it’s helpful to do so, focus on the next year with actionable milestones just 3-6 months into the future. You can also remind the team that uncertainty is now a part of planning and that we need to stay flexible.

4. Have fun as a team.

Whether you hold your staff retreat in-person or virtually, there are many ways you can get creative about bonding as a team. In our experience, the strength of a nonprofit relies heavily on the strength of its team. One of the most vital elements of a retreat is building an engaging and supportive team culture that will leave your staff feeling energized, motivated, and excited to work with each other.

So, don’t forget to introduce fun elements to your retreat! These ideas can range from simply playing a short game before each session to organizing a post-retreat get-together. Every culture and staff will need and want something different, but focus on activities that allow staff to express themselves and to connect with coworkers they may not typically work with every day.

Beyond the Retreat

Following up after a retreat is just as valuable as having one. It can be VERY demoralizing for a team to have a great retreat, set some good goals, and then never hear about them again. Make sure you co-create a plan with staff to share takeaways from the retreat, next steps, and a plan for accountability. Through both regular one-on-one and team meetings, carry the momentum from your retreat forward by building on the skills that are needed to achieve the goals you’ve collectively set for your nonprofit.

At the same time, look for ongoing opportunities to connect staff with each other. Keep some fun elements throughout the year to help deepen your team’s relationships.

For more tips and resources on leading and growing with your values, and on using play as a management tool, check out the slides and recordings from the 2022 National Small Nonprofit Summit. The Catalogue for Philanthropy also offers paid consulting services for small nonprofits in the areas of strategic planning, staff engagement, and board engagement. If you’re interested, please reach out to Chiara Banez for more information.

6 Tips on Training Your Volunteers During COVID-19

Having transitioned your nonprofit’s volunteer programs to accommodate the pandemic, now you must also transition your volunteer training. Your orientation is crucial to ensuring high-quality work and high volunteer retention. Here, we have collected 6 tips on how to effectively train your volunteers in a remote space.

Volunteers Training

Tip 1. Contextualize Your Work

If volunteers understand your work’s context, then they’ll provide higher-quality labor and feel more intellectually engaged. During your orientation, provide background information about:

  • The social issue’s causes, history, scope, and impact
  • The community’s history, demographics, opportunities, strengths, and current challenges
  • Your organization’s history, impact, challenges, current goals, and how it intersects with the community

All of this information should be updated for this moment in time. For example, if your nonprofit addresses homelessness, explain how the economic downturn is affecting eviction rates, how homeless individuals experience a higher risk of COVID-19, and how housing inequities can be viewed through a racial justice lens.

Tip 2. Share Stories and Stats

Don’t just tell your volunteers — show them! Take advantage of virtual orientations to get creative when presenting information to your trainees. Demonstrate community need with eye-popping statistics and informative news articles for them to read ahead of time. Videos are engaging; whenever possible, use video calls and share well-produced videos, possibly of your clients speaking to camera. Ask current volunteers to share stories, lessons learned, and advice.

Tip 3. Value Volunteers

Your volunteers need to know and feel like their work truly matters. Maintain your volunteers’ motivation (and retention) by explaining how their work impacts your organization and the community at large. Explain how their service will save resources because the work might not have happened otherwise due to limited staff time. Also communicate how their work will be remembered and be built upon into the future — people want to know that their seemingly small task contributes to a series of efforts that make a sustainable impact.

Tip 4. Encourage Participation

The last thing volunteers want is to listen to a monologue for 45 minutes. Offer multiple opportunities for trainees to speak up and participate during orientation. Ask them to engage their prior knowledge, relating their experiences with those of clients; for example, when talking about summer learning loss, ask volunteers to describe what their own childhood summers were like. Use break-out rooms to not only have volunteers role-play, but also to socialize and build a sense of community. Take advantage of polls and online quizzes to test knowledge learned and get temperature checks on group opinions.

Tip 5. Build Up Skills (and Confidence)

Set your volunteers up for success by covering the hard skills, soft skills, and expectations needed for the work. Whether it be packaging donations or virtually filing documents, demonstrate the task before letting them practice. Consider sharing your screen or recording demonstration videos for their reference. For more interpersonal and relational work — such as answering 24/7 hotlines — have your volunteers role-play with each other in break-out rooms. Your orientation provides an opportunity to depict ideal behaviors and give volunteers the confidence and direction they need.

Tip 6. Be Flexible

By their very nature, virtual trainings differ from those in-person. Attention spans online are shorter than in person, so limit your orientation to thirty minutes, an hour at most. It is easier to host multiple small orientations online than trying to find a single large in-person time that fits everyone’s schedules. If you don’t have enough time to re-write your orientation curriculum for an online platform, outsource to your current volunteers! Your long-term, most trusted volunteers can help design and lead your virtual volunteer orientations.

 

 

6 Steps to Jumpstarting Your New Volunteer Programs

Nonprofit work often depends upon volunteers. Not only do volunteer programs provide free labor, they also present valuable opportunities for community awareness and engagement. Unfortunately, the pandemic rendered many of these programs impossible to continue safely. During this time, people are looking for ways to connect, occupy their time, and make a difference. This is your nonprofit’s opportunity to harness this energy and re-imagine your volunteer programs for a new physically distanced society. Here, we have listed 6 steps you can take to jumpstart your new volunteer programs within the COVID-19 context.

Jumpstarting New Volunteer Programs

Step 1. Identify Your Organization’s Needs

Do you even need volunteers right now? In this new landscape, your organization’s needs might look dramatically different than they did pre-pandemic. Your programming and consequent staff responsibilities have likely shifted in response to your clients’ new needs, so take some time to evaluate resulting labor gaps. Do you have immediate one-time needs or ongoing opportunities? Have you lost volunteers? Would the time invested in training be less than time saved if your staff simply completed the task themselves?

Step 2. Identify Possible Volunteer Tasks

Some remote volunteer possibilities include:

  • Community Outreach. This work is best suited for your volunteers who are looking for a way to connect with others. They can assist with time-intensive relationship building tasks such as telephone wellness checks with clients, hotline/call center staffing, or organizing virtual group meetings with community members.
  • Administration. When armed with a computer and internet access, your volunteer’s admin support can look like anything from grant writing to virtual filing. What are those tasks that would mightily improve your team’s efficiency, but are just never urgent enough to make the week’s “priority list”?
  • Content Development. Your volunteers can assist with time-intensive research and curriculum adaptation as you transition your educational programming to an online format. Depending on their personal background and expertise, they might also be able to prepare and present specific topics to share with your clients and community!
  • Fundraising. Who do your volunteers know? Ask your volunteers to help you market your nonprofit’s needs with their peers and communities and you could very well uncover a small treasure of new grassroots support.

Other volunteer work will be unavoidably in person. In which case, evaluate how your programs will operate with proper safety measures in place. Can you limit group sizes, enforce mask-wearing, provide sufficient PPE, and screen individuals with symptoms?

Step 3. Prioritize and Plan Your Program(s)

Transitioning your volunteer programs is a big change! Experiment with launching just a few initial programs to work out the kinks before you expand further. Carefully consider which volunteer activities would work well under safety restrictions, which needs are the most urgent, and which are best suited to your volunteer population. Send your existing volunteer pool a survey about their comfort level with technology and various in-person activities. For example, some volunteers might be too vulnerable for in-person activities or lack experience with online platforms; they might prefer telephone-based volunteering instead.

Step 4. Recruit Volunteers

The first place you should look when recruiting volunteers: your previous volunteers! During crises, doing familiar work fosters feelings of comfort and stability. Those who volunteered before are likely to do so again even if the exact task looks fairly different. However, if post-survey you find that not enough of your existing volunteers are comfortable with returning, you’ll need to recruit. Your recruitment pitch should focus on immediate impact, community, and connection — these are the 3 most pressing concerns in this moment. Also, publicize your volunteer positions on social media to reach a wider audience. After all, if your work is virtual, it doesn’t matter where applicants live.

Step 5. Set Volunteers Up for Success

If you want to retain your volunteer force, make sure they have the technology, skills, information, and emotional support they need. What supplies do they need: printers, a strong internet connection, a Zoom account, phone minutes, masks, gloves, flexible hours? Are you able to transition your orientation online in an engaging, effective, and dialogue-driven way? Teach them the context of the social issue they’ll be working on, as well as whatever hard and soft skills they will need. Whenever possible, use video. Quick personal videos from staff can be a fun and personal way to engage volunteers, and live video calls are an excellent way for volunteers to plug into their new community.

Step 6. Monitor and Adjust

This will be a learn-as-you-go process. Regularly check in with your volunteers to gauge their experiences with your new program and to learn what roadblocks they might be encountering. Express your gratitude, even to past volunteers who can no longer make the pivot. Gather data through anonymous, unobtrusive (e.g. less than 3 minutes to complete) surveys to discover which elements of your pilot program should be replicated for future endeavors, and which experiments should be set aside. Keep your supporters, clients, and volunteers in the loop about your ongoing changes in response to our new reality; as faithful members of your community, they will understand and want you to succeed.

 

 

 

 

6 Strategies to Secure Foundation Funding

For nonprofits, foundation grants are a highly competitive source of financial support, with the ability to provide significant financial resources. These steady sources of income are more important than ever for smaller organizations, especially due to the cancellations of in-person fundraising events and the increased cost of shifting virtual or remaining in-person. Here, we have a list of 6 strategies for nonprofit professionals to secure sustainable foundation funding to support their mission.

Strengthening Foundation Relationships

Strategy #1. Survey the Foundation Landscape

Educate yourself on new trends of the ever-adjusting world of foundation funding. Given the ongoing interconnected crises of 2020, many foundations are shifting their funding priorities. The three most common themes that we’ve noticed are emergency funding for basic needs (e.g. food, housing, health), more funding for structural equity (e.g. racial justice, systemic injustices, representation), and a focus on collaboration. Examine the work being done by other organizations in your community – where does your nonprofit fit into the wider ecosystem? How do you stand apart? How can you align your work to these emerging focus areas? Are there opportunities for collaboration? When in doubt, ask your program officer about how their priorities are changing.

Strategy #2. Cultivate Personal Relationships

As with all major donors, now is the time to engage foundation staff one-on-one. Personal relationships with program officers are vital during shifting priorities. If these individuals know you, then they’ll be more likely to advocate for you when the time comes to make difficult financial decisions! Share programming updates more frequently and before you make public announcements – this will make them feel like a priority and keep your organization at the top of their mind. Reach out to simply say thank you, demonstrating your appreciation for their past support. Invite them to attend virtual events, which are more convenient to hop onto than in-person events used to be. Even if they don’t join, they’ll feel engaged by the invitation and will be reminded of your ongoing programming.

Strategy #3. Ask for Non-Financial Support

Foundations can provide more than just funds! Take advantage of their expertise, by inquiring about pro bono legal consulting, financial counseling, or general strategic advice. Foundations are also excellent networking hubs, able to connect you with a wide variety of funders, experts, and opportunities you might not be able to find through an internet search. For ongoing grants, consider asking for more administrative flexibility given the unprecedented current circumstances. For example, they might choose to extend or eliminate reporting deadlines, or allow you to use previously restricted funding for general operations purposes.

Strategy #4. Paint a Picture about Your Impact

During the 2008 Great Recession, one major shift was toward larger, but more competitive grants that leaned toward data-supported impact. When writing grants, we recommend taking a Past-Present-Future approach. This is a time of flux, so you need to cover your bases: traditional programming, new programming, and reopening plans. Use concise yet striking statistics to demonstrate your traditional programming’s effectiveness back during “normal” times – but be careful to not linger too long on the past. Then, explain how your organization has been addressing the ongoing crises, either through a scale-up of your workload or a completely novel programming pivot. Tell specific and memorable anecdotes about your clients’ challenges, your virtual programming’s successes, and your team’s innovation and resilience.

Strategy #5. Plan for an Uncertain Future

Even though nobody knows what the world will look like 6 weeks from now, foundations still want to know that you’re planning ahead. In grants, lay out your tentative strategy and budget for the next 6-12 months – even if you’re not sure! Include contingency plans for possible major variables (e.g. the presidential election, resurgences of social distancing mandates, the 2021 spring school semester) and explain how you would respond and adjust accordingly. Explain the financial implications of your new normal. What resources will you need: equipment, skill sets, software? Will your new strategy require fewer staff, new staff, or restructured staff? Be able to explain to foundations specifically how their financial support will drive your action now and in the future.

Strategy #6. Demonstrate Urgency

A foundation needs to know you are making a difference now, not just in the future post-COVID-19. Demonstrating your work’s urgency is always a crucial element to grants, even during non-crisis fundraising. Make the case about why your program needs funding now to address increased needs, emergency needs, and future needs. Explain your nonprofit’s place within the greater, long-term context of your community; you may need funds now to begin making shifts that will ensure that you will still be around to support clients during the post-crisis recovery.

 

 

8 Tips on Running a Nonprofit Virtual Board Meeting

Board engagement is a perennial challenge, and that was before COVID-19. We know that board meetings can be an important point of engagement – but with meetings remaining virtual for the foreseeable future, how do we keep our boards engaged? In order to help answer that question, we have eight things to keep in mind when planning your next virtual board meeting.

Board Meeting Engagement

  1. Communicate more frequently. Given the constantly evolving situation, you need your board to have regular, up-to-date information to inform timely decisions they might need to make. Consider a monthly check-in with your board chair and/or an email update to the entire board. The more proactively you communicate with the board, the more they will feel that your organization is under control. Monthly executive committee check-ins and a monthly all-board email is a good place to start.
  2. Use video. Despite possible technical hiccups and Zoom-fatigue, video is necessary to engage your board. Onscreen video is better for dialogue, emotional connection, and keeping your board members actively engaged during meetings.
  3. Start with a Roll Call. The simple act of asking board members to introduce themselves and share a quick update at the beginning of your virtual meetings will make them more likely to participate throughout and feel more comfortable unmuting themselves.
  4. Ask for Ideas. Provide prompting questions to stimulate conversation if you encounter pauses – but be specific. Don’t ask the overly broad question “Does anyone have an idea for fundraising?” when what you really want to know is “Does anyone have an idea about how we can engage with medium-sized local businesses?” Also, don’t be afraid to directly call on certain people during the meeting by asking for their expert opinion or advice.
  5. Chat more. Encourage the use of the chat function in video meetings; it has a lower barrier to entry than speaking up and will solicit viewpoints from more members. The poll function is an efficient way to get a quick group “pulse check” on certain topics and may save you time as well.
  6. Delegate. Before the meeting, assign various board members to lead certain sections of your agenda. This will not only give you a break, but also get others in the habit of talking and gives them a sense of ownership over the topic. Plus, more voices make it likelier that others will jump in too.
  7. Use a Consent Agenda. Send materials a week ahead of time to the board, including some of the more straightforward items. These include items like the last meeting’s minutes or programming reports. Having read these materials ahead of time, board members only need to vote Yes or No before moving on, saving everyone time. Focus the majority of your conversation on 1-2 key points that need more discussion.
  8. Craft an Engaging Agenda How you organize, phrase, and relay information in the agenda sets the meeting’s tone and focus. Try to keep your meeting to 90 minutes in length, at most. Consider the following 1-hour structure:
    • Check-In/Consent Agenda: 10 minutes
    • Financial Update: 10 minutes
    • Discussion #1: 15 minutes
    • Discussion #2: 15 minutes
    • Wrap Up and Votes: 5 minutes
    • Executive Session: 5 minutes

With these eight tips in mind, your board will feel more engaged, informed, and ready to respond to potential future challenges your nonprofit faces.

 

7 Tips on Engaging Grassroots Donors Virtually

Grassroots donors are a valuable asset to your nonprofit’s community. Their individual donations might be humble, but in aggregate, they come together to make your organization’s work possible. It’s vital for smaller nonprofits to solicit their donors, but even large organizations lack the time to individually reach out to every single person. In this article, we have collected 7 tips on how your organization can engage your grassroots donors virtually, especially right now during COVID-19.

Grassroots Donor Engagement
Tip #1: Make a Plan
It’s possible that your organization’s original annual communication strategy has long since been rendered outdated. If your organization has not done so already, it’s time to formally plan a new communication strategy for engaging your grassroots donors. This plan should include which team member is accomplishing what task, which messages will go out where (email, snail mail, social media, etc.), your short-term goals for donor engagement, and messaging details to ensure cohesion across platforms.

Tip #2: Communicate More Frequently
Now is not the time to be silent. Even if your organization has paused programming, it’s important to stay present on your main channels so that supporters are reminded of your mission. Your messages can be brief, but should still be filtered through the lens of current events. We suggest sending emails to donors monthly with succinct updates and plans.

Tip #3: Focus on the Short-Term
When sharing information with your supporters, keep your updates limited to the next 2-8 weeks, depending on the level of change at your organization. Right now, because of widespread uncertainty in our community, people are struggling to imagine too far into the future. Your goal is to keep supporters informed but not overwhelmed with information.


Tip #4: Use a Realistic, Yet Hopeful Tone
Mastering the right tone in your communications is an art. Your goal is a sweet spot of realistic optimism without leaning too far toward despair (which leaves donors feeling helpless) or sugarcoating (which comes across as tone-deaf). During these difficult times, donors are looking for positive content, such as stories of resilience or neighbors helping others. Try focusing your content on your programming pivot’s creativity, work, and impact.


Tip #5: Know Your Audience
Consider the “user experience.” Who is your typical grassroots donor and what do they want right now? Are they feeling isolated and looking for community? Are they younger donors interested in social media? Are they politically frustrated and looking for a way to make a difference? Given those experiences, identify their likely “pain points.” What are they missing from your programming or fundraising? Let these questions guide your team when designing resources for donors to engage in, whether it be emotionally-compelling success stories, calls-to-action, or opportunities to connect with fellow supporters.

Tip #6: Stay on Brand
Although your organization has possibly been compelled to pivot, you should still remain recognizable to your supporters. Stay in your lane and remember your organization’s values and mission. Take the time to ask yourself “does it make sense that we are doing this or saying this?” Your donors should not feel confused; they should be reminded about why they gave to your organization in the first place.

Tip #7: Provide Call-to-Actions
Asking your donors to do something aside from just donating money is an excellent way to solidify their engagement. Your organization does not necessarily have to reinvent the wheel, depending on your capacity. You can either create or curate resources for them. Some ideas for actions include a social media challenge, virtual volunteer opportunities, at-home education resources, advocacy, or participating in live-streamed events.

7 Tips on Engaging Major Donors Remotely

With a shifting and uncertain fundraising landscape, keeping our major donors engaged is more important now than ever. But how can you effectively engage them when you are unable to connect in-person? In this article, we have collected 7 tips on how to effectively engage your major donors remotely during COVID-19.

Major Donor Engagement

Tip #1. Identify and Prioritize Donors

This first tip may sound obvious, but it may be deceptively tricky to pull off efficiently. With limited time and resources, your small nonprofit cannot possibly call everybody who has ever donated, so you’ll need to stratify your donor pool. (Moments like these make investments in CRMs all the more valuable!) Your first round of calls should go to your top 50 most generous donors. Second, prioritize the donors who usually give during this time of year. Third, focus on long-time donors. And finally, focus on first-time donors who gave over $250 during the last year.

Tip #2. Plan Your Schedule

One of the upsides of social distancing is that you no longer need to factor in things like transit time when planning donor meetings. In fact, you might be able to engage major donors more frequently than you normally could! Consider this: if you assign 3 team members 2 calls a day, your organization can contact 126 donors in only 3 weeks! Consider also offering “exclusive briefings” to groups of 20 donors or less; this will both allow you to reach more people faster and will foster a sense of community with your donors.

Tip #3. Value the Relationship

If we have learned any lessons from past crisis-fundraising, it is this: relationships matter. When nonprofits are soliciting funds, they must engage their major donor as a “whole person.” Conversations should feel relational — not transactional. People give to people! The first thing you should do in a meeting is to check-in with them and ask how they are doing; life updates will help guide you in how to engage them and make the ask more tailored. Depending on the nature of the particular relationship with this individual, share about your own life as well; these conversations should be a dialogue.

Tip #4. Communicate Your Changes

Keep your major donors in the loop! Explain any programming or operational pivots due to recent circumstances. Don’t paint an overly rosy picture of your challenges, but do focus in on creativity, your team’s work ethic, and the new impact on your community. Donors will feel more confident about their past donations when they learn about your short-term plans and feel more generous when they feel hope about the future. Consider sharing significant updates with select major donors prior to widespread public announcements.

Tip #5. Keep Meetings Focused

Your virtual meetings should maintain a human touch, but still be instilled with purpose and structure. Before beginning a meeting, write down the 1-3 major updates or points you want to share. Attention spans in virtual meetings tend to drop after 30 minutes, so plan on keeping meetings a reasonable length. After all, your donor’s time is valuable too.

Tip #6. Ask for Advice.

People love being asked for their advice, especially major donors. You can ask them for advice, contacts, feedback, or examples of what they have seen other organizations doing. If possible, try to tailor your question to their specific professional background or interests. When holding your executive briefings with larger groups of donors, use the poll-function to ask for feedback or advice. This makes the donor feel engaged, valued, and involved in your work.

Tip #7. Make Your Ask Specific

Just about everyone is being affected by the economic crisis related to COVID-19 to some degree. If your major donors are facing an uncertain financial future, you need to cut through that doubt with certainty. Ask for a specific amount of money that will support a specific project and why it matters now. Contextualize these asks with stories and perspectives of staff and/or clients. By painting a clear picture, your donor will have more confidence in giving, rather than feeling uncertain about where their money is going.

 

Five Tips on Engaging Your Nonprofit Staff

It’s been months since your team has met in person. As a manager, how do you maintain your team’s collaboration, focus, and productivity when everybody is scattered in their respective homes and experiencing their own unique challenges? Here, we have put together 5 tips for nonprofit supervisors to engage their staff during the ongoing pandemic.

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Tip 1: Layer Your Communication

Engage Individuals. All of your staff should have a weekly 1-on-1 meeting with a supervisor. During these check-ins, ask your staff about both their work deliverables as well as how they are doing working remotely. These individual meetings will be a key opportunity for in-depth updates on strategy, goals, and team progress. If possible, try to schedule them earlier in the week to set an engaged tone for the coming days.

Engage Groups. Schedule a weekly check-in with your entire team. If you have over 15 staff members, you may need to break this up into smaller groups since video calls get difficult past 12-15 people. (For larger group meetings, consider every other week or monthly instead.) During these group meetings, ask everyone for a brief personal or professional update. Consider scheduling them for Friday, since it will allow people to report on what they have accomplished during the week.

Engage Peers. This is an important time to tap informal leaders at the organization. Encourage your staff to still reach out to each other and keep up a sense of comradery and unity as a team. One way to do this is by creating projects which require two or more people to collaborate.

Tip 2: Create a Work Plan

Set goals. Set weekly and monthly goals for the team and encourage your staff to set daily goals for themselves.

Discover pain points. Ask your staff how work is going, what is difficult, and what they need to succeed in their current situation: more communication, technology, time? Ask yourself what is difficult for everybody and what is uniquely difficult for particular team members.

Plan ahead. Hedge your bets by assuming that remote work will continue for at least two weeks longer than whatever the current government plan is saying. This will give you leeway for transitioning back. For most teams, all staff will not be back in the office at normal hours for at least another two months.

Tip 3: Balance Outreach

Balance video calls with other forms of communication. Video calls grab attention better, but if overdone they can be overwhelming for staff. If a conversation in person would have lasted 5 minutes, then it shouldn’t last 20 minutes on zoom! Balance their use with traditional voice-only phone calls and emails.

Balance productivity with social engagement. Virtual meetings should be predominantly work-focused, with social elements incorporated. You can engage the whole person by asking how people are doing during team check-ins and doing something “fun” at least every other week.

Balance equality with flexibility. Although you should treat all of your staff as equally important team members of your nonprofit, you cannot ignore that different employees are facing different challenges. Some staff are working through challenges such as insufficient childcare, weak internet connection, unusual work hours, or loud and crowded workspaces. Be flexible in providing different team members different allowances.

Tip 4: Address Burnout

Breaks. A lot of staff are working more than ever and the work/life balance is blurred at the moment. Try to find opportunities to at least give small groups some time off or at least less pressure for a day.

Share Progress. As projects get accomplished or goals are met, share with the wider team. Give your team some “wins.” Shout-out specific people who have gone above and beyond.

Be Realistic. Some of us may need to be working more than 40 hours right now and some may actually want to. Model good behavior; for example, if you’re writing an email late at night, schedule it to go out on Monday morning. Ask staff how they are feeling, not how much they are working.

Tip 5: Bring, Leave, Start.

This new remote working situation does not have to be an exact replication of the office. In many ways, this new situation is like running a nonprofit startup again!

Bring. Make a chart of the top five elements of culture and top five projects. Consider which to try to bring into remote work. You may need to adapt, pause, or abandon certain projects.

Leave. Not everything has to continue as usual during this time. Feel free to cut some meetings and pause some projects as needed. Not all of your office life will translate to remote work or is even relevant or helpful anymore to our new context.

Start. You may have new workflows and cultural norms that need to replace the old during remote work. Much of this you will discover as you “muddle along.” Be flexible and willing to adapt to ever-changing circumstances!