There is no more painful calculation than looking around a conference room, during a boring, nonproductive meeting and figuring out how much it is costing in staff time for everyone to be there. Personal estimates have run from $190 for a small meeting that only lasted one painful hour to an all day retreat where nothing was accomplished and it cost $5,100 in staff time.

If you are leading a committee, here are some strategies to make the time more productive:

Have a clear agenda- Standing meetings with no purpose are the reason why so many people think meetings are a waste of time. Set a clear agenda before the meeting and give people time to add their own agenda items. The agenda should also include the goal of the meeting, so everyone is clear on what needs to be accomplished.

Make the time clear- Have clear start and ending times and stick to it. Don’t wait 20 minutes for everyone to show up. If you get started on time people that are often late will start to come on time because they know that you respect their time, so they’ll respect yours.

Determine who has to be there- Some meetings may only need to have some of the team members there. It is better to proactively think about who needs to be at each meeting and make the invitations contingent on absolute necessity.

Decide if the meeting really needs to happen- If the core purpose of a meeting is check in’s about a project, save everybody the wasted time and have a document that summarizes where everyone is rather than making them sit through a painful meeting where only a minute or two is relevant to their part of the project.

Good meetings are the result of good leadership. Take the initiative and make it the meeting timely, useful, and relevant for all participants. They’ll appreciate their time being used wisely and you’ll get what you need from your committee.

Tweet This Post

In an interview with the Zora & Alice blog, Thalia Theodore Washington, the Executive Director of DonorsChoose.org talks about her experience negotiating her salary. “My second job was in a non-profit in LA. I’ll tell the end of the story first, which is that I didn’t negotiate and I should have. I was young, it was my first office job, and I had no idea what I was worth.

I still to this day kick myself for not negotiating . And the reason is that you’re always building off of your last salary. You don’t have a $30,000 salary and then your next job’s $100,000. There are stages.

The fear I had and the fear that women have is that negotiating makes you seem greedy, not classy; it’s a knock against your integrity. Yet, now that I have had the chance to hire people, I would argue that there’s something to be said for advocating for yourself. Probably everyone has a job where an offer was made and you just said yes. But smart people don’t always just say yes.”

Here are some ways to negotiate a higher starting salary:

 Look at salary surveys- These surveys can give you an idea of what local positions, in similar size organizations are paying. Many organizations use these salary surveys to set their salary scales with in the organization. Your local nonprofit association may produce a salary survey or you can look at Idealist’s listing of surveys at http://www.idealist.org/en/career/salarysurveys.html. Use these numbers when you are considering positions at a variety of organizations (e.g. larger organizations often offer a higher salary) and to give you an idea of what to expect during salary negotiations.

 Check out the 990- The last tip told you that salary often is depended on an organization’s operating budget and the place to find that number is on the 990. The 990 is a document required by the IRS for tax-exempt organizations. This form will give you an idea of how large the organization’s budget is and will also tell you how much the top paid staff at the organization are paid (if their salary is over $50,000 a year). Even if the position that you are interested in is not listed on the 990, you can determine what their salary scale looks like compared to similar sized organizations by looking at what they pay their top staff.

Be truthful but don’t overshare- Don’t ever lie about your salary history. The HR department will check your salary history and being a liar isn’t going to help your career. Instead of listing salary history on an application, list your desired salary range for the current position.

Just say hmmmm- Most people immediately accept the first offer from an employer. Even a reflective “okay” when they say the first salary number can immediately end negotiation. Pausing for a second and saying “hmmm” or “that’s a little lower than I expected” gives room for negotiation. The hiring manager almost always have flexibility and starts with a low-ball number to have room to negotiate.

What are your tips to negotiate a higher starting salary?

Tweet This Post

I am so excited to announce that I am co-writing a book on tips for young nonprofit professionals to move from entry level to leadership with the super-talented Rosetta Thurman. The release date is November 1, 2010 and you will find ordering information on this blog. We wrote this book because one in three emerging nonprofit leaders aspires to be an executive director someday, yet only 4% of them are explicitly being developed to become their organization’s executive director. And of that 4%, women are being developed at a lower rate than men.

Our solution? Give young professionals an accessible, do-it-yourself map of how to navigate the nonprofit sector and the tools they need to move from entry-level positions to leadership roles.

The book is based on our experiences as well as interviews and case studies from other young nonprofit professionals who have successfully used the career strategies outlined. We have both also relied heavily on the wisdom that we have gained from our blog readers. As a result of reading this book, young professionals will be able to develop valuable nonprofit expertise, practice authentic leadership, and establish a strong personal brand.

Rosetta and I are looking for young nonprofit professionals to give us feedback on some of the books chapters. Send me an email at tristaharris (at) gmail (dot) com if you are interested in being a reader.

Tweet This Post

Charities are all too familiar with being scrutinized over their administrative costs, but in a twist, a foundation in Britain is being asked to reduce its overhead.

John Copps, a head researcher at the British charity-evaluation group New Philanthropy Capital, describes on his organization’s blog how the Big Lottery Fund — Britain’s largest grant maker — is being instructed by the government to reduce its administrative costs from 8 percent to 5 percent.

While it may seem that the foundation shouldn’t be immune to the cost-cutting going on elsewhere, Mr. Copps says, limiting the organization’s administrative costs will likely cause harm.

Read the rest here

Tweet This Post

From www.postsecret.com

Generations X and Y have gotten a bad rap in the workplace as a group that constantly needs attention and positive reinforcement. First of all, this is not a universal statement. Second of all, even if it is generally true, so what? Attention and positive reinforcement are not necessarily bad things but what they do require are new management skills (more coaching and recognition programs in the workplace) and a new patience for a different type of worker. It requires patience from Baby Boomers and even from Gen X, who can get quite crabby about the working quirks of Gen Y.

The issues that we are working on in the nonprofit sector will not be solved by one generation alone. We need many ways of working and many different types of skills sets. Maybe that recognition hungry Gen Xer might be a perfect fit for your HR department. They may develop your next employee incentive program that increases your staff’s productivity. That Facebook obsessed Gen Yer could suddenly lift your tiny social service agency from obscurity to social media fame.

Let’s all step back from the irritation and dark wishes that these generations never be employed and move to something more healthy for all of us.

Tweet This Post

I had an interview with the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits as an opportunity to give advice to new foundation staff. Here is the interview.

Tweet This Post

Many of us dream of spending a month on a sailboat but brush the idea off as pure fantasy. We have too much work to do, our boss will say no, maybe we’ll rock the boat too much even by asking. Usually all of these things are true, unless you do your homework first. Headwaters’ newest staff member recently made this request and I happily said yes. Is it because I am a kind executive director and will happily take over her workload for a month? Nope. It’s because she made it so easy to say yes. Here’s what she did:

She got a feel for the organization’s culture- We have many staff members that have taken extended vacations. I often rave about what a good job they did preparing the other staff for their time away. She took mental notes and used that as part of her strategy when approaching her own leave.

She didn’t surprise me- When she first heard about the opportunity to go on the sailing trip, she let me know that she was thinking about doing this and was concerned about missing an event that we are hosting during that time. I appreciated that she was so concerned about the event and wanted to make sure it was successful but I made sure that she knew that, while there was a lot of work to be done to get ready for the event, her attendance on that day wasn’t mandatory.

She made a plan- She wrote up a list of all of the activities that needed to take place during that month, figured out who could be alternatively responsible, got their buy-in, and also listed all of the things that she could do in advance to either finish that activity or to make it easier for the person taking over.

She always does a good job- It is much easier as a supervisor to say yes to someone who consistently keeps up with their responsibilities. She does her job well everyday and so that made it really easy for me to trust that she would properly prepare for this leave and be ready to get back to work when she returns.

Do don’t give up on your dream of going on a safari, a mission trip to Honduras, or backpacking  in Australia. Just make it easy for them to say yes.

Tweet This Post

I recently received a copy of Laura Vanderkam’s book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. A while back Laura interviewed me about my time management techniques to add to the book, as I was reading over my suggestions and quotes I was quickly reminded that time management can be a fleeting accomplishment. When Laura interviewed me I had an amazing executive coach that was helping me put systems in place to make sure that made sure that time wasn’t an excuse for not being able to do all of things that I needed to do as the new Executive Director of Headwaters. She helped me set my schedule so I had time for strategic thinking for three large blocks of time a week, time to clean out my inbox everyday, and time for lunch (I know it sounds ridiculous but in my first few months at Headwaters I was packing my schedule so tight that I didn’t have time to eat). As I got more comfortable in my new organization it became easier and easier to let those good habits go because things were moving smoothly and I was getting a lot accomplished.

Getting Laura’s book in the mail reminded me that good habits only work if they are really habits and not just a fleeting lifestyle change. Her example of how you can really have it all (wife, mother, successful careerist, and connected community member) just by paying attention to how you are spending your 168 hours a week was a needed reminder that I need my good habits back, even when things are running smoothly. She has great examples throughout the book of how to maximize your hours. Check out the book, I bet you’ll find new ways to maximize your 168 hours and make it a permanent habit.

Tweet This Post

I have been busy with work lately, not sleep under my desk busy, but busy enough where I don’t have a lot of spare time to think about what to eat at home. It is not like when I have lots of spare time I am a wonderful chef who makes home cooked meals for the neighborhood but I can get a protein, vegetable, and a starch on the table pretty consistently. For the first three weeks of my new job my husband has been handling almost all of the home duties and when it comes to food that means we had eaten a wide variety of fast food for three weeks straight. I was starting to feel like the guy from Supersize Me, so I finally ventured to the grocery store. I have found that when I have a large number of decisions to make at work, facing the infinite number of possibilities at the grocery store makes my head feel like it is going to explode. Instead of picking fresh food that would require me to figure out what to do with it I gravitated towards the dangerous middle aisles, where there are pictures of completed meals on the box and numbered directions on how to make it happen. At 9pm on a Tuesday night at a grocery store, numbered directions start looking pretty attractive. The next night when I cooked my “1-2-3″ meal I noticed that it had a very unappetizing grey color and it had a nice chemical aftertaste. That’s when I remembered that work-life balance isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.

I have no false illusions that I will be running a board meeting, speaking at a conference, and then cooking a three course meal for dinner but I can do a better job of using the same strategic planning that I use to decide what I need to accomplish for the week at work, at home. I can set broad goals about the sort of food I would like my family to eat and how we spend our time together. I can also celebrate those successes at home the same way I celebrate those successes at work with staff. The hard thing about being a parent or a partner is that you don’t get performance reviews to tell you that you are doing a good job. You need to figure out what let’s you know you are doing a good job, is it well adjusted kids, a happy partner who says nice things about you to their friends, or a family without scurvy? Then enjoy those successes.

Tweet This Post

Just a few weeks ago, the 2010 Global Philanthropy Forum convened in San Francisco. The three-day forum highlighted a number of key international challenges and opportunities facing investors and grant makers, NGOs and civil society, and multi-sector partnerships both public and private, as the industry of giving and receiving enters the second decade of the 21st century. While the overarching themes of the conference were not explicitly related to technological advancements or solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, having attended a variety of sessions over the course of the conference, one of the most prominent threads was exactly that: harnessing mobile and internet technology for change, social impact, and accountability.

Catalista, for example, has developed a mobile platform to connect individuals interested in timely volunteer work for local non-profits in need, whereas The Extraordinaries pioneered the field of micro-volunteering, which helps organizations and supporters turn spare time into social value from a bus stop, cubicle, or couch. To-date, micro-volunteers have completed over 300,000 tasks for more than 200 organizations. Similarly, but in a reversal of roles and in the space of economic development across the developing world, Samasource enables marginalized people, from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan, to receive life-changing work opportunities via the Internet. The core of this concept is microwork — little bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere that add up to a real livelihood for their partners. Another example of mobile and social innovation in action is the work of FrontlineSMS, designed specifically to address a widespread communications problem facing grassroots NGOs working in developing countries. By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs — computers and mobile phones — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. The uses for such technology spans monitoring human rights violations, disaster relief coordination, election monitoring, emergency alerts, health care information requests, mobile education, and more.

Read the rest here

Tweet This Post