By Aaron Hurst on
December 14, 2007 9:14 AM
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We did a a focus group yesterday with 10 nonprofit executive directors to understand their strategic planning challenges and explore how pro bono could be used to support the process. What an impressive group. Collectively, I think they had been involved in at least 50 strategic planning projects, and they brought a real depth of understanding and pragmatism to the process.
What emerged as a core theme was the importance of strategic planning as a way to reach out to stakeholders (volunteers, donors, clients, board, partners, city officials, etc.) to help them connect with the organization. It was clear that this effort was as much about inclusion and engagement as it was about the actual content. It is a rare opportunity to really reach out to people who care about the success of the organization and have a real conversation.
Pro bono support from business professionals with planning and research backgrounds enables an organization to radically increase the number of conversations. This in turn increases the size of the stakeholder group that is engaged and therefore makes them more loyal and supportive of the nonprofit. Most nonprofits around the table reported that they were only able to engage 10-20 stakeholders in their planning process but would ideally like to touch closer to 50 people. With pro bono support to help conduct and record these conversations, they could achieve that goal and perhaps even surpass it. This would not only increase support for the organization, it would yield a much richer set of insight into their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Given this insight, we are going to look at how we can make our "Strategic Planning Preparation" Service Grant include as many stakeholders as possible. Check out the current design of the Service Grant in our grant catalogue.
By Aaron Hurst on
December 5, 2007 1:17 PM
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As an undergrad at the University of Michigan, I took a great course in organizational behavior that focused on team building and team performance. It had a significant impact on the design of our pro bono program.
It was in that class that I was introduced to the concept of "social loafing." The idea is that on many teams there are members who don't carry their weight, which builds resentment and risks the success of the endeavor.
This has been a widely studied phenomenon and there are now understood ways to build teams to minimize the likelihood of loafing (love that word). We have adopted many of these practices, but the one that stands out to me is the practice of creating clearly differentiated roles.
If you have a team where multiple people can accomplish the same tasks, it is common for one of these people to loaf, as they know that the slack can be picked up by another member of the team. On the other hand, if each role is distinct and requires skills that are unique to that individual, all team members know that if they don't play their part, the project will not get done.
For example, in building a website, the HTML developer knows that he or she is the only one who can build the site. The copywriter can't do it. The marketing manager can't do it. The graphic designer can't do it. There is clear responsibility, accountability and sense of purpose (and therefore reward). Similarly, the graphic designer is the only one who can do the design.
That is as elegant a differentiation in roles as you can get. Even on that team, roles like copywriter and marketing manager can lead to social loafing as others think they can also do marketing and writing. So, if the copywriter is not performing, other members of the team may step in and hack some copy, and therefore let the writer off the hook.
So, in pro bono work, where generous volunteers are trying to fit service into their busy schedules, the likelihood of loafing is very high. As you are managing and staffing pro bono projects, take time to think about how to scope and staff the project to create clearly differentiated roles that will increase the odds of a successful project.
For more on social loafing and how to minimize its impact, check out this resource:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Social_Loafing
