The Big News

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.

Lower Overhead for Foundations

Hi everyone! I'm back from hacked blog purgatory so you can expect new posts and a very, very exciting announcement coming next week. To keep you busy as you ponder my big announcement (new job? nope! solved centuries old math problem? nope!) I've got an interesting post from The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Give and Take Blog: 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

Notorious X & Y

[caption id="attachment_1163" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="From www.postsecret.com"][/caption] 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.

Make it easy for them to say yes

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.