Lets talk about leading a nonprofit

Let’s Talk About: Leading a Nonprofit

By Staff – Pacific Business News Nov 17, 2017, 10:00am EST Interested in becoming involved with a nonprofit or charitable organization? As the sector changes, many local organizations are in need of engaged board members. Pacific Business News recently held a panel event at The Pacific Club in Downtown Honolulu, where leaders in Hawaii’s nonprofit industry gathered for a candid discussion about the challenges in board recruitment, staff retention and fundraising.

How did you get started with your respective organizations?

McCarney: I had a very good career, and after retiring I started to think about how I could contribute to my community. One of the things I noticed was how congested Honolulu was with cars, and it wasn’t a good place to bike or walk, so I thought maybe there was something I could do to help change that. Bikeshare started five years ago in planning, and they were looking for an executive director and I thought I could help contribute, and I had nothing to lose. It wasn’t a career move, it wasn’t for the money, it was just something that I thought I had the talent and skillset for, but also passion to help with.

Broderick: I was a family court judge for number of years, and I saw themes of drug addiction and homelessness, and the youth were totality disengaged. One commonality was almost all these people had been traumatized in some way. At the same time, I was on the corporate board for the YMCA and I saw the ways it brought prevention to these issues, so I decided for the last 10 years of my career to spend it on the front-end trying to prevent these families from ending up in family court.

Munoz: I never planned on getting into the nonprofit realm. I am a nurse practitioner by trade, and I was exposed to the issue of human trafficking of children right here in Hawaii, and I wanted to do something about it. When I started doing this work back in 2010, the reality that children weren’t being recognized as victims of exploitation was very shocking to me, as well as looking at our system and seeing the state of juvenile justice reform — and if we are going to bring reform we have to have diversion programs in place so that kids who have been traumatized can be healed. So, my passion is to create a residential campus where underage girls will find that healing.

How do you identify the skills that you need on your board to supplement the skills you have on your staff, and are any of you actively looking for board members?

Martin: I think you have to have some interest in what the nonprofit is doing, and believe in the mission of the organization and its reach in the community. We have different kinds of board members: we have worker bees who like to roll up their sleeves, but there are also corporate representatives whose employers want to be active in the community, philanthropically and through financial support. There are many different kinds of board members, and I think organizations need to identify what they need at a particular time. Is fundraising the highest emphasis, is it expanding your sphere of influence, is it attracting new customers? Figure that out, and then find the people that can help affect that.

Broderick: Find board members who have a personal connection in the organization, they will be the ones who care most deeply about the organization.

Munoz: Having passion is the most important thing, as well as courage, because you can’t be afraid of taking risks, especially with an organization that is starting from scratch.

How do all of you onboard your board members?

McCarney: As both an executive director and a board member on different types of boards, onboarding is really important. There is nothing worse than coming on to a board and not knowing what to do. The process varies by organization. I was president of the Blood Bank of Hawaii board for few years, and that was a very through onboarding process, just talking about what it was all about. Going through the specifics of the organization and helping people understand what it is about, and what their role will be.

Martin: Anybody who is hired for a job — whether paid or volunteer — needs to know what the job is. You need to be clear about your expectations with the person you are trying to recruit. We provide them with a nominee packet which has written criteria, and if they get through that then we have a meet and greet. We can obviously tell them why we are interested in them, but we need to hear why they are interested in us.

Kane: We are trying to create an onboarding process that never ends, because as much as we are onboarding them, they are onboarding us. We have a responsibility to provide a platform for our board members in order for them to exercise their passion, and that process never ends.

Broderick: We always try to remind board members why they joined the YMCA in the first place, and we do that through two ways. At the beginning of every board meeting we have someone tell a personal testimonial about how the Y has changed, or in some instances, saved their life. Second, we periodically communicate stories that have occurred at the Y that had a significant impact on someone. We do that because I want the board to be pumped up about serving on the YMCA board, and the best way to do that is to show the life changing experiences that are happening for the people who are coming here.

Have any of you ever had to fire a board member?

Martin: If someone is showing a lack of engagement. If a board member is increasingly missing meetings, not participating on the committee they have been assigned to work on, not supporting the activities, signs are pretty clear that they have moved away for whatever reason.

Broderick: Some organizations say if a board member does not show up for a certain percentage of board meetings then they should be asked to leave, and I strongly disagree with that. The word is engagement. If you have a board member who is making a unique contribution but doesn’t come to all of the meetings, then I am embracing that. I am keeping them on my board.

McCarney: I have called out people, but not very often. When I have had a conversation with someone, you find that board members sit on multiple boards, so it may be that a particular board at a particular time is engaging them more. It could also be that something is going on with their life and they don’t want to resign because they don’t want to negatively hurt the organization.

When I have that conversation with people, they feel relief because they felt guilty about their lack of engagement. I think it is important to have that conversation to try and figure out what is going on, and give them a graceful exit because then you can focus on the organization and bringing on new board members.

How many of your organizations have the “give-get” policy — the two-sided expectation that a board member will donate a certain amount, and also bring in a certain amount?

How do you manage that?

Martin: As the organization matured, we found that there were a lot of people who can’t contribute, but wanted to in other ways: Whether it’s signing a sponsorship check once a year, or coming in and doing the some of the lower proceeds kind of work. We did away with our mandatory term limit [for board members]. We agreed that we would evaluate a board member’s participation before inviting them to stand for reelection.

Broderick: The ‘get’ part is really important. I don’t want to sound crass or mean-spirited, but I don’t want a board member who isn’t comfortable asking for money. I want our board to be proud and inspired by the work that goes on at the Y. I want them to feel comfortable telling people about the life-changing work, and then asking that person to contribute to our organization. It [seeking contributions] also forces the board member to educate themselves about the organization. I would encourage your board — not require — to call someone and ask for money.

Munoz: When you have a founders’ board or a grassroots startup board, you have the expectation when you come on that you really have to be ‘in the weeds’ helping get things going and launched … then transition into having board members go out into the community. It’s a challenge, and especially as a young organization, our board members have to do that. You really can’t have an unengaged board member — there’s too much work to be done.

How many employees do you have, and do you plan on expanding that next year?

Munoz: We have five full-time employees, and four part-time and contract workers.

Martin: We have seven full-time employees and four part-time. Not considering an extension at the moment — only way I could do that would be to cut everyone in half to double the size of the staff — we use volunteers in key positions, as well.

Broderick: We have 1,200. About 200 are full-time, and about 1,000 are part-time. Our greatest need is we handle 56 A+ sites [a state after-school program] across the island — we have a hard time finding people for those A+ positions.

Kane: We have 67 employees, we’re a statewide organization, so we have offices on every island.

McCarney: Our Bikeshare board has three employees, we have volunteers sporadically who are brand new — we’ve been in operation four months, we’ve been in existence three years — we don’t have a lot of money, so we’ve just been trying to be as lean as possible. But as we’re moving into this next phase, we’re looking at what can we afford and if are we hurting ourselves by not staffing up – but can we raise enough money to employ the staff?

When you are hiring, what are the challenges you run into?

Kane: It’s an issue in this sector [staff retention], and largely it’s due to the size of our organization and the lack of mobility for an employee to move vertically within the organization.

I’m asking our leadership to take a much longer and broader view. Every employee will have a five-year retention plan, and it embraces the goal of keeping them in the sector vs. at the organization. I think our retention strategy as a sector needs to change. It needs to be one that embraces each other, and the mobility for the employees to move around the sector, so that we can create an aggregated retention.

Broderick: We send our folks regularly to training and conferences on the Mainland. What I find is that when they return, they’re extremely motivated and energized. They’re reminded of why they chose to work at the Y. So we have options to do that. Let’s be honest with each other: We [nonprofits] can’t compete in terms of wages. But we certainly can compete in terms of training.

What are your suggestions on finding good grant writers? How do you manage your grants — do you hire project managers to look after them?

Munoz: I’ve had to learn to write grants through this process. As an executive director or CEO, you have a really good pulse on what’s going on — or you should — in your organization, to where you can write to it. We do have someone who we hired who does all of our grants management, and helps us with our reporting — and that’s proven absolutely essential.

Broderick: At the YMCA, we have a luxury — and I consider it a luxury — of having our development office team who helps tremendously with our grant writing. My experience, personally, is minimal with grants — but my sense is that it’s as much an art as it is a science.

McCarney: I think that we wouldall like to have a magic grant writerwho’s going to go out and bring us tons of money. … We have a person who works on programs and grants, and we’re connecting programs with grants — it seems to be one way to connect people to a program and applying their passion and their organization to support you. Start talking to people. Go out and ask: ‘Do you know who might support this?’ And do your networking. I think the “people side” continues to be important, because we’re not necessarily getting international grants or grants from New York City, they’ll tend to be more locally based. … the more you talk to people, you learn more about what different avenues they’ve taken.

Kane: What I would like to see more nonprofits do in the grant process — don’t be afraid, call the source [the foundation] and ask questions. Don’t think that that reduces your viability … understand what the organization is looking for in their grant offer.

Martin: You need to be sure that what you have to offer the potential funder is meeting their needs. We all have needs — the charity certainly has needs and the funder has needs, and maybe there is a match and maybe there isn’t a match. It’s very embarrassing not to have done the due diligence and ask the wrong thing of the wrong person. You need to know what their interest is and how you can help them fulfill their interest by them supporting you.

Demystifying grant writing Nonprofit leaders expressed their frustrations with the grant writing process, and the lack of inhouse writers, at our recent panel discussion. After the event, Diane Peters-Nguyen, vice president of Chaminade University’s office of institutional management, reached out to PBN and said many nonprofits mistakenly believe that their organization needs a “magical” grant writer.

“It’s a common feeling in nonprofits, that the grant writer is a silver bullet,” Peters-Nguyen said.

“But if you can write a business plan, you can easily write a grant.”

Peters-Nguyen said she’s a self-taught grant writer herself, and that she’s trained other people in the profession. One grant writer she mentored — who had no prior experience — was successful in being awarded a multimillion-dollar grant. She said grant writing is a skill that many nonprofit staff and executives can acquire, or rather should — because the reality is not many organizations in Hawaii can keep a full-time grant writer busy.

“There are a limited number of foundations in Hawaii, maybe 20,” Peters-Nguyen explained.

“Also, if you’re seeking out corporate funders, they don’t have the time to read a proposal, they just want a one-page letter.”

Peters-Nguyen encourages people in the nonprofit sector to just give grant writing a try, and emphasizes the importance of doing research first: Look into the foundation or company you’re approaching for a grant, see what causes they’ve funded before and how much they’ve given; demonstrate the impact of the new program you want; be clear about how much money you need, and make sure the numbers add up. A good template can be created with this method and

used to apply for a number of grants, she said, including capital grants for new buildings and renovations.

Lastly, she said to ask a board member to proof the grant before you send it out.

“It’s not rocket science if you can write,” she said.