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May 2007. Issue # 5
IN THIS ISSUE:
News: The Challenge for Multi-Site, Multi-Service Organizations: Achieving a Sense of Family
Tools for Success: Consulting Teams Can Bring Precisely the Expertise You Need
Transitions: Leadership Needs Should Be Considered Even When the Seat Is Filled
Welcome to our Spring Newsletter!
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Foundations: A Critical Role in Social Change
A client recommended "The Foundation: A Great American Secret" by Joel Fleishman, an experienced foundation president and trustee. Based on interviews with leaders in the foundation community, Fleishman uses case studies to highlight the enormous social impact of successful foundations. He discusses some key criticisms of the sector - the lack of transparency and accountability - and proposes actions foundations can take to enhance their effectiveness. We believe this is worthwhile reading for funder and grantee alike.
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We published our first newsletter a year ago, because we wanted to share our insights, trends we saw in the nonprofit sector, and offer tools and tips. Our five-year-old consulting firm has grown and so has the complexity and reach of the organizations we serve. Yet their challenges remain the same: long-term viability and vitality, restructuring and collaboration, and leadership transitions. As always, we invite you to share this issue with your friends and colleagues, and to send us your feedback and suggestions for future issues. And be sure to visit our website, www.KrasnePlows.com to read more about our work and its impact.
News: The Challenge for Multi-Site, Multi-Service Organizations: Achieving a Sense of Family
Multi-site, multi-program organizations face the inherent tension between the central office and field offices or individual programs. The head office wants to impose consistent standards, procedures, branding, and communications practices, striving to unite locations or services into a cohesive whole. Local offices or individual programs want to remain autonomous with the freedom to market and deliver services in a way they think best meets their clients' needs. The most successful organizations actively manage that tension. They focus on their core mission, values and vision and convey them at every opportunity in many ways. They may use new staff orientations, timely news bulletins, or an agency-wide newsletter to keep staff informed. They communicate frequently and seek ways to bring staff together in various configurations, using agency-wide meetings, inter-department taskforces, or informal social gatherings to build bridges, share best practices or work on a particular issue. A nonprofit may share and replicate an innovative idea across locations, once it's developed and piloted successfully in one site, at less risk to the organization. That can even motivate staff to look for other ways to improve their programs and services. Many agencies keep documents, templates, marketing brochures and other information on intranets, where they can be accessed and printed, making it easier for each location to do its job and ensuring consistent messages everywhere.
The key to having one big family is keeping everyone informed and engaged wherever they are.
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Tools: Consulting Teams Can Bring Precisely the Expertise You Need
Strategic and business planning typically examines the entire organization - its mission and programs, leadership and board, staffing and systems, funding and finances. But it is rare that any one consulting firm has the expertise you need in every area as well as deep sector knowledge. By using a team of consultants with a collaboration orientation, you can get the specialization you need and an integrated approach that leads to a coherent and practical business plan. You would do the same thing if you were remodeling a house - identify the right combination of carpenter, plumber, electrician, and painter.
We recently teamed with a development consultant who brought critical sector and fund-raising knowledge. We provided the organizational, financial and public/private expertise. Working together, we created options for our client that neither of us could have separately. We conducted an intensive organizational assessment for another client - finances, organization and infrastructure, marketing and branding, program effectiveness and perceived reputation -- as part of a 4-firm team. No one entity could have done justice to the entire project, and the client quickly got a 360-degree evaluation of its health and the challenges it faced. In another case, our merger experience, another consultant's sector knowledge, plus our combined project management and facilitation skills are providing needed support for a successful combination of a politically sensitive integration.
Assembling the Right Team of Consultants Can be a Winning Combination for Your Organization. Read More
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Transitions: Leadership Needs Should Be Considered Even When the Seat Is Filled
Much has been written about the pending retirement of many long-term executive directors, and we are working closely with leaders and boards on this sensitive issue. But transitions also occur throughout an organization's life. Whether an agency adds advocacy to leverage its program delivery accomplishments, merges to expand its services, or extends its reach geographically, these transitions all represent change. To ensure success these shifts often require the organization's executive, board, and senior management to modify their perspectives, roles, and behaviors.
Our approach to any transition is the same: ask clients to describe the future impact they desire and how they can best achieve it. Then we help them explicitly address what they need - in their board, their executive, and in their leadership team - to transition successfully from what their organization is today to what it wants to become. We assess the strengths and weaknesses in the board, the executive and the leadership team, and identify the skills and competencies required for the organization to move forward. We discuss our findings and their implications with leadership so they can decide what steps they want to take at this important juncture. Then we help the executive and the board to carry them out. We may support the executive director as she adds a chief operating officer, restructures her leadership team, or adds key middle managers to increase bench strength and streamline activities. We may coach an executive to delegate more, so s/he can assume more of an advocacy role, become more active in fund-raising or fill more of the leadership pipeline. We may help the board develop recruitment criteria, a new board orientation program, or a more effective committee structure.
Explicitly addressing the "elephant in the room" -- evolving leadership needs -- is an important element in any successful organizational transition, not just when the executive retires. Read More
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