Marilyn L. Donnellan, MS
Founder Emeritus | Author | Consultant
With over 30 years experience serving nonprofits large and small, and author of four
books The Hour Series of Guides for Nonprofit Management, Nonprofit Management
Simplified and the award-winning guide,
The Six-Hour Strategic Plan, Donnellan’s
material is being used by thousands of nonprofits in more than a dozen countries. Her
fourth book, The Complete Guide to Church
Management, has been translated into the
Chichewa, the native language of Malawi
and Mozambique, Africa. She also developed
fourteen training modules ideal for consultants and nonprofit association.
Few nonprofit executive directors, especially in small organizations, have had any
training in governance issues. As a result,
they stumble along, working with the board
they are given, figuring it out as they go.
Slamming
the Doors on Innovation
and Communication
G
ood communication strategies are the key to effective leadership. But when any communication
begins with a belief in a person’s own knowledge
superiority it can slam the door not only on further communication but on innovation.
Let me illustrate with two frequent discussions in LinkedIn
nonprofit groups: strategic planning and governance.
Strategic Planning
The executive director of a small nonprofit raised a question on LinkedIn about how to get the board of directors to
support their first strategic planning process. The responses
to the question quickly divided into two camps:
1. Traditional: Hire a professional consultant to do scientific environmental and organizational assessments
over a period of several months; present the results
to the board; develop strategic planning goals and a
written plan; staff develops a work plan with regular
reports to the board;
2. Innovative: Hire a facilitator to conduct a one-day
board retreat to review the vision and mission, do a
SWOT analysis and other mini-assessments, develop
strategic goals; develop work plan; regular reports to
the board with ongoing updates to the strategic planning process.
It became obvious that those in the traditional group had
never worked in small nonprofits and did not understand the
financial limitations to hiring a professional consultant. Plus,
there appeared to be an academic-purist viewpoint in the traditional comments that said, “Unless you do scientific research
prior to development of the plan, the plan is worthless.”
The responses from those in the innovative group seemed
to dwindle as the louder, apparently more knowledgeable voices in the traditional group drowned out the responses in the
innovative, less expensive, more adaptive processes proposed.
Governance
Few nonprofit executive directors, especially in small organizations, have had any training in governance issues. As
a result, they stumble along, working with the board they are
given, figuring it out as they go.
The question was raised in one LinkedIn discussion on
how to get the board members to understand their governance
responsibilities. Easy answer, right? You would think so, but
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