Time, Stress & Work Life Balance for Clerks with Beckie Whitehouse
What makes a good organisation great
1. What makes a good organisation… GREAT?
A PRESENTATION TO THE TONIC CONFERENCE, TAURANGA, NEW ZEALAND
B Y K A T E F R Y K B E R G , T H I N K T A N K C O N S U L T I N G
K A T E @ T H I N K T A N K . C O . N Z
1 0 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
16/11/2016 1
2. Outline
1. Definitions of GREAT
2. Expert opinions on what makes a non-profit great
3. My thoughts on what makes a non-profit great
◦ What helps to effectively enable positive social change?
◦ How does GOOD compare to GREAT?
◦ How to fund great organisations
4. Six useful questions
16/11/2016 2
3. What does GREAT mean for non-profits?
3
Peter Drucker:
“The bottom line for a non-profit organisation
is changed lives”
My definition:
“A great non-profit effectively enables positive
social change”
16/11/2016
5. What the experts say:
5
Peter Drucker – the management school
approach:
Mission comes first
A great strategy
Managing for performance
The right people and relationships
Great leadership
16/11/2016
6. What the experts say:
6
Charity rating sites – it’s all about metrics:
Givewell:
Evidence-based programmes
Cost effectiveness
Transparency
Charity Watch
Programme costs vs overhead costs
Efficiency of fund-raising
Not really measures of changed lives!
16/11/2016
7. What the experts say:
7
Forces for Good: Analysing what helps impact:
Both advocate and serve
Harness market forces
Engage supporters, donors and volunteers
Work as allies not competitors
Be nimble and innovative
Share leadership and empower others
16/11/2016
9. What helps enable positive social change?
Working at “kitchen table and
legislative chamber”
Working together
Environments where people help
themselves and each other
Challenging power structures
9
10. Good compared to Great: Vision
A GOOD organisation:
has a clearly articulated
vision / kaupapa
A GREAT organisation:
uses their vision for
everyday decision making
10
11. Good compared to Great: Community
A GOOD organisation:
Consults with & serves
their communities
A GREAT organisation:
Actively involves the
communities they serve
11
12. Good compared to Great: Approach
A GOOD organisation:
Provides effective, evidence-
based services
A GREAT organisation:
Supports people to help
themselves and each other
12
13. Good compared to Great: Leadership
A GOOD organisation:
Has good leadership and
strong teams
A GREAT organisation:
The whole is greater than
the sum of the parts
13
14. Good compared to Great: Money
A GOOD organisation:
Has well managed finances
A GREAT organisation:
Has fit-for-purpose finances
14
15. Good compared to Great: Impact
A GOOD organisation:
Evaluates their impact
A GREAT organisation:
Constantly learns and adapts
what they do
15
16. Good compared to Great: Collaboration
A GOOD organisation:
Networks well and has
MOUs in place
A GREAT organisation:
Works collectively for the
good of communities
16
17. Good compared to Great: Relationships
A GOOD organisation:
Has good relationships with
everyone
A GREAT organisation:
Has open, honest and brave
relationships
17
18. Funding a great org - where philanthropy fits in
16/11/2016 18
Income Source Philanthropy?
Contracts for Services
Traditional fund-raising activities (eg events)
Earned income (social enterprise)
Membership
Sponsorship
Grants Y
Donations (including bequests and regular giving) Y
Crowd-funding Y
Social finance (eg social loans) Sometimes
Adapted from Exult - Helping Non-Profits Grow www.exult.co.nz
19. Helpful Hints for philanthropic funding
19
Look for a close fit between what you do and
what they fund
Try to have a conversation before applying
Look at who they have funded & how much
Write applications for an audience who:
Don’t have much time (keep in succinct!)
Are not experts in your field (keep it simple and clear)
Calculate your “net grant” ($ received – your time)
Build honest, reciprocal relationships with funders
16/11/2016
20. Six useful questions
1. Do we use our vision as a touchstone for
decision making?
2. Does our board and team reflect our
community?
3. Do we put our community first? (Even, if
necessary, ahead of our own survival?)
4. Can we articulate why we do what we do?
5. Are we a learning organisation?
6. Do we have robust relationships within our
organisation and with our stakeholders?
20
21. Final thoughts
21
“Changed lives” and effectively enabling
positive social change is hard, important
work
The road is long, slow and full of potholes
and things beyond our control
What matters is the journey
The most important thing is relationships
16/11/2016
Hinweis der Redaktion
Ki ngā maunga, ngā awa, ngā moana, me ngā tāngata whenua hoki o te rohe nei, tēnā rā koutou katoa.
E te/ngā rangatira, kua whakarite i tēnei wāhi mā tātou, he mihi nui ki a kōe/koutou
Ki a koutou katoa kua tae mai nei e tenei ra, tēnā koutou katoa.
First I would like to acknowledge the land on which we stand, as well as the people and the history of the land. We are here in this historic village and not far from the scene of the battle of Gate Pa – may we remember and learn from our history.
Secondly, warm greetings to you all; it is a privilege to be here in beautiful Tauranga to provide my perspectives on what makes a good organization great.
Here’s what we will cover over the next 30 minutes or so, and I will leave lost of time for questions at the end.
Drucker “father of modern management” 1909 – 2005. Author of “managing the non-profit organisation”
Peter’s point I think is that while in a business the bottom line is financial profit, we in the community sector aim for something much more important and much harder – changed lives. I quite like this definition and I think it can be applied not only to social sector organisations but arguable also to organisations working in the arts and the environment.
My own definition is not dissimilar, but takes more of a community rather than a personal perspective
Here’s Peter Drucker’s take on what makes a great non-profit -
Actually most of these also apply to businesses – with the possible exception of the first one and the fact that the end game is maximising profit but changed lives.
Here’s another view from so-called experts on what makes a great non-profit – and in my opinion this is one we all need to push back on a bit. These are websites which rate charities – they are big in the US, and that bottom one, Charity watch, is a prime example of flawed and simplistic thinking – that the only thing that matters is how much an organisation spends on overheads and how efficient their fundraising is.
Givewell is a little more holistic in their approach but still somewhat mechanistic.
For me the important thing about over-heads is that they are right-sized and fit-for-purpose. And if you are looking for a really good response to people who question overhead rates, I understand that bout 80% of the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee is overhead…
Who has read this? Useful?
I liked it because it came from the point of view of what helps impact and was based on pretty robust research.
So now I am getting to my own perspectives on what makes a good organisation great. I have some hesitation in doing so because I am not sure that funders like me are really best qualified to decide this – so please take with a grain of salt.
However, if we use the definition I suggested earlier of “great” meaning effectively enabling positive social change, then the first step is understanding what helps this happen.
Take Jasmine, a young woman who has been in trouble with the police. We can enrol her with the local youth work organisation, but if she has no prospects for education or training or work then we have a systems issue. Like the Forces for Good quote, we need to both advocate and serve.
Environments where we help each other…. I don’t think the experts touch much on this one. However I have heard our sector described as “an industry built on the backs of others deprivation”… In other words, we as funders need community organizations to be coming to us for funding to justify our existence. In turn, community organisations need people to be in need to justify yours. The way of turning this on its head is to ensure that communities lead.
SO, if a great organisation is one which effectively enables positive social change, what are the characteristics? And how does good compare to great?
As Peter Drucker points out, it is really important to have a clearly articulated vision. How many have a vision statement? Who can say their vision statement without having to think about it? Who uses it every day?
The beauty of a good vision is that it is a touchstone for almost any decision. Which one will be more helpful in contributing to your vision.
Again this isn’t something much mentioned in the literature I consulted for what makes a great organisation. But how can we serve youth without young people involved in the staff and the board? How can we serve Māori if we have no authenticity? Consultation is good, involvement is better!
Maybe that is a picture of Jasmine. And Jasmine may well need professional counselling and ready for work programmes. But when the proverbial hits the whirling object at 3am, the counsellor and the youth worker probably aren’t there to help. In the end it is about families and neighbours and friends. We need both our services and our communities to be strong.
The image here is a whole lot of cogs and levers which together make a heart. In a few organisations, there is a real buzz, everyone is doing their thing and taking initiative, communicating, asking advice, laughing. It isn’t easy to achieve, but if we create our workplaces as communities where people blossom, the whole becomes greeter than the sum of the parts.
As a funder you see a huge range of financial statements. Some organizations simply sent their bank statement, others were complex, multi-million dollar enterprises. Some had substantial reserves, some had negative equity but still struggled on. The important thing I think is that they are fit for purpose. It is fine for a small organisation to have very simple financial management. It is not fine for a large enterprise.
There’s another problem with money. The sad fact is that community organizations survive not by how well they serve their communities but by how well we attract funding. Which makes I really tempting to put priority on fund-raising over service. I don’t think that this is what great organisation does. A great organisation has fit-for-purpose funding-raising and does it efficiently and well – but the focus is on the communities served.
We live in an environment where measuring our impact is becoming increasingly important, and funding is often dependent on this. The unintended consequences of this is that we commission evaluations and use them as marketing tools rather than learning. As a funder we see lots f evaluations which have a very strong subtext of “fund us , we are wonderful”.
Much more important, I think, is to be a learning organisation. To constantly measure and adapt.
We can’t change the world alone.
A great organisation might, for example, stop doing something because they see that another organisation is doing it better and why compete?
I am a big fan of collective impact, where everyone puts aside egos and competition. These are hallmarks of great organisations.
Enabling positive change requires challenging power structures. How we do this, how we engage in ways that are constructive, where disagreements are OK and worked through, can make the difference between good and great.
As a funder, people are very nice to us. You laugh at our jokes. And we are rarely challenged. But we need to be!
I’ll touch on this only because this info is adapted from the wonderful team at Exult and I believe that Megan will be talking about this at one of the next workshops. However, diversity of income streams is really important if you want to be a great organisation, because it gives you more financial security.
Of these, the last four can be considered philanthropy, ie grants, donations, crowd funding and sometimes social finance, and here’s some tips for philanthropic funding:
No point in applying unless you have a reasonably good chance of success
Staff and trustees often read lots and lots of applications – unless yours is clear and simple it wont stand out
Funding burden – put a value on the time you spend applying and reporting on grants so you know what your real net grant is. And if this is unreasonable, give feedback to your funder.
Stay in touch. Put on your newsletter list. Invite to functions. And if things go wrong be up front. Too often we play games with each other..
Pulling all this together, here’s some suggestions for questions to ask yourself about your organisation as you move along the path to being great.