Q&A: NEN ROUNDTABLE
BEING 'HIGH-IMPACT': WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN?
This third in a series of NEN Roundtable Discussions focuses on what it takes to be
a “high-impact” nonprofit, using as a starting point an influential recent article
from the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The article, entitled
“Creating High-Impact Nonprofits,”
took a close look at 12 successful nonprofits and asked what they had in common and which
pieces of conventional wisdom they flouted. The authors identified six “myths of
nonprofit management” and six practices that all 12 successful organizations shared.
We asked our four panelists – all female leaders in the child and youth services field
– to read the article and comment. Why an all-female panel? The 5th Annual Women in
Leadership Summit, cosponsored each spring by NEN and the CWLA/New England Region,
is just around the corner, giving us a chance to revisit the perennially interesting
issue of work and gender. This year the summit takes place April 7-9 in Mystic, Conn.
Click here to find out more about it.
a “high-impact” nonprofit, using as a starting point an influential recent article
from the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The article, entitled
“Creating High-Impact Nonprofits,”
took a close look at 12 successful nonprofits and asked what they had in common and which
pieces of conventional wisdom they flouted. The authors identified six “myths of
nonprofit management” and six practices that all 12 successful organizations shared.
We asked our four panelists – all female leaders in the child and youth services field
– to read the article and comment. Why an all-female panel? The 5th Annual Women in
Leadership Summit, cosponsored each spring by NEN and the CWLA/New England Region,
is just around the corner, giving us a chance to revisit the perennially interesting
issue of work and gender. This year the summit takes place April 7-9 in Mystic, Conn.
Click here to find out more about it.
| Myths of Nonprofit Management |
| Myth #1: Perfect Management. Not all high-impact nonprofits have would be considered exemplary management practices. Adequate is important, perfection isn’t necessary. |
| Myth #2: Brand-Name Awareness. A few of the organizations were household names, but others barely focus on marketing. |
| Myth #3: A Breakthrough New Idea. Although some groups come up with radical innovations, others take old ideas and tweak them until they achieve success. |
| Myth #4: Textbook Mission Statements. All of these nonprofits look to compelling missions, visions, and shared values. But only a few of spend time fine-tuning their mission statement on paper. |
| Myth #5: High Ratings on Conventional Metrics. Many of the organizations didn’t score well on traditional measures of nonprofit efficiency, sometimes because they don’t adhere to misleading metrics such as overhead ratios. |
| Myth #6: Large Budgets. Size doesn’t correlate with impact. Some of the nonprofits have made a big impact with large budgets; others have achieved similar impact with much smaller budgets. |
| Practices that Produce High Impact |
| 1. Serve and Advocate: High-impact organizations may start out providing great programs, but they eventually realize that they cannot achieve large-scale social change through service delivery alone. So they add policy advocacy to acquire government resources and to change legislation. Other nonprofits start out by doing advocacy and later add grassroots programs to supercharge their strategy. |
| 2. Make Markets Work: High-impact nonprofits have learned that tapping into the power of self-interest and the laws of economics is far more effective than appealing to pure altruism. They change business practices, form corporate collaborations, and develop earned-income ventures to achieve social change on a grander scale. |
| 3. Inspire Evangelists: High-impact nonprofits build strong communities of supporters who help them achieve their larger goals. They value volunteers, donors, and advisers not only for their time, money, and guidance, but also for their evangelism. To inspire supporters’ commitment, these nonprofits create emotional experiences that help connect supporters to the group’s mission and core values. These experiences convert outsiders to evangelists, who in turn recruit others in viral marketing at its finest. |
| 4. Nurture Nonprofit Networks: Although most nonprofits pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other groups as competition for scarce resources. But high-impact organizations help their peers succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their fields. |
| 5. Master the Art of Adaptation: High-impact nonprofits are exceptionally adaptive, modifying their tactics as needed to increase their success. They have responded to changing circumstances with one innovation after another. Along the way, they’ve made mistakes and have even produced some flops. But unlike many nonprofits, they have also mastered the ability to listen, learn, and modify their approach on the basis of external cues. Adaptability has allowed them to sustain their impact. |
| 6. Share Leadership: The leaders of these 12 organizations all exhibit charisma, but they don’t have oversized egos. They know that they must share power in order to be stronger forces for good. They distribute leadership within their organizations and throughout their external nonprofit networks, empowering others to lead. Leaders of high-impact nonprofits cultivate a strong second-in-command, build enduring executive teams with long tenure, and develop large and powerful boards. |
The 12 High-Impact Nonprofits
America’s Second Harvest, Chicago, IL
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Washington DC
City Year, Boston MA
Environmental Defense, New York NY
The Exploratorium, San Franciso CA
Habitat for Humanity International, Americus, GA
The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC
National Council of La Raza, Washington, DC
Self-Help, Durham NC
Share Our Strength, Washington, DC
Teach for America, New York, NY
YouthBuild USA, Boston MA
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Washington DC
City Year, Boston MA
Environmental Defense, New York NY
The Exploratorium, San Franciso CA
Habitat for Humanity International, Americus, GA
The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC
National Council of La Raza, Washington, DC
Self-Help, Durham NC
Share Our Strength, Washington, DC
Teach for America, New York, NY
YouthBuild USA, Boston MA
NEN Roundtable Panelists
Shari J. Landry, Vice President of Development, Crotched Mountain Foundation, Greenfield, NH Carole Shomo, Executive Director, Youth Continuum, New Haven, CT
Catherine Simonson, Director, Child, Youth and Family Services, HowardCenter, Burlington, VT
Denise Maguire, Executive Director, Cambridge Family & Children's Service, Cambridge, MA
NEN: The Stanford Social Innovation Review article defines “high-impact organizations” as
those that make real social change — that change the world around them. How does that way of
looking at organizational impact resonate with you?
Denise Maguire: For me, where I go first is to individual change and impact, so their definition is powerful on a macro level, but I tend to personally get focused and motivated by changes on a much smaller scale.
Shari Landry: I very much appreciate the need for advocacy and for non-profits to promote social change, but at the same time, when I look at the organizations involved in the report, it doesn’t appear to me that any of them have daily responsibility for people’s lives (e.g. children or people with disabilities). So for me, I have to look at it through a different lens.
- Catherine Simonson -
Catherine Simonson: On the one hand, I feel like both advocacy and service are so much a part of the work that I do, there’s a blend there. The part I struggle with is the risk of focusing so much on macro change at the risk of minimizing the important work that happens family by family. A trend that I’ve seen is looking for the flashy change — what gets the attention is the stories that are easy to tell. For instance, we had a great success recently with a truancy intervention program. I don’t want to minimize the importance of that, but compared, for instance, to working with families with chronic substance abuse, it’s a simpler thing. It’s much harder to portray this family work, but it’s just as important to get funding for it. Sometimes we can’t even tell the whole story because of confidentiality, but we’ve still got to do advocacy and education for both funders and the public, so they understand its importance.
NEN: Some agencies in our field are mavericks; they want to be noisy and make fundamental change. But it sounds like that’s not what you’re all necessarily about.
Catherine Simonson: One of the barriers is that to get better at what we do, we have to focus on what we’re doing in the agency, and not only on what our role is in making the community better. We have to look at what we’ve accomplished, set performance goals for the next year, set standards for the agency. But that does reinforce a more insular way of looking at things.
"One of the barriers is that to get better at what we do, we have to focus on what we’re doing in the
agency, and not only on what our role is in making the community better. We have to look at what we’ve
accomplished, set performance goals for the next year, set standards for the agency. But that does reinforce a more insular way of looking at things."
- Catherine Simonson -
Shari Landry: In my previous job, the organization had a strong
advocacy initiative. It really felt like those efforts were making changes for the long term, and I was
proud of that. But when I first started, it scared me, because we took sometimes positions that were in
conflict with our major funder. The agency had been at it long enough to do it very skillfully, but I
can see where organizations may find it too intimidating or threatening to take strong, possibly controversial, advocacy positions.
- Catherine Simonson -
Carole Shomo: We struggle every day for a dollar, and we don’t have a good fund development arm here, so it’s kind of scary to take on the world and to voice anything that isn’t the status quo. We certainly do that, but we know that’s not where we’re going at this point — to be a maverick or do things that are unfunded. We did that three years ago; we opened up an education center — we had no funding for it, it was deficit-funded. But we did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. And everyday, we try to fund it.
NEN: In many ways, your agencies are traditional, but this report suggests that shedding some of the traditional techniques of management is a good thing.
Carole Shomo: That part of the report was extremely relevant — the idea that managing an organization isn’t always a cookbook recipe kind of thing. For me, it is always this constant finding and grappling with your environmental niche and responding to challenges that the environment presents to you as well as the internal challenges you have, and really being able to negotiate and navigate that. Any minute the world can change, and even though you may have a strong strategic plan or whatever, you’re constantly turning on a dime and adjusting.
NEN: So the fact that high-impact organizations don’t necessarily invest a lot of time in by-the-book planning makes sense to you.
Carole Shomo: In our organization we’ve really gone away from a structured, strategic planning process. Now we're planning more integratively with the board on a monthly basis. It’s not about writing it all down formally, but understanding again what the context is that you’re operating in at the moment. And I can’t stress enough that it is in the moment. The world changes instantly. Our plan continually morphs itself because of things we see — things in the everyday world that force us to change. We talk now about a continual planning process that is a daily activity.
Shari Landry: I agree that the perfectly crafted mission statement is not all that critical, but at the same time it remains very important that staff and board are on the same page. That’s hard to do if you have a large organization, and if you have people in leadership roles that are particularly entrepreneurial. The mission statement is also a valuable way to inform the public about your work.
NEN: What other features of the report’s high-impact organizations had you nodding in agreement?
- Shari Landry -
Shari Landry: The external involvement with networks — it’s important for a number of reasons. It builds momentum for external change when CEOs and senior staff are involved and visible in the community.
Denise Maguire: When the article talks about shared leadership and adaptation, the thing that resonates with me is that these strengths are relationship-based; it hits on what I think are the key values of our industry that aren’t present in other industries. We acknowledge competition but aren’t competitive; we’re collegial. Nonprofits are generous with each other in terms of advice and support and help, and it’s one of the things that make us more effective.
NEN: Are these particularly female qualities?
Shari Landry: For me, I think that part of it goes to the idea of the inspired evangelist. You have to have evangelists inside the organization first, and you get that by making a commitment to your staff, having good communication and empowering them. My observations have been that women leaders tend to be better at this and that they often do a better job of staying connected to their staff and having a finger on the emotional pulse of the organization.
"The concept of evangelism and creating meaningful experiences for your supporters
in order to get people to be your champions — we could really do better with that. Our board time could be better used to engage people
on a more personal level than we do now. "
- Shari Landry -
Carole Shomo: Having been in a women’s organization for many years,
and having had the opportunity of working with a lot of women leaders, I’m mixed about it. I think it really
is not necessarily gender-based. I do think overall that women tend to be more participatory, nurturing,
etcetera, but I don’t think it’s a universal rule. It depends on the individual. All women have different
things that they’re passionate about, that they’re willing to advocate for.
- Shari Landry -
Catherine Simonson: The report talks about high-impact agencies where the leaders don’t have to have everything all set internally to go out and do community networking. I don’t know how much is my personality and how much is gender, but I need to feel like my own house is in order — that’s important. When I interface with male leaders, it doesn’t always seem that they feel the same way.
Carole Shomo: One of the most important management skills anyone can have, male or female, is individual self-knowledge, knowing where you are, what your buttons are, what perspective you have, and allowing for others to have different perspectives and feeling okay with that.
NEN: Another new report says that women control over 50% of the wealth in this country. So speaking of women – are you targeting them in your fundraising?
Carole Shomo: I don’t think we’re taking advantage of that — we’re not even on that wavelength. Our whole fundraising and fund development arm here is sorely lagging behind anything that would be the minimum in most organizations.
Catherine Simonson: We’re not there, either.
Denise Maguire: When I think about that, the corporate alliances and people who have been very helpful to us, it’s been men. On the other hand, my direct staff are all women. We have a big specialized foster care program, and we rely on these strong women in the community to do that work. Our whole industry relies on women. I don’t have many single men applying to be foster parents. I have single women applying.
NEN: What are the strengths of your organizations not necessarily found in this report?
- Denise Maguire -
Carole Shomo: One is that we maintain a very strong interconnection with direct-care people in our organization. Any senior manager literally takes out the garbage along with everybody else. We know our kids – all of them. And we support our direct-care staff with training and supervision and coaching so that we’ve really ingrained the mission and passion for the work into them as much as possible. They’re the most valuable asset of any organization, and they have to be cared for in any way you can do it.
NEN: Bottom line: What do you take away from this report, in terms of making practical changes in your organizations?
Shari Landry: The concept of evangelism and creating meaningful experiences for your supporters in order to get people to be your champions — we could really do better with that. Our board time could be better used to engage people on a more personal level than we do now.
"We tend to damn
the people who don’t fund us anymore, and have a lot of criticism for anybody who wants us to change. But
instead of focusing on our resistance to change, we should be talking about adaptation. High-impact agencies know how to adapt, and everybody
on staff wants our agency to flourish. "
- Denise Maguire -
Carole Shomo: The priority for me too is the whole ‘inspiring the evangelist’ idea — those
words hit home because we have an excellent board, but I don’t think they’re evangelists. We need to groom that in them more and help them be impassioned about the work.
- Denise Maguire -
Denise Maguire: For me, it’s around the cycle of adaption. The article identifies the cycle and its four components. We’re a rather traditional agency and my staff have a lot of trouble with change. They want to hold on to tradition. We hear a lot of, ‘We decided years ago not to do it that way,’ and ‘Things have never been the same since so-and-so left.’ We tend to damn the people who don’t fund us anymore, and have a lot of criticism for anybody who wants us to change. We spend a lot of energy on that. But instead of focusing on our resistance to change, we should be talking about adaptation. High-impact agencies know how to adapt, and everybody on staff wants our agency to flourish.
NEN: You’re all veterans in this field. As we end this conversation, what words of wisdom do you have for younger female leaders
coming up through the ranks — the women who will one day have your jobs?
Denise Maguire: The thought I have is, 'Congratulations. You’re coming up in a field where as women you can have tremendous impact.' There are other fields where women are still struggling to be heard. Ours is an industry where women can have a strong voice, and that’s just a fact.
"Managing an organization isn’t always a cookbook recipe kind of thing. For me, it is
always this constant finding and grappling with your environmental niche and responding to challenges
that the environment presents to you as well as the internal challenges you have, and really being
able to negotiate and navigate that. "
- Carole Shomo -
Catherine Simonson: I’ve come away being reminded what an honor it is to be a leader in
an organization that is primarily composed of women who have done this work historically — and that it’s important for the women working
directly with children and families that they have a leader who’s also a woman.
- Carole Shomo -
Shari Landry: I find that there is still a strong men’s network in the field, and believe that we need to acknowledge it and help women leaders develop ways to work, successfully, with that reality.