Tag

strategy

Streamling Is Simple. Start Small.

There are many reasons why philanthropy should streamline – excessively long strategic planning processes, grant proposals that take 8 months to be funded, board meeting dockets that measure 3 inches high – and the task can seem daunting. However, there is a way to quickly streamline…by starting small. Let me give you an example:

I recently stayed at the Marriot Marquis in Washington, DC and ordered room service. You know the routine: Order food, wait, hotel staff brings it in your room, they hand you a bill, you sign it while they stand around, and they leave. Not anymore. The Marriott has eliminated futzing with the bill! Instead they deliver you the food, and promptly walk out the door. No more awkward moments for hotel guests wishing they had worn better pajamas. No more awkward moments for hotel staff trying to make small talk while wondering how someone who can afford a 4-star hotel can’t afford better pajamas.

I don’t know why the Marriott has switched to this approach. Maybe they did time studies and discovered that by eliminating those extra few minutes waiting for guests to sign the bill they saved 346,203 hours of employee time worldwide. Maybe they conducted focus groups with customers on ways to improve room service. Whatever the reason, I was glad they did it and the woman delivering me pizza seemed relieved too!

The point is that they streamlined the room service function by starting small. They took one aspect of it that everyone assumed was sacrosanct – signing the check – and eliminated it.

What might happen if you did the same thing?

What is one activity in your operation that you never question?

Weekly staff meetings?
Full day board retreats?
Staff writing 2 sentence summaries of proposals for board dockets?
More background information in board dockets than board members actually want to review?
Complex grant applications?
Cumbersome internal forms or reports?
Requiring three consultants to submit proposals each time you want to hire one?

Now, think about what you could do to eliminate them, or cut them in half. Instead of weekly staff meetings hold them bi-weekly. Shorten them by eliminating round robin “report outs” and instead focus on results. Ask grantees to incorporate those two-sentence descriptions as part of their proposals. Review documenting and reporting practices to eliminate needless steps.

Sometimes, just one small change can kick-start an entire wave of streamlining activities that can save your staff, board, partners and grantees hours of time and headaches. Need help? I’m happy to get you started with my new 6 Hour Streamline service to create immediate solutions to help you streamline, speed up, and improve your grantmaking and operations.

Let’s get started!

February 21, 2017 2,621 comments

Industry Strategy

The Art of Streamlining

written by Kris Putnam-Walkerly

Much has been written about efforts to “streamline” foundation application processes – reducing the number of hoops applicants must jump through, right-sizing applications to the grant amounts, and asking questions in such a way that the answers are truly useful for funder decision making. But extraordinary grantmakers move beyond streamlining applications and grant reports to reviewing every aspect of their internal operations to identify opportunities to streamline. They audit their operations to find unnecessary blockages, duplication, wasted efforts, and barriers to impact.

Why? Consider what the following examples of inefficiency might do reduce productivity or effectiveness:

A foundation assigns six different staff members to review and edit a simple four-page case study.
A funder requires staff to issue RFPs every time they want to hire a consultant, regardless of whether they have already worked with a fantastic consultant who could start immediately.
Another funder insists that at least three consultants must submit proposals in order for staff to hire one. If only one or two outstanding consultants apply, they cannot be hired.
A funder requires that every RFP for grants be approved by five separate departments within the foundation before it can be issued.

In each of these examples, foundation leaders failed to apply basic common sense and examine their internal processes to identify blockages, barriers, and waste. While these might seem like minor examples, the collective impact of such inefficiency across many departments and operations of a foundation results in a tremendous amount of wasted staff time, wasted foundation dollars, and unnecessary delay.

Grantmakers who have mastered the art of streamlining regularly review their internal processes to identify blockages and inefficiencies. They make strategic internal investments to improve. They also hire great talent and trust them to do the job well.

Here are two examples of extraordinary grantmakers who have streamlined their operations:

In an effort to become more efficient, Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF) invested resources to track their internal grantmaking processes. As I wrote in the online journal GMNsight last year, BSCF found fairly substantial inefficiencies and redundancies, made a plan to address them, and are now significantly more efficient and effective – with both time and dollars – than they were before. By making an extra effort to explore their own inner workings, they now can accomplish their internal work with less effort and spend more time thinking, networking, and immersing themselves in the fields they serve.
When the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation needed to conduct 20 site visits across the country with a team of six staff, consultants, and advisory board members – within one month’s time – it quickly calculated the cost in time and travel expenses and realized it would be a burden on the team. It chose instead to streamline the site visit process and conduct them virtually. While not as ideal as in-person interaction, the virtual site visits were enormously helpful for informing funding decisions, and they likely saved the foundation tens of thousands of dollars.

Grantmaking can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be needlessly complex – especially if that complexity erodes efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes it’s easy to mistake complexity for sophistication, but don’t fall prey to that mistake. When issues of complexity arise, remember that in grantmaking, as in almost any other undertaking, the simplest route almost always is the best.

December 23, 2016 2,504 comments

Industry

A Culture of Disrespect in Philanthropy

written by Kris Putnam-Walkerly

There is a lot of talk in philanthropy about organizational culture in foundations. I don’t know about you, but I have noticed a culture of disrespect when it comes to the way foundations deal with grantees, consultant partners, and even themselves. Luckily – in my experience – this is the exception not the norm. Still, it’s troubling.

Here are three examples:

A foundation colleague told me his foundation has a “culture of double booking meetings” including among their own staff. He said, for example, you might schedule an hour-long meeting with a colleague to discuss an important matter, and when the colleague shows up you learn you only have 10 minutes because she booked another meeting at the same time. This is apparently so ubiquitous, that my colleague is concerned about scheduling senior level leaders at his foundation to attend a meeting with senior leaders of another foundation that is of strategic importance to the foundation, because his is worried that his colleagues will double book themselves and not show up!

A board member at a family foundation intentionally wanted to keep her grant application long and cumbersome, and refused to purchase an online application system, because she felt nonprofits should have to work for their money. Never mind the fact that her own staff would also have to shoulder a needlessly cumbersome process – assuming that nonprofits aren’t already working their tails off is ignorant at best, and downright disrespectful at worst.

The CEO of one of the largest foundation in a state wanted to hire a consultant I know, but he wanted to unilaterally change the consultant’s payment terms, because the foundation was concerned about its “cash flow needs.” This CEO then was shocked when the consultant insisted on a signed contract and a partial payment in advance before starting the project and buying a plane ticket for travel. Let’s think for a moment: If someone you were working with indicated that there may be problems with cash flow, wouldn’t you want to secure some portion of payment up front? And who would you expect to have greater cash flow needs, a very large foundation or a solo practitioner consultant?

I am positive that none of the foundation staff or trustees in these anecdotes intended any disrespect. I’m also pretty sure that it never crossed their minds that they were being disrespectful to people who could have been strong allies. So how does a grantmaker avoid behaving disrespectfully? Here are three things to try:

Flip the tables. Because so many people want to please grantmakers, they often don’t question them. Therefore, as you ask things of others, be sure to put yourselves in their shoes. Consider the burden you’re asking them to lift and make sure it’s not disproportionate to your own.
Listen carefully. In any of the cases above, it would take courage for the disrespected party to speak up about what they perceive as shabby treatment. Standing up for yourself to your boss, or your funder, or your client takes some guts. So if someone expresses a concern to you about their situation, be sure to listen carefully and honor what they’re saying. Brushing them off as whining may mean you lose a valuable resource or asset.
Do no harm. There are SO many ways in which foundations think they’re doing good, when actually they’re causing problems. I call this delusional altruism. Next time you’re about to enact a policy, or create a process, or anything else that you think will provide a benefit, run it up the flagpole with those who will be expected to comply to make sure you’re not doing more harm than good.

As I mentioned above, the culture of disrespect is currently the exception, not the rule. But just like any other bad habit, if left unchecked it can quickly become the norm. Let’s not let that happen. Let’s commit to working respectfully, always.

December 19, 2016 2,267 comments

Strategy

Learning How to Learn

written by Kris Putnam-Walkerly

Most philanthropies seek to be strategic and have an impact. Yet few build their own internal capacity to be strategic grantmakers. In particular, most funders forget to intentionally learn from their initial piloting and testing of strategies so that they can make early modifications and course corrections.

Learning isn’t hard to do, but it must be intentional, documented, discussed within your team, and it must lead to decision making. It can’t simply exist inside a program officer’s head. One of our clients, the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, asks themselves, “What will make or break this grant?” when deciding whether to recommend a significant grant to their board. They are clear on the risks involved and what needs to happen to make the grant successful. The answer is documented in the staff summary of the grant. Six to nine months later, like clockwork, they revisit the grant during program team meetings to assess progress on that risk and identify ways they can help ensure success. That is intentional learning.

Chances are, you already have many kinds of information that can inform your learning: grantee reports; grantee convenings; evaluations conducted by grantees; dashboards; your understanding of changing conditions (staff turnover, local or federal policy changes, the economy, etc.); and the observations, knowledge, and instinct of your staff and consultants. You could also seek new insights at minimal cost: conduct an online survey, convene all your stakeholders, or solicit outside perspectives.

As you review information and have conversations, use “learning questions” to help guide you. For example:

What are the top three things we have learned about our strategy thus far?
If we could do it all over again, what would we do differently?
What has surprised us? What are we seeing that is different than what we originally expected?
What progress are we making on our strategy overall?
What progress have we made on each of our short-term and long-term outcomes?
What are some of the early accomplishments/wins?
What has been the most challenging?
Are there areas where we have not yet made much progress? Why?
What are the current conditions now compared to when the foundation launched this strategy, and how has/will that impact the work (e.g., policies, systems, other funding streams, staff changes, etc.)?
Have we made modifications or improvements to any aspect of our strategy, approach, or funding since this strategy was created (or since we started working at the foundation)? Has that helped?
At this time, do we anticipate making any modifications or improvements? If so, what are they? By when will we make that decision?
What opportunities do we see with this strategy going forward?
If we were board members, what would we want know about what has been learned/accomplished?

The Saint Luke’s Foundation used intentional learning to update their board and inform strategic planning. The staff asked themselves the questions above, summarized their key insights, discussed them within their team, and shared them with their board, all within a few months’ time. The board was thrilled – it provided them with timely information they needed to make decisions about strategy and direction.

Learning takes an investment of time – but it’s time well spent. Intentional learning also can feel as if you’re intentionally hunting for failures, so it’s important to keep an eye out for things done well in addition to areas for improvement. In either case, you’ll find opportunities that you can embrace in real time as your work progresses, rather than waiting for a post-mortem evaluation after everything is ended and it’s too late to increase your impact.

October 10, 2016 2,177 comments

Strategy

Five ways to avoid delusional altruism

written by Kris Putnam-Walkerly

Good businesses pride themselves on the good they do for others, both in terms of their products and services and in the way they give back to their communities. However, in my 16 years of experience advising corporate, institutional and individual philanthropists, I’ve found that many suffer from delusional altruism.

Delusional altruism is when you are genuinely trying to help people — but paying absolutely no attention to the operational inefficiency and waste that drains those you’re trying to help or your own company or corporate foundation of the human and financial capital necessary to accomplish these goals. Let me give you two common examples of delusional altruism in action:

A foundation gives itself five weeks to approve a Request for Proposals (RFP) that it has already written, but gives grantseekers only three weeks to apply. Five different departments within a large national foundation each had a week to modify — or simply sign off on — an RFP.
By contrast, each applicant had to decide whether to apply, decide whether to do so jointly with other invited applicants, develop the proposal concept (possibly in collaboration), write the proposal and get written commitments of matching funding – all within three weeks.

A corporate foundation pays a program officer $60 per hour to perform tasks that an administrative assistant could handle for $20 per hour. Countless organizations pride themselves on their low overhead and administrative costs. They insist that one program assistant support two to four senior leaders who each are responsible for allocating millions of dollars in funding annually.
What this really means is that program executives spend their time scheduling meetings, proofreading documents, collating binders, updating PPT decks, taking notes and filling out travel reimbursement forms. This is time not spent developing new relationships, identifying ways to leverage funding, sourcing new ideas, mitigating risk, thinking and planning.

If you suspect that delusional altruism is undermining your philanthropic effectiveness, here are five actions you can consider to course correct:

Examine your grantmaking processes. Spend some time examining all the people, paper, committees, handoffs, sign-offs, write-ups, etc., that are involved. (I once had a client who discovered more than 200 steps in their internal grants approval process).
Ask your staff for ideas. Allow these to be big ideas as well as small solutions, submitted anonymously if they prefer. Prioritize a few ideas, act on them, then discuss with staff what impact the changes had.
Talk to grantees. Ask them to identify times when they felt that your company wasn’t being realistic, or when the process seemed unfair. Ask them to help you identify solutions and give them the opportunity to do so anonymously via surveys or interviews conducted by a third-party consultant.
Do the math. Invest a little time quantifying the work your staff and managers do that could be off-loaded to a new support staffer. Then, quantify the value of the work your program staff could be doing once that administrative burden has shifted. Where is the greatest value?
Increase autonomy, transparency and accountability for team members. Empower them to make more decisions without waiting for multiple levels of approval and consider creating a culture in which staff ask for support instead of permission when making decisions.

I guarantee that if you can suspend your belief in your own pure altruism and examine ways you might be deluding yourself, you will be delighted with the dramatic improvements your corporate philanthropy can make on the issues and communities you so clearly care about.

September 26, 2016 6,013 comments

Strategy

Speaking with One Voice: 5 Tips for Joint Public Statements

written by Kris Putnam-Walkerly

Once upon a time, it was unheard of for a foundation to engage in any kind of discourse involving public policy. Now, it’s becoming more and more commonplace, as foundations realize that in order to truly create positive change and address the various root causes of the issues they fund, policy must come into the picture.

Several of our clients have engaged in policy successfully in a variety of ways. Some work well in advance of legislative activity, bringing issues to light and convening experts to brainstorm potential policy solutions. Others work to support nonprofit organizations in their own advocacy efforts. Still others work after policies are enacted to help support their implementation.

Sometimes, foundations feel the need to speak out boldly and directly (within the limits of law) about existing policies that are detrimental to the communities they serve or to society as a whole. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen statements from the Kellogg Foundation and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation in response to HB2 in North Carolina, which has made national headlines for its discriminatory stance against transgendered people.

Speaking out about an existing law can be intimidating, and foundations may feel more comfortable by joining forces and sharing a voice. This provides cover, but it also means juggling multiple foundation missions, a range of board comfort levels with policy statements, as well as local or regional foundation relationships and politics. In other words, releasing a joint policy statement can be a tricky task.

Here are five key points to help simplify and smooth the process:

1) Agree on the frame of your message before you draft it. When the Reynolds foundations mentioned above released a joint statement in response to HB2, they agreed up front to frame the message in terms of how discrimination of any kind undermines their impact.

2) Know everyone’s “trigger words.” Some foundations will be more cautious than others, so you’ll need to err on the conservative side in crafting a message. Even words like “legislation” in a public statement may give some signers pause, and you’ll need to respect that to keep everyone on board.

3) Be clear up front about when and where your joint statement is to be released. While one media market or event may seem like the obvious choice to deliver the message to some foundations, others may have an entirely different agenda in mind. Agreeing ahead of time when and where you’ll release your joint statement helps keep your timeline moving and your text on point.

4) Agree on one attorney to vet the message for the group. This could be in-house counsel for the most conservative among you, or a respected foundation attorney from a firm that everyone trusts. Having one legal opinion saves time (and money) and can prevent your message from being overwhelmed by legalese.

5) Build in time for trustee approvals. Some foundations have a small group of trustees who are authorized to approve public statements and can do so rapidly. (In my opinion, this is a best practice that more foundations should adopt.) Others, depending on size, culture or circumstance, will need more time to send your draft statement through the vetting process. Give them a deadline, but be willing to be flexible. You may not want to drop a key name from your joint signers list just because they need two more days to approve the statement.

Creating a joint policy statement is rarely as simple as writing a draft and getting it signed and published. Be prepared for a constantly moving, dynamic process in which many different external and internal forces come into play as you drive for the final goal of releasing something meaningful and (hopefully) effective.

July 11, 2016 3,207 comments

Industry Strategy

Are You Limiting Losses or Capturing Gains?

written by Kris Putnam-Walkerly

When you’re planning a grantmaking strategy, a list of hurdles to effectiveness is bound to come into play. Time and again I’ve heard them: The nonprofits in our area need more capacity to pull this off. There are no partners out there for this work. Public policy is a roadblock. We don’t have enough funds to really make change happen, so we should do the prudent thing and limit our focus. We need to be realistic about the return on investment we’re likely to see from our grants to keep our trustees happy.

There is something to be said for going into a grantmaking strategy with eyes wide open about the possibilities for failure, and for setting goals that seem reasonable. But grantmakers often hamstring themselves by thinking about their strategies in terms of limiting losses rather than capturing gains.

Here’s an example of the difference between limiting losses and capturing gains from a different industry. In his book, Million Dollar Referrals, business guru Alan Weiss writes about the auto industry: “Before the entire automobile world changed, GM would tell its designers that they had to create a Buick that would sell for $18,000 and provide the company with a 20% margin. Mercedes would tell its designers to build the safest, best performing car they could; once it had the car, it would decide then what to charge for it.”

In this example, GM limited its thinking – and ultimately its potential profit and brand identity – by using the lowest bar it would accept to define its work (the car must cost no more than $18,000, and we must make no less than a 20% margin). Mercedes, on the other hand, opened itself and its employees up to a much higher standard with much greater potential return. It allowed – even encouraged – its designers to strive for their most creative and effective solutions, knowing that it if put the best product out in the marketplace, the return on investment would follow.

Personally, I think of that instant when you open yourself to the possible as a “Mercedes moment.”

Granted, most foundations are not serving communities where everyone drives a Mercedes, but my point is about not creating processes and assumptions that limit a grantmaker’s thinking. It’s natural to want to feel a sense of security that your grants will deliver an acceptable return, however you define that. But funders frequently create a host of self-limiting processes and put too many parameters on their work too quickly, thereby prohibiting their ability (and that of their grantees) to ever have a Mercedes moment. They approach grantmaking from a poverty mentality rather than one of abundance, and stifle creativity, restrict new ideas, and erode the potential value of their work in the process.

These self-limiting processes can be internal, such as insisting on a set of predefined characteristics or work plans for potential consultants or grantees rather than asking for their best ideas, or external, such as creating a two-year window for a grantmaking program at the outset, regardless of how much it might accomplish in that amount of time.

What happens when a foundation embraces its Mercedes moment and thinks in terms of capturing gains rather than limiting losses? One of our clients, the Cleveland Foundation, is a great example. This Foundation made investments in children ages zero-five for several years, but as the children it served began to age out of early childhood, the Foundation decided to grow with them, expanding support in a variety of ways. To do this, the Foundation had to embrace a big-picture notion of creating successful adults, and had to be creative in tapping new partnerships and resources outside of its usual suspects. It opened itself to trying a number of wide-ranging approaches, from youth leadership to youth employment, to support that big picture.

The Foundation was willing to invest significant resources to get it right (e.g., retaining consultants and national experts, commissioning research from top universities, taking teams of people on site visits to other states, etc) and be open to a 20-year horizon to achieve long-term results. Although it’s still early, the preliminary accomplishments are promising. Thus far this effort has provided more than 33,000 opportunities through out-of-school time activities, summer and year-round jobs for more than 11,500 youth and young adults, and coordinated youth engagement, leadership opportunities and college visits for 1,200 youth.

The Cleveland Foundation could have moved incrementally by trying to fund only the next step forward, or limited its thinking with a set of assumptions about which programs would work best, but it didn’t do that. Instead, it allowed staff and community to be creative, think bigger and farther, and build an approach that was more compelling and effective for everyone.

When we as grantmakers try to focus too tightly, too early in the process (think inexpensive car with minimum ROI) in order to limit our potential losses, we also limit our ability to focus on what might be most important for those we mean to serve (safety ratings, comfort, cup holders). Instead of setting limits, think about what might be possible without them. Allowing yourself that freedom takes practice, belief in the possible, and courage – but I guarantee you that once you have your first “Mercedes moment,” it will be worth it.

June 27, 2016 2,460 comments

Strategy

Boardroom Battles: 5 Ways to Move Beyond Conflict

written by Kris Putnam-Walkerly

Over the last 15 years, I’ve consulted with a few clients who, in the midst of our strategic planning sessions or evaluation efforts, must deal with the added stress of handling conflict within their boards. At best, these conflicts are time- and energy-consuming hassles. At worst, they can derail an entire planning or implementation process or bring a foundation’s momentum to a screeching halt.

I’m happy to report that extreme conflict is the exception rather than the rule. Most board members are rational, committed professionals. However, even among the most collegial boards there’s always the possibility of conflict, and savvy foundation leaders I know have used the following approaches to diffuse disagreement smoothly and quickly.

Remain impartial. Never take sides. Not even in private. As a senior staff person, your role is to serve all of the board, not just a contingent. Although you may heartily agree with one board member over another, you are more likely to lead the full board to agreement if you treat all perspectives with respect and courtesy.

Stick to the facts. Good data can help end disagreements. Many times board members may disagree because of differing perspectives or assumptions. Using data to clarify an issue helps disprove assumptions. It also can remove the emotion from arguments and provide an objective, impassive pathway to agreement in which no board member is left with hurt feelings.

Frame the debate in terms of the mission. While board members bring many perspectives and life experiences to the table, their common thread is their service to your foundation’s mission. Asking questions and generating conversations about challenges through a mission-focused lens can help the full board achieve greater clarity and alignment in their thinking.

Focus on the professional, not the personal. Board members are only human, and as such are subject to a range of personality conflicts, miscommunications, perceived slights and just plain not getting along. By keeping conversations focused on the professional questions at hand, you can send a clear message that disagreements of a personal nature have no place at the board table. (And yes, this can be much harder to achieve within family foundation boards, where personal relationships are the underlying bedrock.)

Find a confidential, outside sounding board to help maintain your objectivity – and possibly your sanity. Having someone else to talk to who is removed from the conflict can help you maintain your own objectivity. This could be a friend outside the foundation world, or a fellow CEO within it. Some regional associations, like the Southeastern Council of Foundations, offer CEO forums that create a “safe space” for discussions about a host of things – including dealing with board challenges.

Working with a board is an ongoing adventure that can lead to great things. But when the path gets rocky, the tips above can help you smooth the way and get back to doing the work you all believe in.

June 13, 2016 2,182 comments

Industry Strategy

TED Talk – Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

written by Justin

Many publications that compare charities will rank organizations by efficiency, which in large part is attributed to the way in which revenues are allocated through their organization. This unfortunately means that when money is reinvested in execution and distribution which drives additional money for social programs, that it could create a negative stigma for an organization that is doing a lot of good.

Dan Pallotta takes this issue head-on during a TED Talk where he pulls from personal experiences. Watch the video below.

If you’re interested in watching more videos from the TED series you can view their YouTube channel, and for more info/media from Dan Pallota, visit his website: www.danpallotta.com

November 16, 2015 3,956 comments