Strategic Planning & Sustainability Archives - Page 2 of 4

25 Jan, 2023

Create Your Board of Directors Balance & Alignment Plan

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-01-23T22:47:22-05:00January 25th, 2023|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Board Members, Board of Directors, Staff, Sustainability|0 Comments

The decisions your board of directors makes not only influences your organization’s growth, but impacts how your staff does its job. When a board can’t function, it’s due to one or more of these issues. When these issues arise, it’s time to develop a plan for addressing them.

I’ve been increasingly interacting with board members in my consulting projects. I sit on a few boards myself. These experiences illuminated for me how difficult the nonprofit model can be, and how difficult it can be to make the key parts of a nonprofit–board, executive director, and staff–move smoothly like a wheel.

Speaking of wheels, I considered whether this blog post should focus on balance or on alignment. In fact, when I Googled “balance vs alignment”, I came across multiple articles around tires. This article explains the difference between tire balancing and tire alignment:

“It’s easy to get tire balancing and alignment confused. After all, they both sound like they would do the same thing. But in reality, they are very different services. In the simplest terms, tire balancing uses weights on your wheels to keep your vehicle from vibrating, while an alignment keeps all of your wheels pointing in the same direction for safety and performance.”

Within the context of boards of directors, individual and collective skillsets, networks, ability to fundraise and speak on behalf of your organization, and ability to choose the best leader to serve as executive director are the balance. Their personal identities and values, ability to engage with staff and other stakeholders, and ability to understand how their decision making impacts how staff are the alignment.

It can be a delicate process to develop a plan to increase balance and alignment within your board and between your board and staff, but with intention, commitment and support, it’s possible.

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4 Jan, 2023

Ask Nicole: What To Do with Ineffective Board Members?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-01-23T19:53:51-05:00January 4th, 2023|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Ask Nicole, Board Members, Board of Directors, Staff|0 Comments

*Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.*

The board of directors is a governing body for an incorporated organization, consisting of individuals that provide strategic governance and support to an organization’s leader, staff, and stakeholders.

Here in the United States, in order to maintain 501(c)3 nonprofit status, an organization needs to have a functioning board. And, unfortunately, inactive and ineffective boards are pretty common in the nonprofit world.

I’ve experienced various board dynamics, both within my consulting role and as a board member for a few nonprofits over the years. I’m fortunate to have served on boards with members dedicated to serving in this capacity and care about organizational mission. However, even with my personal experiences and my interaction with boards in my projects, I’ve noticed quirks among boards that are confusing at best but can also be detrimental to staff if not checked.

While its considered an honor to serve on a board, the decisions a board makes can positively or negatively impact how staff carry out the organization’s mission.

So, how much of this is the fault of the board, and how much rests on the shoulders of the organizations that invite them to serve? Below are 10 things I’ve noticed, and how to spot them in your board:

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24 Aug, 2022

Try This: Assess Staff & Board Buy-In

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2022-08-22T13:24:01-04:00August 24th, 2022|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Board of Directors, Staff, Stakeholders, Try This|0 Comments

Try this and let me know how it goes for you.

This post is a follow up to What’s in it for Me? Evaluating Stakeholder Engagement, where I shared, “If [the question] “What’s in it for me?” sounds self-serving, it’s because it is. In order to increase engagement, communities and the people driving the actions to produce change should easily see how their involvement leads to the change they wish to see.”

In other words, what you’re asking them to do not only has to make sense, but has to be worth it for them.

In theory, as their leader, what you should say goes, right? These days, this isn’t without a lot of push back.

In an ideal situation, you wouldn’t have to convince staff and board that what you want to happen matters. I’m sure it’s frustration when you experience the push back.

I recently finished a project where I observed that the executive director cared about that the process than staff and partners did.

Well, I could tell they understood the importance of the project and how it could support their work, but there was major hesitancy.

Let’s explore getting your staff, board (and anyone else that’s important to your project) on board.

This activity is ideal for:

Board of directors, staff, and other stakeholders expected to participate in this project

Here’s what you’ll need:

Schedule time for this activity, where you can work with minimal interruption. Make sure to schedule breaks!
Whatever setup you use to capture your process (laptop, pen and paper, whiteboard, etc.). Make sure it’s kept in a place that you can refer back to

The steps:

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17 Aug, 2022

Let’s Build a Partnership

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-03-22T19:17:12-04:00August 17th, 2022|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Capacity Building, Partnerships, Sustainability|0 Comments

Recently, the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) published data on the 2022 pass rate for the ASWB licensing exam. The analysis concluded major disparities in pass rates for Black test takers, older adults, and other marginalized groups.

The data were published as a result of years of advocacy and pressure from the National Association of Social Workers, schools of social work, other social work organizations, and individual test takers. Previously, data on pass rates were never released.

I’ve shared my experience with preparing for the licensing exam before, and while majority of test takers pass this exam on the first try, questions about the fail rates were enough to warrant looking into this. Lack of social work licensure can result is loss of job opportunities for many social workers, so it makes sense to explore why these disparities continue to exist.

This is an example of bringing together a group of individuals who care about an issue, and work together to address it. Test takers, professors, licensing exam prep experts, exam test question writers, and more were all needed for this process.

Part of my role as a facilitator includes facilitating partnership meetings.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies a partnership as “organizations that share a common focus and combine resources to implement joint activities, avoid[ing] duplication of effort, ensuring synergy of resources, and enhanc[ing] overall leadership.” From my viewpoint, this also includes individuals who may not be part of an organization but hold a significant amount of knowledge, power, and connections.

Partnerships may develop in response to an emerging issue (such as disparities in test taking scores) and ideally, you’re bringing together individuals that care about the impact of this emerging issue.

A tricky aspect of building a partnership includes understanding the partnership’s purpose and selecting the appropriate individuals and organizations. Every entity mentioned in the licensing example plays a pivotal role in how students prepare for this exam and how the exam is written and administered.

Another aspect of building a partnership is understanding that, while everyone cares deeply about the issue, they have their own ideas for addressing it.

So, how do we bring together various important perspectives to reach a common goal? Here are seven questions to consider for building a partnership:

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15 Jun, 2022

Try This: The SOAR Analysis

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2022-06-15T15:49:19-04:00June 15th, 2022|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Strategic Planning, Try This|0 Comments

This this activity and let me know how it goes.

You’ve probably heard of the SWOT analysis. Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s considered a traditional component of the strategic planning process.

It’s useful, for the most part.

What I mean by this is that, a glaring issue with the SWOT analysis is that the SWOT analysis has a tendency to focus on deficits within an organization, with the intent of fixing issues and problems.

This can often be draining to your stakeholders to always think of the problems.

Another issue with the SWOT analysis is that everyone has to agree that what’s considered a “weakness” or a “threat”, as much as their needs to be agreement on what’s a “strength” or a “opportunity”. This is really based on your perception.

Dismissing the SWOT analysis doesn’t mean dismissing potential barriers to your strategic success, but it does prevent us from creating experiences that’s more engaging during the strategic planning process.

Enter the SOAR analysis.

This activity is ideal for:

Board of directors, staff, and other stakeholders involved in your strategic planning process

Here’s what you’ll need:

Set aside a full day (or several) for this activity, where you can work with minimal uninterrupted (as we’re still in a pandemic, determine how this will work for an in-person setting or a virtual setting) Make sure to schedule breaks!
Whatever setup you use to capture your process (laptop, pen and paper, whiteboard, etc.) but make sure it’s kept in a place that you can refer back to

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Create Your Board of Directors Balance & Alignment Plan

Ask Nicole: What To Do with Ineffective Board Members?

Try This: Assess Staff & Board Buy-In

Let’s Build a Partnership

Try This: The SOAR Analysis

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