Dear Association Leader

The profession of page design is one many nonprofits leave to amateurs or untrained professionals. It shows in newsletters, web pages, and organization documents. Typography is about putting text and letters on a page in order to communicate effectively. It is a massive and complex subject often relegated to the tools being used like a word processor. Fred Design has a very good set of Simple rules for good typography that you can use to help evaluate your documents and consider how to make them more effective.

• Don’t use too many typefaces
• Pay attention to the hierarchy of the page
• Use no more than 4 font sizes
• Use 8 to 10 point fonts for body text
• Use legible typefaces
• Pay close attention to leading
• Use proper kerning
• Accent or emphasize a little but not too much
• No caps in body text
• Align to a baseline
• flush left, ragged right
• Use lines from 6 to 12 words long
• Keep punctuation and bullet points in the margin
• Use the fibonnaci sequence to aid design and type sizing

If the terms and ideas are foreign to you, a list like this is a good place to start your own education about typography. You have powerful tools at your disposal and you will get best effect if you understand the concepts on which they are based to use them for designs that will communicate your message.

Michael Wade describes Why the Extra Touch is So Important. That touch is that little extra bit that makes a difference. It is that little extra bit that isn’t necessary and is often neglected.

Whether the conduct was good, bad or indifferent, the common factor is that the person–who acted well or poorly–did not have to do so. We may recall the senior colleague who put in a word for us when we were up for promotion, or who took the time to explain the arcane nature of the organization. He or she didn’t have to do that. The discretionary aspect is what makes that extra effort all the more commendable.

Wade suggests the leader “add a bit of poetry to our work.” Go beyond the minimal requirements and add just that extra little bit. It can be a smile, a simple acknowledgement, or a tidbit of critical information that can make a difference. Make it a habit and that difference will enhance your organization in ways you might not be able to imagine.

Is everyone in your organization on the sales team?

Vivek Wadhwa says It’s All About Selling for Survival.

Yes, I know that “selling” conjures up negative images of used-car salesmen peddling clunkers. But the ability to persuade people to believe in you is a necessity. That’s because sales is not just about selling things for money. Selling is about life.

To sell effectively, a salesman has to believe in the product, to have credibility and be trustworthy. He has to listen to understand buyer needs and desires yet be a champion for his company and its products and services. The salesman has to have focus and understand the mission and purpose of what he sells. These attributes are valuable for everyone in an organization.

Some efforts to make everyone in the organization a salesman are well known. Directors are expected to bring in major funding. Members are expected to bring in more members. There are incentive programs for these activities. The question is whether such programs have become stale routine or are charged with enthusiasm and ongoing creativity and participation. That is where leadership comes in.

Jamie Notter’s post Big Idea: What If Only You Could Change Associations? is a good place to find links to ideas that should stimulate creative thinking about your organization. The one Notter chooses for discussion is an idea you can easily do to make significant positive change with little downside.

Elizabeth Engel’s post inspired what I’m writing here, where she suggested that every staff person be required to pick up the phone and call a member just to get to know them and what they care about. We pay lip service to being focused on members and member needs, but do we really know? As individuals? Do we do anything about it?

People join associations for association with others of like interest. The question for an organization is how rich your activities are in terms of interpersonal relationships supporting this interest. Meetings and conventions are high value but also high cost. Newsletters and websites are low value and low cost. Staff, or lead volunteers’ reaching out to the membership by telephone is a high value and low cost means for the organization to reach out and touch its members.

If you cannot find one of those ’round tuits’ for things like this then Notter has a word for you

The time may not be right for everything…but it’s ALWAYS right for something. Do something, and learn from it. And THEN think about it and write about it. But if we don’t start changing our behavior as individuals, I fear our community may become increasingly marginalized.

What you actually do is how you communicate what you value. When you do something for your organization then you make it clear how you value that organization. If you or others in your organization just can’t seem to get up the gumption to ‘do something’ for the organization and you still value its existence, then you need to find something to do for the organization that you can get the gumption to do and get after it.

Joseph Phillips at IT World has a list of Five things every project needs. Consider these ideas next time you get your team together to get a job done.

1. Ground Rules – manage the project stakeholders to minimize changes in goals and requirements; define who is in charge of what and how the project is to be controlled – in actions as well as words.

2. People – “Your job is to manage the project, not the work the project team completes … get out of the way and let the project team work … coffee breath and constant questions won’t help your team complete their work.” — that means proper people management and leadership!

3. Leaders – align, motivate, and inspire; create alliances, synergy, and involvement; focus on ‘all of us are in this together, let’s get the job done approach.’

4. Organization – organize project information for easy retrieval and use; manage schedule; create a structure where another leader or manager can step in and just find everything where it should be.

5. Fun – A team is a social construct and that is much more than just a gaggle of folks working towards a common goal. Foster appropriate relationships within the team and build on them so that members can trust each other and know what to expect of others. Don’t forget the whole human.

Every project is an adventure with a destination. Use these things a project needs to make it one that will leave team members looking towards another project after getting the current job done.

Mission statements don’t have to be dumb. In fact, they can be very valuable, if they articulate real targets.

Nancy Lublin describes How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn’t Dumb at Fast Company. The problem is that mission statements are often sentiments and not goals, they describe a state of being rather than a benchmark for achievement.

Here is my challenge: Write a mission statement with a goal that’s an action, not a sentiment; that is quantifiable, not nebulous. If you’re trying to sell a product, how and how many? If you’re trying to change lives, how and whose? Take your wonky mission statement and rip it to shreds. Then ponder your ambitions, and write and rewrite the thing until it reflects — in real, printable words and figures — the difference that you want to make.

A good mission statement should define a benchmark and a standard against which everything the organization does can be measured. One of the ways to measure the quality of the mission statement is by how well it serves to measure the productivity of the organization activities in terms of focus towards the reason the organization exists.

If your board or committee members do not know why they gather together for your organization, they are missing vital direction to focus their efforts.

The NIST Computer Security Division has released a Draft NISTIR 7621, Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals that describes the fundamental components of an effective information security program for small businesses, including many nonprofit associations.

Nonprofits deal with membership information that may include sensitive personal data as well as financial transaction data. The account books may include vendor data and transaction detail that is confidential. Information security principles apply to them as well as to for profit businesses.

The term Small Enterprise (or Small Organization) is sometimes used for this same category of business or organization. A small enterprise/organization may also be a nonprofit organization.
…
Some of the information used in your business requires special protection for confidentiality (to ensure that only those who need access to that information to do their jobs actually have access to it). Some of the information used in your business needs protection for integrity (to ensure that the information has not been tampered with or deleted by those who should not have had access to it). Some of the information used in your business needs protection for availability (to ensure that the information is available when it is needed by those who conduct the organization’s business). And, of course, some information used in your business needs protection for more than one of these categories of information security.
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Failure to properly protect such information, based on the required protections, can easily result in significant fines and penalties from the regulatory agencies involved.

Just as there is a cost involved in protecting information (for hardware, software, or management controls such as policies & procedures, etc), there is also a cost involved in not protecting information.

Small nonprofits, especially those depending upon volunteers for information related functions, may tend towards the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ school. The cost in not protecting information properly must be considered by the governance of the association. “Absolutely necessary” actions to be taken include policies that

1) protect information from damage by malicious software

2) provide proper security in network connections, including wireless access networks

3) keep operating systems and applications up to date

4) maintain proper backups of important business data and information

5) control physical access to computers and network components

6) train everyone who does anything with the information or the equipment used to store or process it in basic security principles.

teach them your expectations concerning limited personal use of telephones, printers, and any other business owned or provided resources. After this training, they should be requested to sign a statement that they understand these business policies, that they will follow your policies, and that they understand the penalties for not following your policies.

7) require individual user accounts for each person using computers to access information or data and make sure the account security is backed up with effective password and access policies.

8) limit access to data and information and also the authority to install software.

9) do not allow a single individual to both initiate and approve a transaction (financial or otherwise).

10) know and understand the potential risk and the costs of loss exposure.

It is important to understand that there is a real cost associated with not providing adequate protection to sensitive business information and that this cost is usually invisible until something bad happens. Then it becomes all too real (and all too expensive) and visible.

Information security is not something that should be left to amateurs. Just like your books can be maintained by an amateur but need professional accountant oversight backed up by written policy, so does your information security needs appropriate attention at all levels. Policy needs to be written with consultation of a skilled professional. Training is needed so that everyone knows and understands the policies and what they are to do. A periodic review, or even an audit, is necessary to make sure that security is maintained.

Don’t get caught closing the barn door after the horse has already escaped!

Frustration often yields to the ‘if you want it done, do it yourself’ point when it comes to management. Alison Green hits this in here list of 5 Ways Managers Fail at Delegating at US News. That is number 3 on her list. The other four provide suggestions about how to get others involved in getting the job done.

First is to get on the same page and make sure you delegate to someone who understands the desired goals and outcome the same way the manager does.

Second is to manage properly by keeping at an appropriate distance. The manager must monitor progress to catch problems early without hovering.

Third is to let go. This is the ‘hovering’ where the manager is so involved that the delegation of function has no substance.

Fourth is to let others do it. Just because the manager can do it, and probably do it better, is no reason not to delegate. It is the manager’s job to get work done through others. There are times the manager must bite his tongue and let others get it done their way. The focus must be on developing subordinate skills as a part of getting the job done.

The fifth item in the list is perhaps the toughest. That is to select the right person for the job. This choice includes many factors that include not only the desired functional outcome of the immediate project but also personnel and team development issues.

At its core, delegating well – and finding the appropriate level of involvement at each stage – is a microcosm of good management. It’s about figuring out what needs to be done, finding the right people to do it, clearly communicating
what you’re looking for, following up to ensure you’re getting results, and creating accountability.

Good management is not only about getting the current project done with excellence. It is also about the next job and the one after that. Successful delegation is not just in getting one job done but also in preparing the team for the next.

David Peck thinks You’re Paying People Too Much to be Telling Them What to do. You may think the ‘pay’ here limits the argument to high end employees but that only means you need to rethink what (and how) you pay volunteers in nonprofit organizations. The issue is in how close to action you see your role sets the tone as to whether you are managing or leading.

The manager is the quarterback, doing nothing but running every play with the team. But the leader is the coach, guiding the overall effort from a healthy distance. The manager’s question is “How do I get them to do what I want them to do?” But a leader needs to ask a question that capitalizes on his or her investment in people: “What do I need to change in the way I am leading to launch them into effective, independent action?”

Herding cats describes a Leadership Framework based on a list from Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordan England and asks how the items on this list can be applied to project work.

how to “make” a leader:

• Treat every person with dignity and respect – nobody is more important than
  anyone else
• Be forthright, honest and direct with every person and in every
  circumstance
• Improve effectiveness to gain efficiency
• Cherish your
  time and the time of others – it is not renewable
• Identify the critical
  problems that need solution for the organization to succeed
• Describe
  complex issues and problems simply so every person can understand
• Never
  stop learning – depth and breadth of knowledge are equally important
• Encourage constructive criticism
• Surround yourself with great people and
  delegate to them full authority and responsibility
• Make ethical standards
  more important than legal requirements
• Strive for team-based wins, not
  individual
• Emphasize capability – not organization
• Incorporate
  measures and metrics everywhere
• Concentrate on core functions and outsource
  all other

Can you connect these the ideas from these two resources?

Mark Roberts has a set of posts on his blog about How the Internet Helped My Church and My Ministry, (Section 2). His experience has much to offer nonprofit organization directors who depend upon volunteers but are pressured about their web presence.

Issues discussed include keeping the website up to date, resources, personal websites, and social media.