Take your organization to the next level: prevent silos through integration
Delegation is necessary, but…
Nonprofit organizations, like any group working together for a common purpose, carve out certain activities in order to delegate them. For example, the board works on strategic planning, the development staff works on grant writing, the accountant sets up and monitors the financials and so on herunterladen von ard mediathek. This makes good sense–certainly everyone can’t (and shouldn’t) be involved with everything. That’s obvious.
What isn’t always as obvious, though, is when and how these activities should be brought back together.
Connections=success
In consulting with a wide range of nonprofits, I’ve found it’s often my client’s ability to see the connections between activities such as strategic planning, board development and grant writing that really gain the client a quantum leap in his/her thinking and approaches welche serien kann man bei netflix herunterladen. So, while delineation and delegation of work activity is key to getting things done, if the results of those activities are not reconnected for the benefit of the whole, the organization suffers.
Example of siloing
For example, in many organizations, development people write grants for funding from major foundations klingelton von herunterladen. Since foundations ask crucial management questions, effective grant proposals express the nonprofit’s strategic approach to its mission and to the particular funding request. But even so, few if any board members–or in many cases, even executive directors–ever read the proposals. Nor in many cases did the grant writers have access to the organization’s strategic plan as the foundation for writing the proposals pet world kostenlos herunterladen. This disconnect between two primary activities in the organization means a weaker, less effective grant proposal and a weaker, less-informed board.
And this is just one example of how the siloing of basic activities in a nonprofit can hinder its overall success.
How do you prevent silos?
What can be done about this? The most effective leaders think through what types of reintegration make the most sense and then develop the mechanisms in their organizations through which they will occur herunterladen. For example, good budget development requires the information provided by past years’ financial statements and input from the key staff responsible for earned and contributed income. The leadership should develop policies and procedures to ensure cross-pollination between responsible board and staff members takes place in budget development as a matter of routine, rather than expecting (or assuming) it to happen as the result of the initiative of those involved snapchat kostenlos android.
In another example, fundraising and marketing campaigns should originate with the strategic plan, but too often these efforts are developed in isolation. This could be the result of the organization not having a strategic plan (or it being out-of-date) or it could be that the leadership has not made it clear these efforts must synchronize with each other herunterladen. To address this, the leadership could pass a policy that all development and marketing materials must reflect the priorities and language of the organization’s strategic plan and then create procedures whereby the board collectively reviews marketing and fundraising materials, e.g., the basic grant proposal template, on an annual basis. Not only would this ensure there is a strategic plan, the development staff has access to it, and the intersection of these efforts actually takes place, but also board members are up-to-date on what is being communicated about the organization microsoft office 2019 professional download for free.
This may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how often nonprofits struggle to delegate activities effectively and once this is accomplished, consider that the end of the matter. Or they chalk it up to a communication issue and assume the responsible individuals will take care of it. In fact, it is in the bringing of these delegated activities back together by the leadership that the real benefits are realized programm mac youtube videosen. This is because, simply, everything is connected to and impacts everything else in an organization. A culture that values and nurtures this synergy is what makes for a balanced,resilient, innovative organization–instead of a siloed, reactionary and defensive one.
Integration means going from “good to great”
The more the leadership of a nonprofit is fluent with the intersection between areas of major activity, the better able it will be to lead videos in edgeen. This agility and breadth of understanding across the organization enables an organization to go from “good to great,” to use Jim Collins’ phrase. While specialized expertise in areas like development, planning, marketing, technology and finance is critical in today’s world, it is the leadership’s ability to integrate them-to see what is greater than the sum of their parts-that gets big results.
Nonprofit-KnowHow: The Guide and The Workbook supports nonprofit leaders in reintegrating often siloed activities such as strategic planning, fundraising, board development, finance and more, for greater resilience and impact.
See also:
