Monthly Archives :

April 2016

Work Avoidance (and How to Avoid It)

work avoidance

Ever been in a meeting and wonder why you’re there? Chances are, you’re there because someone doesn’t want to work.  The average meeting is an excellent way to pass the time without getting anything done, which, sadly, is exactly what some people want to accomplish. And now, the conference call has taken unproductive meetings to new heights, providing slackers with the opportunity to mute their phones and surf their social networking sites with impunity.

At today’s Results-Based Facilitation Workshop, sponsored by the Staten Island Foundation, not only did we learn proven strategies for facilitating productive meetings that move teams from talk to action, but also how to be a good meeting participant.  It all starts with defining the purpose of the meeting, being clear about the roles of the participants, and staying within the boundaries of authority with respect to your role.

First, when planning the meting agenda, think about what you want to accomplish. When the meeting is adjourned, how will things be different? Is the purpose simply to inform or update people or get the to make action commitments? Are you trying to capture input for future decision-making, or will decisions be made in the meeting to inform a way forward? Will the team gain knowledge to improve their productivity and become more unified? Having a clearly articulated, intended result is an imperative for a productive meeting.  Likewise, each activity/item on the agenda should also have an intended result.

Just a reminder, folks: we’re supposed to be discussing the pros and cons of bringing in an outside consultant and coming to a decision on whether that’s the best course.  We’ve all had a choice to weigh in on this and we need to move on to the next agenda item, so I suggest we…(insert action commitment here – it could be taking a vote or deferring to the decider, but it’s a way out of the circular debate of the options and considerations.)

That said, don’t be married to your agenda. With the meeting’s purpose and intended result in mind, be flexible.  As our facilitator told us, “results are the promise, the agenda is the possibility.”  An agenda is a means towards achieving the meeting’s intended result, so if it’s not going well it’s better to switch it up than stick with something that’s not going to get you where you want to be.

Everyone has a role in the meeting (facilitator, attendee, moderator, observer, evaluator, consultant). Knowing your role, and sticking to it, is crucial to making that 60 minutes meaningful.  For example, it is important for a facilitator to maintain neutrality.  Rather than putting forth their own ideas, or making value judgments about the ideas of others, the facilitator’s role is to source input from the group – good, bad, or indifferent.  Active listening is critical to any meeting role, as is putting personal biases and motivations aside. We’ve all sat in on meetings with the Interruptor, the Talk-a-Lotty, the Idea Bully, and the Rambler.  These folks provide us with painful examples of what happens when meeting participants step outside of their roles, exceed the boundaries of their authority, and/or put their own agenda ahead of the intended result of the meeting.

I know that you have some strong views and really good ideas on what this program should ultimately look like, but right now we’re trying to decide on the overall structure of this partnership.  It’s very likely that the structure will include a working group whose task will be to design and develop the program, and  you will certainly play a big part in that. But for now, let’s focus on establishing agreed upon roles, responsibilities, lines of communication and accountability that will make the partnership a success.

It can be difficult to stop a rogue participant from derailing a meeting (and demoralizing everyone else in the room).  Our facilitator gave us a simple but powerful reminder to share with your colleagues that can help to keep your meetings on track:

“Brevity is a leadership skill.”

For more on results-based facilitation, take a look at this super-fantastic workbook by Jolie Bain Pillsbury, Ph.D.

The Secret History of Staten Island

To most people, Staten Island is only known for a handful of things:

The Ferry

ferry

Wu-Tang Clan

wutang

The Landfill

landfill

Big Ang (Rest in Peace!)

big ang

Well I’m here to tell you, there’s plenty more to know about forgotten borough.  For example, did you know that said landfill, once the largest garbage dump in the world, is in the process of being renovated into a 2,200 acre park? (RIP, landfill!) Or that Staten Island was a staging area for the departure of British troops returning to England after the Revolutionary War? Or that on September 11, 1776, a delegation led by Benjamin Franklin row boated to Staten Island from Jersey to negotiate an end to the war with King George’s emissary? (Needless to say, they couldn’t come to an accord.)  The house where that meeting took place is still standing, and is now a museum known as The Conference House.

Staten Island also has interesting ties to the Civil War. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who led the all-Black Massachusetts 54th Infantry into battle and was subsequently immortalized by Matthew Broderick in the Oscar-winning epic “Glory,” was a Staten Islander.  Before the war started, he lived with his family right around the corner from where I live now in Livingston, a community of prominent abolitionists.

56.davis_.glory_

Just few days prior to Colonel Shaw’s heroic death on July 18, 1863 at the battle at Fort Wagner, there was mass terror back home in Staten Island and around New York City. In what came to be known as the Draft Riots, an estimated 120 people were killed during a four-day period from July 11th to 15th, when protests against draft requirements, which unfairly targeted immigrants and poor people, escalated into violence and outright attacks and lynchings of Blacks, abolitionists and Union sympathizers.    (Some death toll estimates are in the thousands).  Many Black and Abolitionist residents of Staten Island were forced to flee to New Jersey or fortify their homes to protect their community from angry mobs.  This fascinating and chilling history can be found in the archives at the Staten Island Museum.

Staten Island is also the location of the oldest, continuously inhabited free black settlement in the country. Sandy Ground, established in 1833, provided safe haven for freedmen from Maryland and other parts,who came to earn their living in the booming oyster industry.  The history of Sandy Ground was captured in the Sandy Ground Historical Society‘s quilting program, “Faces of the Underground Railroad” which provides profiles of some of Sandy Ground’s earliest settlers. The quilts are on display in a library exhibition at St. John’s University’s Staten Island Campus.

Sports? Football: Did you know that Staten Island was once home to an NFL franchise? The Staten Island Stapes, who played in (surprise!) the Stapleton section of the borough,compiled a tepid 14-22-9 record in four seasons from 1929 to 1932.  The Stapes also fielded the smallest player in NFL history, Jack “Soapy” Shapiro, a five-foot tall blocking back who played in one game for the franchise.  Baseball: Bobby Thompson, the New York Giant outfielder who hit the “Shot Heard Around the World” in 1951, rode the ferry back to his Staten Island home after his historic home run. Mary Outerbridge (for whom the Outerbridge Crossing is named) brought tennis to the U.S. by way of Staten Island, which is also home to the nation’s oldest cricket club.  This and more little-known sports history of the borough is being featured in an exhibition called “Home Games,” a collaboration between the Staten Island Museum and the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame.

I’m pretty certain that you’re aware that Staten Island is surrounded by water. But how much do you know about the Island’s rich maritime history, such as the story of Katherine Walker, one of the earliest known female lighthouse keepers? The Noble Maritime Collection, located on the campus of Snug Harbor Cultural Center (nee Sailor’s Snug Harbor),  captures her story and chronicles the fascinating evolution of the shipping industry in New York Harbor through visual art and interactive classes.  Trust me, it’s a lot more interesting than you might think.

And the same can be said for my hometown.

What the 990 is telling your funders

form990

Happy Tax Day!

The IRS 990 Form is one of those things that just has to get done because…well, because it has to. The harsh reality is that, other than enforcing the filing requirement, the IRS doesn’t have the capacity to do much with all of the information that they require you to provide. Funders, on the other hand, consistently use the 990 to get a picture of an organization’s capacity and financial health.

  • The number that funders are most inclined to hone in on is Liquid Unrestricted Net Assets, better known as LUNA, for some crazy reason (Get it? See what I did there?). Funders want to know what your reserves look like, how much cash you have on hand (if any). They care less about your overall assets, which might include a building or some other instrument that can’t be quickly converted to working capital.  What they want to know is, how long can your organization survive at its current burn rate?
  • The year-to-year comparisons on the 990 are useful to funders in identifying trends, growth or contraction. They look for seismic shifts in your revenue streams, spikes in expenses, or other indicators of a financial sea change.
  • The 990 is also used to examine the overhead question (everyone’s favorite topic, I know). How much money is the organization spending on program, versus management and fundraising?  There isn’t any set standard – private funders have their own, which can  range from 75/25 and up.  The BBB suggests that 65/35 is a healthy number. And government tends to restrict expenditures on overhead to 10%, unless you go through the exhaustive process of applying for a indirect cost rate. The main thing to consider when it comes to overhead is that you need to be aware of your organization’s rate and be able to give it context – a rationale, justification or explanation. You should also be able to explain major changes in your overhead rate over time.

So before you blast out that 990 and publish it on your website, make sure you’ve thoroughly examined it yourself – and prepare yourself with talking points to address the questions of your funders.

 

Collective Impact: Shiny New Object or Real Solution?

CI

Some people in the field are drinking the Collective Impact Kool-Aid like water in an oasis. Others are bristling at the thought of adding this big, hairy, complex additional thing to their already overfull plates. Who is right?

This post isn’t meant to define collective impact in any great detail, nor sway opinion in one direction or the other. If you want to know what it is, check out this primer by FSG, a mission-driven consulting firm that is at the forefront of the collective impact movement nationally. My purpose, in 300 words (or so), is to try to synthesize all of the information and insights I’ve gleaned from the myriad of meetings, readings and workshops on Collective Impact that I’ve taken in over the past several months (most recently, at today’s SINC: 2016 Conference). But don’t expect a firm answer to the title question. I can only express amazement at how polarizing Collective Impact has become in such a relatively short time on the block.

Funders and philanthropic pundits laud Collective Impact as The Way Things Should Be Done. They firmly believe that service providers should be working across sectors to address complex, entrenched problems. Services should be coordinated according to a common agenda. Organizations should communicate, partner and work towards a common result, informed by data and supported by a backbone organization that oversees fiscal management and data collection for the collaborative. All of these efforts should be aimed at reducing the negative statistics and/or increasing the positive ones, to achieve a population-level result.

Sounds great, right?

It does, until you ask the CEO who is in the process of completing an audit, preparing for a board meeting, and working frantically to meet a key proposal deadline while trying to fill a vacancy in the development department. Our poor, beleaguered CEOs are just too busy and distracted to add more meetings, more talking, more data collection, and more partnership strategies to the mix.

We can sympathize with them, right?

We can, unless (or until) it occurs to them that Collective Impact isn’t an additional thing to do; it’s a different way of approaching what they already do. And that’s the sticking point. Collective Impact requires systems-level change within all of the organizations that undertake it, and it therefore requires the organization’s leaders to change.

Collective Impact is messy and complicated. It takes time – years, decades – before you’ll ever achieve results. It requires relationships and partnerships that are “built at the speed of trust.” And it requires more funding than any one organization has, to achieve population-level results that no one organization can reach alone.

Sounds impossible, right?

And yet, it also minimizes isolation and allows service providers to better understand the larger context and environment that influences their work. When properly executed, Collective Impact increases efficiency and generates the kind of results that we all want.

Sounds like that’s what it’s really all about.

Right?