4 Traits Of A Major Gifts Officer

Things just seem to go smoother when an organization has the right major gifts officer. Unfortunately, bringing on the right candidate for this job is not as simple as taking the first fundraising expert you find.

When hiring a major gifts officer appearance can be everything. Since the chosen candidate will be in contact with your most influential supporters, you have to be sure you are bringing on someone who will represent your organization well. During the Association For Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) international conference in Boston, Mass., Holly Duncan, president and CEO of the Morton Plant Mease Health Care Foundation in Clearwater, Fla. outlined her own qualifications for a major gifts officer.

The four traits are:

• Look for candidates in unconventional areas. People with a focus in technology have the ability and inclination to fully leverage information services capacity. Other qualifications they might have are the ability to research, schedule, communicate and document gifts.
• Seek out someone who doesn’t just have traditional book smarts. Problem solvers and strategic thinkers can think quickly — that can help you out of a bind.
• In a position that talks to others frequently, it’s important to have someone who is both skilled verbally and in writing. A major gifts officer should know how to listen, ask open-ended questions and engage on all levels.
• Even though you will want someone who can work independently, a candidate should be able work with a team. There should be transparency and an attempt to engage allies. No one “owns a donor.”

6 Ways To Avoid Hiring Risks

If you aren't being sued by someone who was hurt by one of your employees, chances are you are being sued by someone you didn't offer a job. That's just the way things seem to go these days in the modern workforce.

It's impossible to completely eliminate hiring risks but there are ways to increase your chances of avoiding them. In their book “Exposed: A Legal Field Guide for Nonprofit Executives” published by the Nonprofit Management Risk Center, Melanie Lockwood Herman and Mark E. Chopko provided advice for nonprofit hiring managers who want to minimize risk in their screening of potential employees.

Lockwood Herman and Chopko provided the following six strategies:

• Establish written screening guidelines and use written tools to substantiate your efforts, such as position descriptions, interview scripts, hiring checklists, reference check worksheets, and checklists for conducting other background checks.
• Use the same screening tools for every applicant for the same position.
• Decide in advance what will disqualify a candidate.
• Don’t disqualify applicants based on their beliefs.
• When checking references, only ask the reference questions you can ask the candidate.
• Train all staff involved in the hiring process on the hiring policies and risks involved.

5 Additions To Recruitment And Retention

Employers across the globe are concerned that they are faced with a workforce that is aging and a talent pool that is under-educated, or under-motivated and showing talent shortages in many critical areas. These problems create challenges for all businesses, but they are especially critical for nonprofits, which usually operate with a smaller number of employees than for-profit firms.

While recruitment and retention programs will help address this problem, they alone will not solve it. In their essay, "Managing the Impending Workforce Crisis," Jeffrey Akin and Brenda Worthen argue that there are five additional practices nonprofit managers should implement to address emerging talent demands in a sustainable way.

Their four suggestions are:

• Redefining knowledge management. Knowledge embedded in IT often can’t adapt or grow to meet changing needs. Knowledge resides in people, not technology.
• Fostering flexibility. This can come in the form of cross-functional or cross-business unit career mobility, job sharing, part-time work, flexible work schedules, etc.
• Supporting transparency. Just as clients want to know what is going on, talented people want their organizations to share information that could affect their careers.
• Decoupling resources from locations. Although globalization can create instability, it can create a more stable supply of talent.
• Breaking down silos. Organizations must abandon structures that rationalize the flow of information up and down the chain of command.

6 Tips On Managing Human Capital

It's the question all businesses and nonprofits ask: What's the best way to attract talent to the organization? One school of thought is that high-quality candidates will continue to flock to you as long as the service offered is good enough.

While this is certainly one thing that drives talent, a report compiled by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) indicates it's far from the biggest factor.

Distributed at the AICPA Not-for-Profit Industry Conference, “Talent Pipeline Draining Growth” offered several findings about human capital and the management of it. The findings:

• Inadequacies in talent management are hurting the competitiveness and financial performance of firms. Growth prospects are blighted by failure to make most of human capital.
• There is disagreement and disconnect at the C-level (most senior leaders) for talent and development, particularly in relation to succession planning and training and development investments. CEOs and CFOs differ from human resource directors in their perceptions.
• The majority of companies do not seem to be paying adequate attention to succession planning. Only a third of respondents see talent management embedded in business strategy.
• Many of the talent-management tools employed by organizations are ineffective. Performance-based bonuses and personal development programs are rated as effective by just a third of respondents.
• There is a lack of clarity on who has the responsibility for measuring the effectiveness of talent management. Again, CEOs and CFOs see it differently from HR directors.
• Business leaders are concerned about the quality of data and analytics they receive on human capital. Data need to be translated into actionable insights.

5 Workplace Management Issues

The workplace is something of a second home for employees. It is important that managers treat their workers as family for this reason but, unfortunately, handling the problems of employees is never easy, and things just seem to get more complicated every day.

Speaking during the AICPA Not-For-Profit Industry Conference, Karl Ahlrichs, Michael J. Monahan and Peter Petesch bought up the various legal complications that can arise when managing employees, including the issues that come from a business background.

They took note of the following five business trends and the problems they can cause:

• Nonprofit mergers and acquisitions, particularly in the healthcare and healthcare-related communities, are trending up – activities have gone up more than 50 percent in the past three years;
• Compensation decision-making at nonprofit entities continues to evolve with compliant and effective governance models and processes being the keystone;
• Benefit costs often range from 30 to 35 percent of the total cost of compensation can be higher depending on location, collective bargaining agreement provisions and the types of ‘benefits” included in the calculation;
• During the past 10 to 15 years annual health insurance program cost increases turned up from 5 percent a year in the 1990s to 12 percent or more a year in the early 2000s with recent increases as high as 20 percent; and,
• Account-based health plans, whether using health savings accounts or health reimbursement arrangements should be an active consideration in plan designs for the future.

3 External Hiring Tips

The first place nonprofit managers do when beginning a hiring process is to see if they can fill their open position from within. This is preferable for many reasons not the least being that the candidate is already familiar with the inner-workings of the organization.

As Kirk Kramer and Preeta Nayak noted in the Bridgespan Group’s book “Plan A: How Successful Nonprofits Develop Their Future Leaders,” the beginning of the external hiring process isn't something that makes nonprofit leaders scared. Citing Bridgespan's Leadership Diagnostic Survey, they noted that 77 percent of managers agree or strongly agree that they “effectively screen external leadership candidates to ensure they are correct for the role and the organization.”

When it comes to the transition phase, however, that confidence is not present. The survey indicated that 38 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that their organization has a successful on-boarding plan.

So where to begin? Kramer and Nayak sought to ease hiring manager's fears by detailing three steps for a successful external hiring campaign:

• Step 1: Define requirements for the role. 
• Step 2: Create opportunities for both the organization and the candidate to assess whether the candidate is a good fit. 
• Step 3: Design an on-boarding process that supports the new hire’s capabilities and relationship development.

4 Ways To Tell If HR Is A Strategic Partner

Gone are the days when your nonprofit's human resources (HR) main responsibilities were hiring new employees and ensuring existing workers complied with rules. These days, HR is involved in a variety of activities and processes within an organization.

During the recent AICPA Not-for-Profit Industry Conference, Karl Ahlrichs, Michael J. Monahan, and Peter Petesch talked about the necessity of making HR a strategic partner in your day-to-day activities. While the number of class action suits, overtime issues, and sexual harassment reports have decreased since 2005, the number of lawsuits against employers have increased, as has the number of employees joining unions.

What does this mean? According to Ahlrichs, Monahan, and Petesch, it means:

• The field of employment law and human resources continues to grow, stratify and become more complex;
• The importance of employment law counsel and human resources in any organization continues to increase;
• Keeping informed and up to date is important; and,
• That having a strategic HR partner involves having a strategy, both for the organization and for the individual in HR.

The speakers said that you can tell if your HR department is a strategic a partner if you can answer "yes" to these four questions:

• Is the HR person at the table?
• When the CEO wants to execute on a merger, does the HR chief know before the deal is agreed upon?
• Does the HR leader identify business opportunities?
• Does the HR honcho look for ways to link productivity with morale and cost efficiencies?

4 Tips For Talent Management

The fast-paced world we live in has made it more important for nonprofits to manage human capital. Yet a new survey from the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) seems to indicate that quite the opposite is happening.

The survey, distributed during the AICPA Not-for-Profit Industry Conference and titled “Talent Pipeline Draining Growth,” details how bad management can hurt a nonprofit in all facets of the organization. In addition, it offers four steps to reconnect human capital to the growth agenda. The steps are:

• Embed human capital strategy within the wider overall business strategy. Organizations need to develop relevant human capital metrics to support and implement the wider strategy.
• Focus on getting the right information and translating it into actionable insight. Human capital information needs to be credible and accurate.
• Leverage the relevant skill set to bring credibility to the data, insights and subsequent actions. Organizations must ensure there is clarity on responsibility, accountability and ownership for human capital performance management.
• Structure the organization to encourage collaboration and partnering. If necessary, restructure for closer collaboration at the executive and operational levels, especially partnering between finance and human resources.

4 Things Nonprofit Managers Need To Do After A Hire

Congratulations, your nonprofit finally hired a qualified candidate to fill a long-vacant position. Your work is done now, right? Not so, said Mendal Bouknight, president of the Piedmont Healthcare Foundation.

Speaking at the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy’s annual international conference in Atlanta, Ga., Bouknight explained that a nonprofit manager's work is far from complete even after a new employee is bought on board. A good employee is someone who is constantly motivated to do the best job possible so managers should constantly be thinking of new motivational and support techniques.

Bouknight described some of the things to think about as a manager or leader within your organization to motivate and retain employees:

• Intentionally focus on the team and the individual;
• Begin every day by thinking about your team and what you are going to do to support them;
• Select the right people: those who are talented, fit with the culture, bring value to the team, are smarter than you, and like what they do; and,
• Actively listen to your team.

6 Steps To Handling Office Romances

The laws of attraction dictate that, whether you like it or not, office romances will occur under your watch. Time to panic, right? On the contrary, the only way disaster will come of this is if you or your human resources department have the attitude that “It can’t happen here” or “It won’t be allowed to happen here.”

During a recent Risk Management & Finance Summit for Nonprofits, Woods Bowman, an emeritus professor at DePaul University and an observer of nonprofits, spoke about how to best handle workplace relationships. He stated that the reason they can cause problems is because effective management depends on clear role relationships, which can be disrupted by office romance.

Yet it's almost inevitable that there will be those in your organization who are attracted to each other. Bowman shared the following advice if this does end up happening:

• Establish policy before the fact.
• Encourage reporting. Have anonymous and trustworthy reporting systems. Nonprofits must comply with the whistle-blower protections of Sarbanes-Oxley
• Investigate all allegations.
• Enforce policies evenhandedly. Policies and punishments should be universal, from the CEO on down, and gender-neutral.
• Monitor results and amend policies as needed.
• Don’t overlook outside relationships. Relationships between an employee and the spouse (or significant other) of another employee are more common than one might think. Think also of vendors and competitors.

5 Steps To Developing New Leaders

Does your nonprofit have a strong leadership team? Congratulations, you are probably one of the envies of the industry but don't celebrate for too long; your best strength can disappear before you know it if you rest on your laurels.

As Kirk Kramer and Preeta Nayak wrote in in the Bridgespan Group’s pamphlet “Plan A: How Successful Nonprofits Develop Their Future Leaders,” developing new leaders for your organization can be an overwhelming task. This leaves many managers wondering where to start. There's no need to wonder anymore, though, as the two authors came up with five steps that will help your organization get on the path to developing strong leaders.

The five steps are:

• Engage Your Senior Leaders: If you are a CEO just launching your leadership development efforts, begin by telling your senior team that it is important that they develop as individuals and that you’ll help each of them to do so. Ask each member of the senior team to add a personal — and organizational — development objective to annual goals.
• Understand Your Future Needs: Gather your senior team for a once-a-year offsite meeting to discuss where your organization is going and the potential of their direct reports to move into more senior roles.
• Develop Your Future Leaders: Meet twice a year with each of your direct reports to discuss their progress against their leadership development goals.
• Hire Externally to Fill Gaps: Identify the areas where you will likely need to hire externally to meet your future needs and those where you should aim to build capacity from within.
• Monitor and Improve Your Practices: Set targets for accomplishing the work of the previous items on this list. Next, report on your organization’s progress against those targets to your senior team and the board. Finally, determine leadership development priorities for the coming year.

For Employers: The 2013 Salary And Benefits Survey

UPDATE: We have extended the deadline to complete the Survey to July 26th.

Every year, The NonProfit Times and Bluewater Nonprofit Solutions publish the Nonprofit Salary and Benefits Reports. These in-depth studies help organizations to determine whether they are in line with similar organizations and to remain in compliance with the Internal Revenue Service. The data for these reports come from surveys of our readers and we need your participation again for our upcoming 2013 Salary and Benefits Reports.

Besides helping all nonprofits with their compensation packages, completing the 2013 Salary and Benefits Survey, has other benefits. Those who complete it by the deadline will qualify for a chance to win an iPad Mini and you will receive a free executive summary of the Survey results. Finally, everyone who completes the Survey will get 50 percent off the full reports (currently priced at $285) set to be released later in the year.

Since we know that your time is valuable, we have instituted some new features to make completing the Survey easier and faster than ever. In addition to some general streamlining, previous participants now have the ability to jump start the 2013 survey completion process–you only need to change the data that is different.

Other new features include:

• The survey is now compatible with all major Internet browsers including Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.
• We've made it easier and more intuitive to enter data. We've also added more prompts to guide users.

So what are you waiting for? Complete the 2013 Nonprofit Organizations Salary and Benefits Survey today and help all nonprofits!

Hiring An Employee Is Not The Final Step

So you've finally hired a new employee to your nonprofit. That means all of your work is done, right? According to a leading nonprofit executive, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Speaking at the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy's 46th annual international conference in Atlanta, Ga., Mendal Bouknight, president of the Piedmont Healthcare Foundation, explained that organizations should not rest even after filling their open positions. She shared some of the techniques her organization used to promote a strong workforce:

• Culture is introduced during the interview process;
• Expectations are clearly addressed Day 1; 30 days; 60 days; 90 days; 180 days, and 365 days;
• Take the time to provide an orientation to the organization, as well as every member of the team;
• The Hermann Brain Diagnostic Instrument (HBDI), similar to the Myers-Briggs Test, is introduced to every new member and the team; and,
• Regular retreats are centered around team, roles, responsibilities and respect.

Motivation is also an important tool to keep your employees engaged, and Bouknight detailed how strong leaders can do this:

• Intentionally focus on the team and the individual;
• Begin every day by thinking about your team and what you are going to do to support them;
• Select the right people, those who are talented, fit with the culture, bring value to the team, are smarter than you, and like what they do; and,
• Actively listen to your team.

The First Day Employee Checklist

The first day at a new job is a little bit like the first day of school. Feelings of loneliness, confusion, and an overwhelming sense of anxiety are common for new hires on Day 1 and, unfortunately, sometimes busy supervisors can contribute to these feelings.

Nonprofit managers must do everything in their power to be available when a new employee starts work. While all first day hires need help acclimating to their new environment, it is even more imperative to be present when the worker is new to the job market or is working in the nonprofit sector for the first time.

In "The Big Book of HR," authors Barbara Mitchell and Cornelia Gamlem created a checklist that managers should follow on Day 1 of any new employee. The checklist offers some items that might seem like no-brainers, yet it's exactly these items that are critical to ensuring that Day 1 is successful for all parties.

• Does security know the new hire is coming?
• Does the employee know where and when to report on Day 1?
• Is the work area ready: computer and phone – hooked up and ready to go? Are there supplies, welcoming items?
• Does staff know when the new hire is arriving?
• Is there a plan for the first day and beyond?
• Does the manager’s schedule include time for the new hire?
• Does the new hire have a copy of his/her job description?
• Does the new hire have a copy of the organization’s strategic plan and mission statement?
• Does the new hire know what to do in case of emergency?

The First Day Checklist For Nonprofits

You probably think you are the only one who is nervous on the first day of a new job. In reality, nonprofit managers are probably just as anxious as you when the big day finally arrives.

Organizations have to go through a good deal of preparation if the first day of a new hire is to go as smoothly as possible. In their book “The Big Book of HR,” Barbara Mitchell and Cornelia Gamlem urged managers to be immediately available to the new hire. That means they should put off any planned days-offs or meetings so they can be there should the new employee encounter any difficulties. If an emergency comes up at the last moment, the manager should appoint someone to assist in his stead.

Mitchell and Gamlem also laid out nine checklist items to look over before the new employee arrives. All of these questions should be answered in the affirmative for the first day to be successful:

• Does security know the new hire is starting?
• Does the employee know when and where to report on Day One?
• Is the work area ready with computer, phone, supplies, and welcoming items?
• Do your staff members know when the new hire is arriving?
• Do you have a plan for the first day and beyond?
• Does your schedule include time for the new hire?
• Does the new hire have a copy of the person’s job description?
• Does the new hire have a copy of the organization’s strategic plan and mission statement?
• Does the new hire know what to do in case of an emergency in the workplace?

8 Sample Employee Interview Questions

What's the key to hiring the best employees for your nonprofit? There are many answers to that question, but one could arguably be asking probing questions during an employee interview; questions that can't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no."

According to Barbara Mitchell and Cornelia Gamlem in "The Big Book of HR," employers will have a better chance of receiving in-depth answers with these types of questions, which will help them make more informed decisions before hiring. The two authors listed eight sample questions that will give the interviewer a better idea of the behavioral characteristics of the interviewee:

• How would you describe your communication style?
• Tell me about a time when you had to make an unplanned presentation. How did you organize your thoughts? How did you feel about this?
• Describe a situation in which effective interpersonal communication skills contributed to your success.
• Give me an example of a time when you worked on a project with little supervision. How did you get started? Describe the results.
• How would your last employer describe your work habits and ethics?
• As a leader, what do you do when people on your team aren’t pulling their weight?
• What is one of the greatest leadership challenges you have ever faced? What did you do? What was the result?
• How do you handle situations with people who don’t agree with you?

12 Ways To Enhance Nonprofit Hiring

Appearances can be deceiving when it comes to hiring for your nonprofit. You should stop hiring based on so-called "gut decisions" and do a thorough investigation of the candidate before handing out that job offer.

In their book "Being Buddha at Work," Franz Metcalf and B.J. Gallagher lamented that some hiring managers don't pay enough attention to the finer details of a candidate's application. This includes his work history, ability to learn and grow, and ability to work well with others. The two authors wrote that, if an organization is to enhance their hiring process, they need to investigate those details plus these 12 additional techniques:

• Don’t limit your search to obvious candidates.
• Be clear about what is required in the job.
• Consider what it takes to be successful in your particular organization and/or department.
• Involve many people in the interview process so you get multiple perspectives.
• Ask behavioral questions. The best predictor of future performance is past performance.
• Don't use hypothetical questions.
• Don't be in a hurry to hire. Haste in the beginning can be costly later.
• Use job tests when you can, whether it's a typing test, a computer simulation, or a roleplaying scenario.
• Be sure to consider the candidate's future potential.
• Be honest with the candidate about the nature of the job as well as future growth potential.
• Look especially careful at someone who interviews well or tries to get away with glib answers to questions. This individual may be good at interviewing, but make sure he/she has other skills to back up those interviewing skills.

5 Ways To Sell Flex Time To Your Employer

According to the 2012 Nonprofit Organizations Benefits Report, flex time was one the more popular perks offered to employees. With many people feeling the squeeze from the dual responsibilities of work and home, it's easy to see why flexible start and end hours are popular among workers.

Nearly 50 percent of employers offered flex time to employees last year according to the report, but that still leaves a good percentage of nonprofits that don't. That doesn't mean you shouldn't advocate for it to your boss. If you're one of the many employees who want a flexible schedule, here are some ways to convince your superiors that it's a good idea.

• Assess the Environment: See if anybody else in the office has been offered a flexible arrangement. If nobody else has, talk to them and see if they would be interested in such a program. You should then head to your HR department and see if flex time is even offered as a benefit. If it isn't, you can advocate for it based on its popularity in the office.
• Assess Your Needs: Flex time benefits come in many different forms. This includes flexible start and/or end times or telecommuting. Based on your personal situation, figure out which is right for you. Your work habits also need to be considered, as you are not likely to be offered flex time if you are not performing with a regular schedule.
• See Things From the Employer's Eyes: A good way to advocate for flex time is to position your argument as one that benefits the nonprofit through increased productivity or other cost savings. For example, the organization could actually benefit for having a compressed work week if provides added coverage at a time when it is desperately needed.
• Create a Proposal: Write a formal document explaining your proposal and schedule a meeting with your boss. Be prepared to explain how you will accomplish all your work if given flex time, and outline why it won't make things more difficult for the organization's mission.
• Be Flexible: Flexibility from the organization requires the same from the employee. Be willing to make necessary accommodations for the employer if it is needed.

5 Qualities To Seek When Hiring

Here's what most employers want to believe about the hiring process: Out of countless candidates, the best-qualified individuals are weeded out, and the organization then has no problem picking between those applicants.

If only it were that easy.

The most experienced hiring managers know that hiring is a difficult art even in the best of economic times. When the market is not as robust, as it is right now, staffing decisions can be stressful, exhausting, leaving overworked managers to wonder if there is anything that can make it easier.

There is unfortunately no magic button that can make everything better, but there are some ways to make one of the most stressful aspects of the process -- reviewing qualifications -- simpler. In the revised edition of his book “Managing a Nonprofit Organization,” Thomas Wolf offers advice about the qualities a nonprofit executive should look for when reviewing the qualifications of prospective employees. The most important qualities are:

• Administrative skills related to the job to be performed;
• Management skills in working with others, especially when some supervisory requirements come with a job;
• Character traits that reflect creativity, flexibility, an enthusiasm for solving problems and an ability to work with others;
• An understanding of the need for authority in an organizational structure; and,
• Knowledge, sensitivity and enjoyment of the nonprofit field in which the employees will be working.

Are Happy Employees Preferable?

Originally Posted on the Nonprofit Job Seeker


What makes the best employee for a nonprofit job? If you ask some managers, it's an individual who hates their job (and/or boss) with a burning passion but is also fearful of losing it, and is unwilling to put up much resistance as a result.

That kind of person might be easier for nonprofit managers to deal with, but there are actually tangible benefits to be had from happier employees.

Erin Teter, a senior human resource business partner for Sage North America, says that overwhelming research shows that happy employees are better to have around than unhappy employees? She listed the following reasons:

• Happy people are more productive and, since they enjoy their job, are unlikely to take many "sick days."
• Happy employees are better equipped to handle workplace relationships, stress and change.
• Rather than looking for a new job, happy employees will want to stay so they can grow within the organization. This will also save valuable money, as the cost of hiring and training new employees can vary from 25 percent to 200 percent of annual compensation.
• In the nonprofit sector, happy employees lead to donor loyalty. They treat donors and clients well because they are engaged in the organization and want to see it succeed.