Latest / Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup, Small, and Growing Nonprofits / Operational Stewardship: 3 Mistakes That Quietly Hurt Nonprofits (Ep. 60)
Transcript
- Matt Stockman (00:00) If I asked you what the biggest resource your nonprofit might be wasting is, what would you say? I think most of us would probably answer money, but after coaching and working with nonprofit leaders for years, I actually don't think money is the resource that is wasted most often. I actually think it's time that's wasted. Every unnecessary meeting, every unclear expectation. Every volunteer who doesn't know what they're supposed to do, if you have events that weren't properly planned, it's all quietly stealing your time, hours from your mission. Today I want to introduce you to an idea that I think every nonprofit leader should embrace: operational stewardship. Matt Stockman (00:44) Welcome to the Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startups, small and growing nonprofits. This podcast is here to help you build your nonprofit from the ground up on a strong, sustainable foundation with clear frameworks, practical tools, and the real-world guidance that you can actually put into practice to help grow your nonprofit on. I'm your host, Matt Stockman. I'm a nonprofit growth coach. I'm glad you're here. And here at Nonprofit Launch Plan, we believe that every successful nonprofit has to be operating at peak performance across six key areas. Those six areas are leadership, fundraising, marketing, programs and services, operations, and finances. So on every episode of the podcast, we focus on one of these core areas to help you create lasting impact in your nonprofit without all of the complexity. Now, before we dive into today's episode, if you like the kinds of things that you're learning and picking up from listening to the podcast, there's more in my free weekly email called the Nonprofit Launch Briefing. Each week I send out one meaningful email about something different than the podcast that week. Strategies and practical tools and fundraising insight, guidance that you need for any startup, small or growing nonprofit. So if you're serious about building a healthy nonprofit or growing your nonprofit, I'd love to have you on the list. Shoot me a quick email with a simple sign me up in the subject line. My email is Matt at nonprofitlaunchplan.com. Again, sign me up in the subject line. Email is Matt at nonprofitlaunchplan.com. All Okay, so let's dive in. Today's episode really can be boiled down to a discussion about one word stewardship. The definition of stewardship is the job of supervising or taking care of something, such as an organization or property. When most of us hear that word though, our minds naturally go to finances. We think about how well we're treating and taking care of donor dollars. Are we following our budget? Is the board helping to hold the leadership of the nonprofit financially accountable? Maybe we think about good stewardship as taking good care of the volunteers that God has brought us alongside our mission. Those are all important. But stewardship is actually much bigger than your bank account. You've been entrusted with a mission, which means you've been entrusted with people, time, systems, opportunities, and leadership responsibility. So the question isn't simply, did we spend or are we spending the money wisely? But it's also, do we spend our capacity wisely? I see nonprofit and ministry organizations both lose hundreds of hours every year through operational habits they've never questioned simply because nobody has ever really stopped to ask is there a better way to do this? So today, in this episode, I want to look at three really common operational stewardship mistakes that quietly consume resources your donors never intended to fund. And the good news is these are really easy to correct. So, first off, let's dive into the first mistake I think a lot of people make. It's the one phrase that makes me cringe every time I hear it. We're just a nonprofit. I typically hear it said after somebody points out something inside the nonprofit organization that could be better, whether it's an inefficient process or a website that looks wonky. Or inconsistent communication, people just default back to, well, we're just a nonprofit. Almost as if being mission-driven somehow excuses being disorganized or not doing things with excellence. The fact that you have a different funding model than the businesses that you frequent is just an excuse, in my opinion. Yes, we can allow the mindset of, well, we're just a nonprofit to creep into our thinking all the time to cover up the fact. That the work that you're doing is less than what it should be. The way most nonprofits get into this place where they're using we're just a nonprofit as an excuse is by taking on too much too quick. In other words, trying to put the roof on the house before you have a solid foundation. Let me give you an example. I'm working with a nonprofit that wanted to host a gala. Events like this are really hard. They take a lot of people and financial resources and can take a long time to turn into good revenue generators. But they moved forward anyway, and as predicted, it didn't go so well. They believed that because they were a small staff and were doing good work, that people would just somehow look past a confusing and poorly executed event, which by the way, didn't happen. And I think they actually damaged some key donor relationships in the process. The tragedy here wasn't simply that the event underperformed. It was that months of staff time and volunteer energy and the donor goodwill and financial resources were invested into something the organization simply wasn't operationally prepared to execute. That's an operational stewardship issue. When you're doing work without a well designed plan and stuff gets bumpy and details fall through the cracks, the phrase, well, we're just a nonprofit. Is not an acceptable fallback. And anyone, including yourself, who has that mentality in your organization, ultimately should be held accountable to changing that way of thinking. Now, a quick side trip down what I believe is in a really important rabbit trail here. If you're launching or you're running a Christian ministry, which I know a lot of my listeners are, I encounter Christian ministry or organizations all the time that use God's grace. As an excuse to do shoddy work or to be unorganized. The number of times that I have heard it's the best we can do. And since it's for the Lord, it's okay. when it is obvious to all that it was not their best, are far too many to count. And as a believer myself, I firmly believe in the foundational tenet that God provides everything and We can do nothing apart from him. That's scriptural, but I also believe that God calls us to offer him our best work. Excellence isn't a substitute for dependence on him, it's one of our expressions of our dependence on him. I've seen that in this coaching business, in this podcast as well. I know that God has called me to this work. It could be very easy to say, well, since he's called me to this, I'll just wait until he sends me clients. And I don't believe that he honors that. Rather, he expects me and you to do what we can with the excellence as a praise offering to him. And then he brings the increase. Okay, so that's the first issue. Let's do away with the language of we're just a nonprofit. The second mistake I see a lot of nonprofits fall into related to operational stewardship is a lack of clarity about what success looks like. I did an exercise with an organization that I was working with that had three people on their executive team. I asked each one of the three separately, what are our top priorities this month? And I got back three different answers. And this is a lot more common than you think it might be. Imagine for a moment. A rowing team where every athlete is just rowing as hard as they can, but one is pulling slightly left, another is pulling slightly right, and another is rowing backwards because nobody ever explained where the finish line actually is. When success at the highest organizational level isn't clearly defined, everybody stays busy, everybody works hard, but everybody is rowing in slightly different directions. Mainly because they're not really sure how what they do fits into the bigger picture of fulfilling the mission. So what happens is that people start defining success at their departmental level, ultimately because they don't know what success for the organization actually is. So the director of programs thinks success is serving more clients. The person who is handling the outbound communication thinks that success is finishing the nonprofit newsletter. Your volunteer coordinator believes it's recruiting more volunteers. None of those things are wrong, but strong executive directors and nonprofit leaders are always reminding their team members what success for the whole organization looks like and how their individual role fits into that success. Healthy organizations create clarity. They define what success and winning looks like. Something like success looks like, for example, a five percent increase in donor support year over year, or our programs expanding into three new communities this year, or over 90% beneficiary satisfaction rate. Being clear on what organizational success looks like and communicating that consistently throughout the team is good operational stewardship because confusion consumes your team's energy and your energy as well. Now, the third mistake I see small nonprofits make creating operational stewardship challenges is this nonprofits that love saying we're flexible. As a way to cover up a lack of planning. Flexibility is great, but it's not the same thing as making everything up as you go. And some nonprofits don't have the documented processes in place because they believe that structure slows them down. That is more often than not because the founder has started the organization essentially by himself or herself. And when that person is doing everything, if that's you, You're building the processes, you're creating the workflows, setting up the email series, doing the bank deposits, doing it all. And then you're also setting the pace of how quickly the organization will work in the future. As that one man shop grows, eventually a new person comes on because it grows and we can't take on everything just by ourselves. So we bring an assistant on, and they're just expected to learn the systems that are in place. And start operating inside those systems and at the pace that the founder is going. Nobody pauses to put structure and processes in place or even write the current processes down. So the opposite is actually true. The organizations that can respond the fastest are usually the ones with the clearest systems. Think about a jazz band. I like jazz music. We go watch excellent jazz music musicians here in Denver play pretty frequently. And I admire their ability to improvise, but the improvisation only works because every musician understands the chord structure beneath it. Organizations with strong operational stewardship work the same way. When people know the process, they can adapt. When nobody knows the process, then every situation becomes like chaos. And if you're relying heavily on volunteers who are all coming and going, maybe giving a few hours a week, that structure becomes even more. Important. The structure is what creates freedom, whether that's a simple checklist, a one-page process, a volunteer onboarding guide, or a documented donor thank you process. Plans and structures are not fun. They're not sexy. They're not the sort of thing anybody gets super excited about, but they're good operational stewardship because they free people to focus on people instead of constantly figuring out what's coming next. Okay, as we kind of tie this all together, notice what all three of these things have in common. Operational stewardship doesn't require money to do it or more staff to be good at it. They're choices about how your organization operates. Operational stewardship simply means removing unnecessary friction. So more of your organization's limited time and energy and resources, yours as well, can be invested where they matter most, your mission. You don't have to overhaul your entire organization this week. Here's what I want you to do. Just start by identifying one place where there's some operational friction and it's stealing time from your mission. Maybe start with these questions. Where are we accepting inefficiency simply because we're a nonprofit? What does success actually look like for our team this month? And what recurring tasks or tasks could we document with a simple checklist or a one page process? What I think you'll discover is that you have a great opportunity for increasing your impact just by stewarding the resources you've already been entrusted with more purposefully. Financial stewardship will always matter, but operational stewardship matters a lot as well. Because every hour you reclaim, every process that you simplify, every expectation that you clarify, and every bit of unnecessary friction that you take away, it all creates more capacity for the work that God has actually called your organization to do. Thanks for listening to the Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast. That's all I've got for you today. Remember, if you like what you're learning in the podcast, you can get more of it in your inbox each week. Sign up for my free weekly email, the nonprofit launch briefing. Every week I send you one meaningful email with something you need to be considering or thinking about or working on as a nonprofit leader. And it's something different than what we talk in the podcast. It's never the same stuff. It's designed to help you lead smarter and avoid some common pitfalls and mistakes. So if you're serious about growing your nonprofit, this is something I think you should have in your inbox every week. Shoot me a quick email with a simple sign me up in the subject line. My email is matt at nonprofitlaunchplan.com. Again, sign me up in the subject line, Matt at nonprofitlaunchplan.com. That's it for this episode of the Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for startups, small and growing nonprofits. if this podcast has been helpful, please share it with another nonprofit leader who you think might benefit. And until next time, keep building wisely and keep making a difference. Have a great day.