Due Diligence

There's over 9,000 nonprofits in Dallas County today. More than 3,500 of them filed a 990 tax return so say the smart folks at Urban Institute. With that many working nonprofits in town, chances are that there's someone trying to do the same thing you're doing.

Okay. Let's narrow the field from that 3,500+ and add another filter to look just at your cause: healthcare, poverty, children, environment, aging, the arts, whatever. Chances are that you've still got somewhere between 5 and 25 other nonprofits trying to do something very similar to what you're doing. That makes it a little challenging to raise more money and excite more volunteers year after year.

You may be slightly different or very different from your peers (aka partners .... aka competitors). But to potential donors who want to help fight poverty, for example, all the homeless organizations look the same at first blush. The fact is they are mostly very different.

How do you distinguish yourself??

It's no longer enough that you have a compelling case statement. (Although you can take some comfort in knowing that some of your peers have not reviewed or updated their mission statement or web site in years.) Being current and relevant certainly helps you distinguish yourself.

Each year, donors ask better questions and perform more due diligence about the nonprofits to whom they may give. It's important for the nonprofits to improve their own due diligence.

The keys for many donors are:
- show me the numbers!! (quantities, percentages, benchmarks, results, results, results)
- show me some independent evaluation
- show up (as either a volunteer or a site visitor)

Showing up is not a popular choice for many foundations, donors, and evaluators. It takes time. You might be uncomfortable in the surroundings. You might get dirty. (I'll save this rant for another time.)

GiveWell is a new foundation in NYC with the noble intent of evaluating charities in different fields and making the results public. They began this with big hearts, good business brains, and a real drive to bring efficiency and order to the evaluation process (ahhh....the appeal to my own left brain....). There are other evaluators across the country.

Many nonprofit evaluators are still learning that there's a lot more to evaluations than just cranking the numbers and publishing the results. For one thing, the numbers on true effectiveness are elusive. It's often made more difficult by our mobile society and the fact that many clients just don't stay in touch on a consistent basis.

The best way to distinguish your nonprofit is to show everyone how effective you are. Until you can get the donors and evaluators to show up for site visits or as volunteers (....do you have a really good volunteer coordinator???....), you need to be able to show you're effectiveness. It takes a process to measure your successes. That costs time and money, but it needs to be done.

You may learn something about your organization. It may mean a very critical self examination of what's working and what's not. It may take real guts to change. But you've got to ask yourself, why you do what you do? Who are you really trying to help?

Whether you're new or have been in this business for years, it's absolutely vital that you not only show everyone you are different, but that you make a difference. Due diligence and investments in process, self examination, and change will pay big dividends for everyone involved.

Wiki Social Science

Does your nonprofit really offer what your end user clients need? Or are they just taking what's offered even though they really need something else?

Currently I'm on a church committee with a goal to facilitate social, economic, and spiritual transformation in one of the poorest areas of Dallas. Realizing it's nearly impossible to find a solution until you've identified the problem, I've been a part of two different surveys to determine the main problems in this area of need.

Results from both surveys were very similar. But two things bother me about these surveys:
1) they were conducted by well meaning people who had little training in preparing or conducting surveys
2) over 90% of the participants represented only about 40% of the people in the area

How can we be sure we are addressing the real problems in the area???

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on investment research and wiki's. Wiki's are a fascinating way to me (a yawner to my wife) of collaborating on most anything. Wikipedia is currently the most prominent example of lots of people working together.

In Everybody's an Analyst the writer discusses a new kind of web site that offers financial information from a broad group of people acting unofficially (and with little regulation) in concert.

This has significant limitations when it comes to investment advice, but what about research? Especially in the area of social science.

Accurate surveys cost money. Even if you get a nearby university to put its students at work on this.

But if there was a demographics wiki web site available, it seems to me that lots of nonprofits could take advantage of better information on their end user clients.

Imagine that. Getting more efficient on the cheap. Actually working together, maybe even towards a clearly defined goal.

Are there any smart people out there working on this?

Who's Your Buddy?

Coordinating volunteers.
Coaching kids soccer...or any other sport for kids under 8.
Getting your church committee to do SOMETHING besides talk.
Starting a new business, a new project from scratch.
Riding bicycles in a pack.
Shopping at the mall after Thanksgiving.
Finding other organizations to work with yours.

Yes. They all have the common denominator of cat herding.

Can't we all just get along?

No. Well sometimes yes.

So what do you do if you're one of the 837,027 U.S. nonprofits trying to do more than just exist from month to month? (Nearly 40% of you ran deficits in 2003.)

How 'bout finding a buddy??

Remember. It's not all about you. At least it's not supposed to be. Aren't you doing this for a cause? Who else is trying to do the same thing? Can you help them? Can they help you? Each of you probably has unique strengths. If you're duplicating each other, someone needs to go...or change. Remember, you're trying to do good, not just look good.

Life is full of chaos, but often in the middle of that confusion is someone going the same way you are. There's your potential buddy. Watch a bike race sometime. The Tour de France is the big one, but there are lots of others.

The riders ride in a pack for miles. They're mostly competitors, but they're actually helping each other along the way. It's amazingly more efficient to ride in a pack. They are cooperating at the same time they compete against each other. It's chaos at its most elegant.

The chaos turns into pure teamwork when the teams pull out of the pack and form pacelines and work together to go further and faster with less effort. (I'm trying valiantly not to repeat an earlier blog...but this is such an important concept.)

Nonprofits are in a competitive business. David LaPiana wrote an excellent book about this. It's called "Play to Win, The Nonprofit Guide to Competitive Strategy."

You've got to be a successful competitor or you'll fail. But you've also got to be a buddy to get along in this herd of cats.

Starts and Finishes

Time to start your next project? Or are you just too whipped to think about climbing a new mountain?

Wonder when this current project will EVER finish? When will we ever get out of this valley? Is it time to give up?

Don't like those words? Try these: It's time for someone to feed us. We've been feeding others long enough.

Ahhhh....the joys of projects, especially those that start with good intentions, but seem to lose their luster and energy as time goes by.

The November issue of Christianity Today has an excellent article by Greg Snell titled "Developing Good Development." More than a few skeptics think millions (billions?) of dollars are being wasted (they probably are) and that all that generosity is harmful to its recipients (in many cases it is).

Some of those skeptics are saying "give up." That's just what you wanted to hear, right? A reason to quit. Mr. Snell disagrees. There are others who share the views of Mr. Snell.

Ram Cnaan, in his book, The Other Philadelphia Story, talks about how faith-based giving initiatives in Philadelphia are making huge differences in that urban environment. His studies conclude that faith-based nonprofits in Philly contribute as much as $250M a year for vitally needed services that the government does not have to maintain.

Byron Johnson of Baylor University looked at Ohio and concluded in his study that faith-based programs in that state can bring about "dramatic increase in the cost-effective provision of social services that otherwise go unmet in so many communities." It seems to me this applies to the world, not just a city or state.

John DiIulio, does a good job of summarizing the works of Cnaan and Johnson in his Wall Street Journal article, The Other Philadelphia Story. Mr. DiIulio has also just released a book, Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America's Faith-Based Future. A magazine that presents a vision of liberal philosophy, politics, and public life, The American Prospect gave the following review of his book: "If there were more liberals who shared John DiIulio's passion for justice, liberalism would be better -- and so would America." My comments on faith vs. secularism and liberals vs. conservatives will have to wait for another time.

Back to "Developing Good Development." Mr. Snell offers ten principles (my comments are in parenthesis):
1. Know more than your mission statement (make sure everyone knows it)
2. Avoid deficit auditing (live within your means)
3. Seed the project with local seeds (insure there's "skin in the game")
4. Make the rounds early and often (relationship 101)
5. Build values before buildings (see number 1)
6. Practice cost sharing (find partners willing to invest)
7. Use the eyes and ears of locals (relationship 102)
8. Don't patronize (relationship 201)
9. Answer questions slowly (relationship 202)
10. Plan your exit strategy (plan on eliminating yourself)

Whether your working in Kenya, Mississippi, or Dallas, Mr. Snell offers principles that every nonprofit will do well to consider.

Big Heart, No Plan

This is nonprofit variant to the Texas idiom: "big hat, no cattle." I've worked intimately with a lot of great nonprofits over the last year. A common denominator is a huge heart and passion for making the lives of children better than anyone can reasonably hope. This is not only a big plus for the kids, but a big lift for our communities and even our planet.

But there's a big problem with some of them. They've got no plan. They just grab onto the latest concept or donor or volunteer or foundation and HOPE that will solve solve their problems. They call that their strategy.

Hope is not a strategy.

The most recurrent problem is under funding. Sometimes the "strategy" is to work harder for a home run; or wish for the Hail Mary pass for the touchdown; or just pray more fervently.

Don't get me wrong. Prayer is a very good thing. A necessary thing. But get off the railroad tracks before you start praying for the train to stop. Take that first step (to the side for your safety) then the next step forward. In other words, get a plan. Like my dad always said, "plan your work, and work your plan."

In Brian Hurd's excellent paper, "Growing Ministries the Right Way," he makes the point that successful, sustainable fund raising is not just scheduling a series of events and making a bunch of asks. It's about putting a system in place. Planning a process and sticking with it.

This is not rocket science, but it does take time and persistence. It also means taking the first step. If you think you've run out of time to plan because the bills are due, you're wrong. The bills will always be due. A good way to insure you never catch up is to never plan and never put a system in place to run your organization like a healthy business.

Where do you start?

Peter Drucker, the legendary business consultant, gave us five must answer questions in order to run an effective nonprofit. Do you even know the questions?? Hint: they're about mission, customer, value, results, and plan.

There's that word again. Plan.

If you expect to get funding from big donors, whether sophisticated foundations or individuals, make sure you've got answers to all those questions. The big donors are big because they live in a world that works to the answers from those questions.

Where do you think they got all those funds to donate? From well run, for profit organizations with good answers.

If you're a brand new or very small nonprofit without a 990 or audited financial results, you at least need a good business plan until you get bigger. People want to give to people, especially people who are helping children. It's the easiest of all fund raising.

But savvy individual donors and virtually all foundations want to insure their funds will go to good stewards no matter how good their cause. They will be asking to see the results and understand your plan before they contribute to your great organization.

So take all those strengths that helped you develop a great heart and develop a great plan in order to have a great organization to help those in need. And don't let the ego from the big heart get in the way of what's best for the kids.

Paluxy Lessons

Life is good! Did a bike ride in the hills around Glen Rose, Texas Saturday. The weather was gorgeous, the vistas beautiful, the long runs down county roads thrilling, the people among the best in the world! And the food was good. Just wished I'd slept better.

Tossed and turned in our B&B the night before the ride called the Paluxy Pedal. Wasn't sure I could really finish the 45 mile route laid out for us. If I'd be going it alone. If I'd get lost. If I'd have a flat. If I'd make it over "the wall."

The "wall" is a steep hill....a 19% grade. It is a third of a mile hill climb at about the 22 mile point in the ride.

As usual, my concerns the night before just weren't that big a deal after the sun came up. Sitting on the banks of the Paluxy River that afternoon, I had time to reflect on my lessons learned. Actually relearned. Somethings just aren't that new. They just bear repeating. Or maybe I'm just a slow learner.

Lesson numero uno: having a partner makes a HUGE difference. My best buddy, Mark, rode with me the entire way. He wasn't any more sure of being able to finish than I was. At the go / no go point about 15 miles into the ride, we both agreed to go. And we agreed that if one of us had to ask for help, we'd both ask for help. Sort of a pact to not be too macho. (As an amendment to our pact that we weren't gonna let a bunch of wienies outride us.)

Lesson numero dos: obstacles can be bigger in your mind than in person. The hill known as "the wall" was a grueling climb physically for this old guy. But it was also a big pysche job. You approach it with a steep hill sign on your right and notice the pavement changes because normal paving of this section is not possible. Your brain tells your legs, "this is not good."

You start the slow grind upwards and rapidly reach your lowest gear before you're even half way to the top. You look up to see a curve to the left which means you cannot even see the top. Your brain tells your now burning legs, "this is really not good."

Your legs yell at your brain, "NO KIDDIN' MEATHEAD...GET OFF AND WALK RIGHT NOW!"

Your brain half-way listens but keeps your head down trying not to look up in order to postpone disappointment at how much further you have to ride. Your brain also remembers other climbs that were even more disappointing because you quit just before a summit that was closer than you thought.

Your stubborn brain, though totally focused on the moment, looks up one last time, sees the top of the hill, and pleads with the legs, "just a few more turns!" The legs are too tired to talk back.

With the goal in sight, you get a few more strokes from your aching legs and actually make it to the top with a smug smile. You'd dance in celebration except that your legs would totally embarrass you...or by not working, keep you from embarrassing yourself.

These lessons apply to nonprofit organizations as well as to cyclists. Every nonprofit endeavor needs partners, allies, buddies. Can you make it alone? Maybe. But you really can go further and faster with less effort with a good partner you can trust. And if you can do that, you can do more good. (Is it about helping more people, or is it about your ego?)

There will always be hills to climb, some dauntingly steep. But you've got to try them. Even when you don't quite make it one time, it's great "ammo" for your brain to hang a little tougher a little longer so you can make it the next time. Or the next.

Keep working "heads down," focusing on the details to make things happen, but don't forget to look up to see where you're going. (Do you have a goal and a strategy on how to get there?)

In the meantime, ride safe, have fun, and try not to slobber with that big grin while you're zooming down hills.

TMI

Too much information.

You know the feeling. It's usually when your wife starts talking about female medical issues or your Uncle Hiram in Niceville starts telling you about all the desert choices at the retirement center.

But there's another, more insidious, danger from TMI besides being grossed out or bored to death. It's called reinventing the wheel.

Two things affecting everyone in the commercial and nonprofit world this century:
1) how do you do more with less?
2) how do you sort through the tons of information available today?

This isn't rocket science folks. Whether you're trying to avoid starting a redundant teen pregnancy center in a single zipcode or trying to build a high tech immigration data base to protect our borders. What you need is to find who's done this before you. Chances are good that someone has tried. Maybe even succeeded.

The problem is, how do you find out what's been done so you're not starting from scratch or building something new that turns out to be not so new?

I can't help you a whole lot with the past, just encourage you to look and dig and talk to others before you start spending lots of time and money on a "new" idea. But starting now, I can encourage you to start using "tags."

This is a popular concept in Web 2.0, but even this isn't a new concept. In 1989, my mentor persuaded me to include keywords in the subject line of EVERY email I sent. It's easy to do. It only takes a little discipline. Once done, it's amazing how easy it is to search for just the right email you need.

It's also amazing (and frustrating) how many emails I get with little or no information in the subject line. Heck, sometimes they're even asking a question about an email written hours or days before without attaching the old email. I've noticed that sometimes I have another distraction or thought after I sent that email. Until my clairvoyance gets perfected, you're just wasting time and bandwidth.

So here's the deal folks. Starting right now. Take a breath. Put a significant word or two in the subject line of each email you send. This helps sort the clutter into categories. It helps bring order out of chaos. It gives you the opportunity to tell people you are practicing folksonomy (your new word for the day).

It you want to see how well this works, check out the folks at Technorati. They've done incredible work by getting the masses to put category names on blogs, photos, music...pretty much all the garbage - and treasure - that's on the web today.

Trust me. It's gonna help your life get simpler. And it's gonna make it a lot easier for those following you to discover your brilliant ideas and apply them to changing the world. You might even get credit for it. At the very least, it will help you find the recipe for Uncle Hiram's favorite, homemade cough syrup.

Spies, Terrorists, and Donors

What in the world do these groups have in common?

From today's news: "since February of this year, none of our phones have been tapped without a court order. Don't know if I feel relieved or disappointed about that."

Indignant is probably a better description. I like my privacy. I think I guard it pretty well. But between my frequent buyer cards, my frequent flyer cards, my frequent stayer cards, and just about anything else that calls for either a plastic card or my phone number, there's not too many marketeers out there that don't know a lot about me.

So pardon me if I'm more than a little annoyed that big brother isn't listening to conversations of suspected bad guys. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of big brother. But do you really think the government has more of an agenda than all the marketeers collecting data on us??

Everyone has a right to privacy, but at what cost to the common good? Nonprofits are public organizations that must operate "in the sunshine" and at the same time protect the rights of their donors. Apparently some of our most noble np's are not very open about their operations. Ask the Smithsonian.

It's a good thing to give without expecting accolades. For those who really want to maintain their privacy, the BBB of giving acts as a watchdog that will bark loudly to insure there are plans to "take action to ensure that privacy concerns of donors are respected in the collection, dissemination, and securing of personal information, and allow donors opportunities to have their names removed from solicitation lists."

It's called a donor privacy policy. It's important to publish. It's easy to do.

On the other side of the coin, the public does have a right to know and a right to expect accountability of our funding - both expenses and income. That's not hard to solve either.

The answer to the question at the top? What do spies, terrorists, and donors have in common?

PRIVACY.

Some groups need the privacy of working in the dark to "succeed." But bad things rarely happen in the light of day.

Privacy is not a bad thing when kept it in balance. Take care of your donors. They take care of you.

Three Seconds After the Snap

It's amazing what we're trying to do now. At least what some are trying to do.

Today's college football quarterbacks need to take a football snapped from the center, drop back a few steps, look over about a hundred square yards of grass, and decide what to do with the ball. They have about three seconds to make up their mind and execute the plan...or improvise....or get crunched. That's a lot quicker than 10 years ago.

Heck, I'm from Texas. I have trouble saying a simple sentence in three seconds. Don't even ask me to put "philanthropy" in that sentence.

College teams all over the country are spending big bucks for simulators from companies like Gridiron Technologies or Visual Edge to get their qb's into a better place mentally to make quicker decisions. The Air Force Academy allegedly has their football players jumping on trampolines and reading two eye charts, one inches from their face and one 10 yards away.

Is this a trend for social capital in the 21st Century??? Wikipedia describes social capital as the "advantage created by a person's location in a structure of relationships."

College football is all about having an advantage in the relationships on the field. The game is faster than ever. There are more options than ever. The relationships are more complex than ever. The costs are higher, and there's more money at stake than ever before.

This holds true for the rest of life as well. Relationships are the common denominator. What you do to maintain healthy relationships and prepare for change in a rapidly changing world is vital.

Sure hope my bifocals stay on when I'm on the trampoline.

Diversity is Dead!

Long live diversity!
Who ya gonna believe? Google "diversity" and you'll get 93.1M hits. It's an idea, a system, an industry, a hope, an argument in waiting.

Lately, it's getting even more interesting. Is it alive or is it dead? This all started recently at The Saguaro Seminar. In a nutshell, according to renowned Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam, diversity doesn't really build better communities. His studies show that the more ethnically and religiously diverse a community is, fewer people vote; less volunteer; fewer give to charity; and less work on projects for the good of the community.

But wait, there's more. Along with a decline in civic engagement, you get an increase in economic and creative innovation. This is actually kind of funny watching the conservatives and liberals switch sides of the diversity table.

For a really good summary of this new look at diversity, immigration, and social capital see Michael Jonas's story in The Boston Globe , "The Downside of Diversity" on August 5, 2007. Is this a new incovenient truth?

This Putnam guy is one of our nation's best when it comes to studying and understanding people. He's met with both Presidents Clinton and Bush. Putnam virtually coined the concept of "social capital" aka "social networks." His contention that when social networks of friends and associates are in good shape whether in church, around your home, at work, wherever - then you will have a greater number of voting citizens living in safer, healthier communities.

Hmmm....there's a key. Social networking. Wonder if that concept will ever take off in the 21st century?? In Dallas, The Williams Institute has some very interesting research on social capital and what makes a city healthy and whole.

Maybe the best (and shortest) read on Putnam's findings is by Daniel Henninger. See "The Death of Diversity" and make up your own mind.

So what's to be learned with all this new information? Things aren't always as they seem.

The Battle at Kruger

Okay kids. It's a battle for survival. Who you gonna place your bet on? Your choices are a lion, a crocodile, a water buffalo. Actually, lets make it a baby water buffalo...a calf.

If you've not seen this video, it IS amazing. Don't read any further if you want to sustain the suspense of the ending. It's on YouTube 24x7 and national tv tonight. Joe Bob says check out the Battle at Kruger. Background to the video is on the ABC news site.

If you don't have eight minutes to watch this, then bookmark it for later. It's a fast and fascinating video. Rated PG13. Some violence, very little blood, but heavy child endangement.

If you're an animal lover, you'll start with heart in throat and end with a grin. The least among them wins! It's not the stealthiest (or sneakiest). It's not the fastest and flashiest. It's the humble water buffalo who prevails.

And why did they win? Because the herd worked together (and showed a lot of courage). Funny how this paceline thing of working together to succeed keeps popping up in the world.

Do our bovine buddies have something to teach us more advanced animals? Do you think ANY of our politicians get it??

Lets hope our nonprofits get it when they're trying to save those that are the least among us.

Parallels

This year's Tour de France ended today. Camp Esperanza ended yesterday.

The Tour de France is a 100+ year old bike race across Europe. Camp Esperanza is a 25 year old summer camp for kids fighting cancer in Texas.

Le Tour is 21 teams of 9 vying for fame and glory (and considerable monetary rewards) by racing bicycles across Europe to get to Paris first. Camp Esperanza is 10 teams of 6 volunteer counselors working with 10 groups of about 14 children ranging in age from 6 to 16. All the kids are or have been fighting cancer at Children's Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

The Tour lasts for nearly three weeks and covers over 2000 miles of beautiful European countryside. Camp Esperanza lasts for one week at the Camp John Marc facility on the border of the beautiful Texas Hill Country near Meridian, Texas.

Both have sophisticated support staffs and spend many months planning each year's event. (Camp John Marc is probably one of the premier camps for medically fragile children in the world.)

What amazes my simple mind are the remarkable parallels between these two radically different adventures. It gets back to working together. The guys on the bikes can go fast and help each other by riding in pacelines. (See my blog of July 10, 2007.) The same goes for the men and women working with the nearly 140 kids who epitomize diversity.

Three busloads of children arrive on Sunday and depart for home the following Friday. The kids range from future linebackers to some who are near the need for (or are actually in) hospice.

For some of the children, it is the first time they've been away from home. For some of their parents, it is the first time they've let go of their children since they've been diagnosed with cancer. For nearly everyone, it is the best week of the year.

It is an exhilarating, exhausting, challenging, fun, sad, hope filled week. It's tough for me to restrain myself from writing way more than you wanna read about this special week in July.

My point today is that the ONLY way the volunteer counselors get through that incredible week is by working (and playing) together.

It is a beautiful thing to see. Just like a paceline.

BTW, "esperanza" is Spanish for "hope."

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Ever wonder what a paceline really is? It's a great example of playing nice...when it works.

A typical paceline is a group of people in a hurry to get somewhere that follow in line right behind each other. Sounds kind of goofy if you remember playing follow the leader as a kid, especially when you thought it was really fun to stop all of a sudden when you were in front.

You ain't seen goofy till you've seen some guys wearing dorky little helmets matching their garishly colored spandex and riding bicycles in a paceline. And when you see this, and understand it, you might revise your opinion of what goofy is.

The Tour de France began again on Saturday with 189 riders. A bunch of crazy guys have been riding this epic bike race across France since 1903. Le Tour and Versus offers us some quality visuals on working together...or not.

The strategy of the race is pretty simple. Survive and get to the finish line first.

The tactics aren't much more complicated. Teams of nine guys ride in a line...a paceline. The first guy leads and the rest follow closely behind him using about 2/3 the effort. When the first guy gets tired, he rotates back, and someone else leads...starts pulling the team from the front.

These teams are sometimes closely choreographed and sometimes not. Most of the time the teams form a larger group or pack (the peleton) to fight the wind for the long haul. They're still working together to save energy even though they're competitors.

Sometimes a few impatient (or really ambitious) guys will break away from the pack. Those individuals will become their own ad hoc team (for a while) to work together to beat the pack. Most of the time, but not always, the larger group will catch and pass the smaller group just by working together.

Do ya get the theme here yet? This sharing the load - getting along - working together thing?

It is pretty neat and works amazingly well. Working together to go further and faster with less effort. Wow! What a concept.

So why don't more people do it? Why don't more nonprofits do it? Especially if their hearts beat to the plight of the same cause?

Who's Running the Show?

Okay, boys and girls. Time for a quiz.

According to FP (that's the catchy acronym for Foreign Policy magazine) how many nations still have monarchs as head of state?

A) 34

B) 44

C) 54

The answer is of course later in this post. In the meantime, here are some questions closer to home.

How many monarchs are running nonprofits? Optionally you can answer the following question:

Is your nonprofit being run by a monarch? Take your time. It's an essay question.

The answer may be readily apparent, or it may need to develop while you're on one of your long runs or standing under a hot shower. Wherever you do your best thinking and talking to yourself.

So what's the answer to the question on rulers in those faraway lands?

According to FP, there are 44 countries that still have a monarch as head of state. They say that's quite a bit fewer than last century, but it still seems like a lot to me. Of those 44, Queen Elizabeth reigns over 16 of them.

To put it in context, I went to my friendly spy service, the CIA World Factbook. They tell me there are 268 countries in the world. So just over 16% of the countries on this planet are ruled by some sort of potentate.

How many nonprofits being ruled by just one person? My gut tells me it is more than 16% of the total.

Is yours one of them?

You Want Fries With That Mission?

Monday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about charities getting into the franchise business to raise some extra money. Profits on the Side told of some pretty amazing gains and some pretty big losses.

"Social franchising" is what they call it at Harvard Business School. Interesting is what I call it.

Good nonprofits need to be run like a good business. Different rules. Different motives. But you still owe it to everyone involved to run it efficiently and effectively.

To be competitive, you often need to think out of the box. Before you do that, remember to tend to the basics. That starts with your board.

If you're serious about opening a franchise for your nonprofit, do you have someone on your board who already has franchise experience? More than just the smell of French fries on their clothes?

Help From The Vols

So you've got a bunch of volunteers showing up to "help" in a few weeks. What are they going to do? What are you going to do?

Which of those questions is more important?

If you just wait for them to arrive, hand 'em a bottle of water and a t-shirt, point them to the tools, and show them where to go to get started, you can get some pretty good stuff done.

Sometimes free labor is just worth what it costs.

You're competing for volunteer time with other organizations who love to use volunteers. If the time is well spent, the vols will want to come back to you.

If you're not ready to efficiently make the most of their time or if they feel like their contributions are minimal or just a band aid for what's really needed, you may not see them again.

Depending upon your staffing, you might not always be able to prepare much in advance. You may not even have a process to hand off to a temporary volunteer coordinator. It is what it is.

That just means you spend more time recruiting new volunteers...re-inventing the wheel for your next lalapalooza. What are you going to do?

It's your choice. Spend the time before the vols show up so that they make real progress, learn to love your mission, and want to come back as experienced volunteers (and recruiters), or spend the time recruiting the next batch of vols so you can throw something together and make things look good. For a while.

It's your choice. What are you trying to accomplish?

O yeah. Did I mention that good volunteers often turn into good donors of things besides time?

Today's Experts

The Wall Street Journal today says you can hire a consultant to help you name your baby. A friend of mine told me yesterday that a couple of years ago she worked part time as a consultant to individual families to help them get their high school kids into the "right" university.

If I stopped blogging right now and went for a run in my neighborhood, I'd pass at least three consultants, aka "nannies," taking their charges out for a stroll. Ah....the wonders of "outsourcing." Life in the 21st Century. Don't cha just love it!

This isn't a rant against it. I like to cook, but I often outsource our meals. I know where to go for some really good food ready to reheat and serve at home. The chefs at Whole Foods and Central Market are terrific! Those folks are experts at making good, healthy food.

There are lots of "experts" out there. An old joke is that an "x" is an unknown factor. A "spurt" is a drip of water under pressure. Therefore an "expert" is an unknown drip under pressure.

Experts are often called consultants. If they come from out of town, they're more of an expert. Or not. They are unknown, but rarely are drips.

Through 20+ years of selling computer systems to large corporations, I mostly practiced consultive selling myself. Some things, especially complex things, are just not a quick sell.

Frankly, more than consulting, I probably did more coaching, advising, encouraging, and gathering of experts, technical wizards, and gurus to solve problems for my customers. I've always been a little suspicious of the consultant who is also the guru.

Business author Michael Treacy says that "there are way more gurus than there are new ideas." There are new tools for the 21st Century, but basic, good ideas are centuries old.

If your organization is looking for a consultive guru, it might be wise to read "Bad Consultant Confidential" in the Chronicles of Philanthropy. If you're a new nonprofit, I highly recommend a subscription to the Chron.

In a nutshell, the article says that good consultants can really help, but a bad choice can at a minimum lose you considerable time and money. It goes on to say that consultants need to thoroughly understand your organization. That means they're either a really quick study or they have previous experience with organizations similar to your size and your mission.

You also need to be prepared for additional work if change is to truly be implemented. Change will probably not happen quickly. And it will only happen if you act. (I've coached one nonprofit that listens politely and smiles at my recommendations. Little action has yet to occur.)

Finally, if your income is weak, don't count on magic bullets from a development guru to help you raise funds. There's no speed dating in this game. Relationships with funders are everything. Good, solid relationships take time.

Now we're back to one of those basic, good ideas that is centuries old.

Social Venture Capital

venture |ˈven ch ər|
noun
a risky or daring journey or undertaking : pioneering ventures into little-known waters.
• a business enterprise involving considerable risk.

So whadayagit when you gather a hundred smart people willing to risk several thousand dollars and hundreds of hours every year to make a difference? The answer in North Texas is the Dallas Social Venture Partners (DSVP).

Just returned from an intro to DSVP in preparation for this year's grant cycle. I'm impressed. This is venture capital at its best. The capital is not just their bucks, but their brains and hearts to assist nonprofits in capacity building.

By December, DSVP will select one or two nonprofits focusing on youth-at-risk and edu issues and help those orgs start attaining some really big goals. The help comes from investments by the partners in the form of funding, and more significantly in the form of expertise...critical skill sets of every type that well run organizations in any business need to succeed.

What a concept! Increasing your joy to stuff ratio and working together to change the world.

This will be fun to watch. Sort of reminds me of a paceline.

So What's Next?

There's always something next. Okay, so this isn't one of those really profound blogs. What'd you expect from an Aggie?

The bigger question is how do you prepare for and react to what's next? You can prepare so much that you don't get anything else done. "Be Prepared" (p. 96 of the Boy Scout Handbook) is sometimes easier said than done.

Do you have a business continuity plan? It's very important, but even commercial businesses with tons of money tend to ignore preparing for really stormy days.

There are lots of components to lose sleep over. What will you do for emergency fundraising? I'm not talking about making up for lousy funding because your development people are afraid to ask or write grant proposals like a remedial English class. (That sounds more like an HR issue.)

I'm talking about things like Texas tornadoes, runaway cars, plumbing leaks in the attic, criminal acts in the front door...all the things that probably won't happen. They always happen to someone else. Right?

What's your crisis communication plan? If you suddenly have a missing child, do you have anything in place better than the PA announcement that birthday cake is ready in the kitchen? Who's prepared to be the voice of your nonprofit? Who's authorized to be that voice?? Think about it.

None of this is fun. Business interruption...life interruption can be a real hassle. How you react is as important as being prepared. It's part of the preparation.

If you're a basketball fan, watch the Krzyzewski coached team at Duke react to things when something doesn't go their way. There's no time lost throwing their arms in the air or yelling at the refs (as if we even have refs in our game). Their immediate reaction is "what's next?" They focus on getting back in the game right now...preparing for what's next. That's a pretty healthy way to live your life or run your nonprofit.

There are ways to prepare both physically and mentally for that curve ball that's suddenly heading towards your nose at 85 mph. (Can ya tell I'm a guy who loves sports?) Physical preparation may be as simple as just thinking about your nightmares and writing down the first two or three things you'll do. That's a good start.

With that, you've also begun your mental preparation...thinking about what things might get in the way of your normal life so that when you react...when you jump out of the batter's box...you're the only one who knows that you're about to croak inside.

When you're prepared, you'll be amazed at what you can do (and who you can inspire) when you stay cool and rapidly adjust to the "new normal." It can make all the difference in the world to you, your organization, and to the people you serve.

The Slow, Rolling Start

Strong trees grow slowly. I've learned (but don't always practice) that a warm-up steadily increasing in intensity will get me into my best game faster than if I just jump right in.

So I begin.

Starting is so important. Kind 'uv like just showing up. My dad always said, "Plan your work, and work your plan." It's often easy (and safe) for us left brainers to plan. But plans are useless without action.

Perfect plans (another means of safety for the a/r among us) are things of beauty. Heaven is indeed in the details. But the perfect can often get in the way of good.

Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. observed that "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan executed next week." Now I'm not recommending violent plans for nonprofits. Patton's job was the business of war making. Violence was expected.

But the business of nonprofits is to change the world. If you're not executing a good plan, you're wasting time and money. More significantly, those you're trying to help are still waiting for your help.

If you're trying to change the world, you need a good plan. If your nonprofit is mostly just herding cats, you'd better make some time to answer the big question:

What's next?