The Bamboo Project Blog

Tech Tools--Vizu Web Polls

People love polls. Not long-winded customer service surveys, but those quickie little multiple choice or yes/no polls that ask a single provocative or fun question like "Do you think the Democrats will regain control of Congress?" You'll find them all over the web. They are a fixture on social networking sites such as MySpace and on many blogs.

I've recently begun using one free, easy to use tool available from Vizu. (See the poll in the upper right corner of our site--it was created with Vizu).

After signing up for my account (which took about 3 minutes), I was able to move immediately into creating my first poll. Vizu walks you through the process, letting you type in your question and potential answers in any form you want. You select one or more categories for your poll, which you can make available to all Vizu users or only to people you designate through a password protected option. (I haven't used that version so I'm not totally sure how it works).

You can also select the start and end times for your poll and how you want results to show (bar graph anyone?). Once the poll is completed, you can preview it and then post your poll to the Vizu site. They then offer you the option of exporting the poll to your own blog or site, providing multiple choices for HTML code.

TypePad users (I'm one) will find Vizu particularly easy to install. You just click on a button that says "Install TypePad Widget" and then you can select the blog where you want to install the poll. Other users will find it only slightly more complicated--basically a copy/paste to your blog template, although you do have to have some idea of how your template works.The whole thing is incredibly simple and, frankly, a little addictive as I find myself thinking in terms of poll questions now.

Keep in mind that if you make the poll public, it's possible that people who participate in your poll are doing so through Vizu rather than through your site, so it wouldn't be a good way to do a customer survey (SurveyMonkey is a good, cost-effective option for that type of poll). But Vizu offers the opportunity to inform and to have fun, as well as to supplement material on your blog by calling attention to it through your poll.

Good "blog bling" for my money.

Michele

More On Video Social Networking

Join the conversation on key learnings around video and the benefits/drawbacks for NPOs.

Loyalty Can Work for Your Organization

Non-profits state that competing with corporate America for talent is difficult. I think that's because non-profits try to act like corporate America. Recently, I listened to Executive Directors of multiple non-profits lament their inability to offer competitive salaries. I think this is limited thinking.

Competitive salaries are an important part of the equation, but a non-profit that really makes a commitment to a strong organizational culture that engages in "high-commitment" HR practices can, in my opinion, offset this disadvantage. High commitment is the new phrasing for what was the traditional loyalty exchange between a company and an employee. This "loyalty" pact was mutually beneficial. It stated that in exchange for hard work and company loyalty, the employee could expect back fair treatment and a thing that was called "job security."

If you will indulge me for a moment while I review corporate changes in the employer-employee relationship, I think you'll see my point. In the eighties corporate America became "leaner" and meaner" and cut costs through lay-offs. This became the standard operating procedure to make a corporate financial statement look good to potential buyers. It is a short-term strategy that many adopted because the idea was that human capital was a commodity like any other raw material. In the abstract, I agree, but in practical terms, I think an organization that views its employees as commodities is not looking toward the future. The plastic used to make widgets, doesn't think and feel. Humans do.

The result of this attitude toward human resources, is a marked decrease in productivity according to several studies. In the article, High Commitment, Strong Performance: Companies Can Have Both, the author provides examples from multiple studies on this subject. Interestingly, the article states that studies indicate that a lack of mutual commitment between employers and employees is highly correlated with negative employee behaviors and weaker financial performance.

How does that help non-profits attract and retain good talent? By giving your employees something not highly valued in corporate America: satisfaction of working for the public good and a commitment to fair treatment. A high commitment HR management system is built on these fundamental management beliefs:

• Reciprocity- Demonstration of a mutually beneficial relationship for both employer and employee.
• Trust and confidence- Treating employees with trust in their competence. Genuine opportunities are presented for the employee to gain further skills and grow. In retrun, employees trust the motives of the organization and demonstrate that trust through work ethic and public discussion of the organization.
• Social memory- Both employer and employee remembers good behavior in difficult times. This leads to mutually respectful treatment whether the company is going through difficult times or the employee. The author of the article has some interesting thoughts on this. I believe this is built through the demonstration of reciprocity, trust and confidence.

Adoption of these practices does not mean instilling a system in which a poor performing employee is guaranteed employment, but it does mean installation and commitment to strong employee evaluation and feedback as part of your system. There are ways in which to deal with mismatches of talent and job without demeaning either party.

If your organization is willing to make this part of its culture, start using it in your job postings and interviews. Have a staff retreat that explains this commitment to your employees. Be clear about expectations on both sides and introduce your staff evaluation system. Become known for a commitment to your mission and your employees. This approach can and will attract quality employees. High commitment HR practices matched with your mission can be a powerful incentive.

Just my thoughts,

Jann

Dollar Philanthropy

Carol Kirshner is proving that you don't have to be wealthy to be a philanthropist. She's started Dollar Philanthropy to encourage ordinary people to give $52 a year--$1/week--to worthy causes and is using her blog to spread the word about worthy charities:

My plan is to research and highlight one nonprofit per week.  I will give you all the contact information, important links and information about what they do.  Admittedly, here at the beginning a number of the nonprofits will be based in Georgia (where I live) because I already know about them.  I promise to expand to other states as I begin to get a feel for what this entails.

A featured blog on Typepad, Carol's site is focusing primarily on small and medium-sized non-profits because as she notes:

Well....  I suppose the choice is based on my belief that small & medium nonprofits are more nimble than larger ones.  I think they are more able to mobilize to meet the immediate needs of the community around them.  Also, it is my opinion that a greater percentage of the money goes directly to the cause versus overhead.

I know this is a broad, sweeping generalization and that all nonprofits are not the same. There indeed plenty of schisters out there.  I also understand that big nonprofits do good work too. However, those folks have more resources at their command to be able to raise funds and make things happen.  I've chosen small and medium organizations because they need the help.

It's an interesting concept that offers some interesting opportunities. Obviously as Carol builds her blog, she will be giving a sort of "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" that in the blogosphere may carry some weight. She is also providing a forum for smaller and medium-sized NPOs to be noticed. And clearly she is developing a simple, powerful marketing message--"Give a $1 a week and I'll help you decide where to do that by doing the research and making it easier for you to make up your mind."

I noticed that Carol is using Constant Contact (a post for another day) to send e-mail updates to her regular readers to let them know when she's updated her site. While hardcore bloggers will have a news aggregator, Carol has recognized that the vast majority of people don't have a clue what an aggregator is, so she sends e-mails to her list when she adds new content to her site. This is a great way to maintain relationships with her "customers."

The site is in its early stages, but I hope that as Carol builds her encyclopedia of charities, she'll begin to categorize them for easy viewing and selection. I think a lot of people start out wanting to help "children" or "animals" and that it would be helpful if they could see all the choices related to their interests in a single section.

If you want to list your NPO or see who else she's researching, check out Dollar Philanthropy. The site is worth the read.

DoGooderTV--YouTube for Non-Profits

Previously we talked about using YouTube to provide a videoshowcase for non-profits. But now via Dollar Philanthropy (a later post is coming on that), I see that C3 has started DoGooderTV, a video social networking site specifically for non-profits.

According to the DoGooderTV site:

DoGooderTV enables nonprofit organizations to present new videos and existing media assets to new audiences. Once site visitors see the compelling stories of nonprofits, DoGooderTV gives them a direct way to donate to the organization, join, volunteer or simply find out more information.

Interested 501C3s may sign up for a free account which provides them with a free web page, 100 MB of space to store their videos and the opportunity for viewers to donate, volunteer, etc. While the link to donations is currently a link back to the organization's site, C3 is in the process of working with a third party provider to have a "Donate Now" button included as part of your web page. This would allow viewers to click on the button and donate immediately, which as we all know, can sometimes be the difference between getting a donation or not getting one.

Read more about DoGooderTV and Carol's interview with C3 CEO Michael Hoffman at Dollar Philanthropy.

UPDATE--As you can see from the comments, Carol has posted a more extensive version of her interview with Michael Hoffman at her site, Driving in Traffic. Part One is up now and Part Two will be coming soon. Check it out.

If the Job Fits . . .

Built to Last, as I've mentioned before, is one of my all-time favorite organizational development reads. It reiterates something I've found to be true in my 20-year career--organizational culture has a profound impact on how business is done in any organization. In a way that's a big "duh," but it's something that often gets lost in the shuffle.

  While I think that organizations have a responsibility to themselves and to their workers to appropriately screen for culture fit during the hiring process, I also think that potential applicants need to do some screening for themselves. Throughout my career, I've found that there's a tendency for many people to assume that if the organization wants them, then they must want to work there. That can be a BAD assumption for both parties.

Jim Citrin supports my case and provides some suggestions for ensuring that the job fits YOU as much as you fitting the job. Job responsibilities, money, lifestyle and tradeoffs are Jim's primary criteria. To this list I would add two other items:

• Values--how well do the organization's values jibe with your personal values? This can be a tricky thing to find out in the interview phase, as often the organization's stated values are not actually supported by its behavior. If possible, I think it's important to ask about organizational values, as well as the organizational activities that demonstrate those values. For example, if they value "collaboration," what are some of the ways in which the organization's day-to-day activities support this value?

I also find that job seekers themselves aren't always clear about what is important to them, so a certain amount of self-assesment must occur prior to beginning the job search process. If you're not clear about what's important to you, then it will be difficult to determine if the organization meshes with what you want.

• Use of Your Strengths--will both the job and the organization help you capitalize on your strengths? While technically this might fall into the category of matching yourself to your job responsiblities, I think the critical point here is that you want to find work that maximizes your opportunties to focus on what you do best and minimizes work that plays to your weaknesses. I think that organizations would like to see this happen, too.

Marcus Buckingham in Now Discover Your Strengths, does a fabulous job of describing the importance of knowing your what you do well and finding work that allows you to do that. His perspective is that we tend to have things we do well and things that we don't do well and that in the broadest terms, these tend to be relatively fixed characteristics. For example, while an individual who is not a "people person" can learn how to interact appropriately, he is NEVER going to be as effective in working with people as the individual to whom that trait comes naturally.

I tend to agree with this observation and have made a habit of continually seeking work that allows me to leverage my strengths and, to the extent possible, minimize my weaknesses. I learned long ago that I need to avoid work that requires me to do extensive paperwork, apply rules, or think "inside the box" on a routine basis. Instead, I seek opportunities that leverage my abilities as a systems-thinker, generator of ideas and developer. Since adopting this policy, I've been much happier and far more successful, both in terms of accomplishments as well as financially.

While I would love it if job seekers did this kind of thinking and matching for themselves, my years as an HR Director taught me that it's usually not the case. So, because having a good organizational fit is so important to the creation of culture, as well as for job retention and productivity, I think it's incumbent on organizations to find ways to help job seekers think through these things themselves. To do this, I would suggest including questions in both your application and interview process that allow  you and the applicant to reflect on these ideas. For example:

• What are your personal work values? What are the things that are really important to you in your work?

• How do you think  our organization matches with those values?

• What would you need in your daily work life to feel that you were living your values?

• What do you perceive to be your key strengths as a worker?

• What aspects of the job as we've described it to you play to your strengths?

• If you could make this job be entirely about what you do best, how would you restructure it?

Ideally job seekers would come to you with these things already figured out. But for those times when it's not the case, I think it's worth some extra probing and discussion to help both you and the applicant decide if you're the right fit for her.

Photo from absolblogginlutely

"Today I Applied for Food Stamps and an Abortion"

It's been my experience that after a few years on the job, it can be easy to forget why we do what we do, particularly if we work with some of society's most downtrodden. Whatever youthful optimism we may have brought to the job initially can fly out the door once we've spent some time in the trenches.

But of course with that optimism can go our compassion and our motivation. It can be very easy to get caught up in the requirements of paperwork and case notes and fundraising and a million other things that have nothing to do with actually helping people. I've been guilty of this myself, so I know whereof I speak.

I don't think this has to happen, though, if as organizations we require staff to put themselves in customer's shoes at least once a year. Look what happened to Keely Stevenson who spent a day posing as a single mom, pregnant with another child and in need of services because her abusive boyfriend would no longer be supporting her:

"The woman from HRA was very nice to me, but I had a tough time understanding her. I didn't have my social security card or birth certificate, so she couldn't process my paperwork. I didn't have an address and she said I needed some address or they couldn't issue me anything. She had no idea where I could get a social security card, and I was all out of money (had given it to Micky and Annie outside Taco Bell), so I couldn't call anywhere to find out. I certainly couldn't go to my boyfriend's house to get it because we were hiding from him since he abused my son and me. When I told her I was 2 months pregnant and needed a doctor, she said it didn't matter until I was four months pregnant. There were so many confusing components of the conversation because she was thinking of her system and I was thinking of my needs- a miss match. If I was a shy, less confident person, I might have just made assumptions and accepted that I couldn't get help. Instead I asked more questions and finally found out that I could get food stamps the same day if I had my and my son's social security card and that it takes about a week to open a case for Medicaid, child care services, shelter assistance, domestic violence services, etc. I told her I would try to get some ID (somehow) and come back tomorrow.

I was so overwhelmed and was empathetic of my own story (since it was really a story of so many women I have met before), I felt hopeless. Tears actually began to stream down my face."

So after less than a day as one of the women she serves, Keely knows helplessness and grief in a way she could never have known just sitting at her desk. The beauty of Keely's experience is that it reminded her of why she works where she does. It gave her a street-side, on-the-ground, in-your-face picture of what it means to be a poor, young single mother who is pregant and alone.  It forced her to experience life from the inside--and it changed her.

Now imagine an organization that required this as a regular part of it's ongoing professional development process.  Imagine an agency that required  staff at all levels of to spend a day as a homeless vet and then participate in a facilitated discussion on what they learned. What if staff had to be "blind' for the day and then write about what they experienced? Or what if they shadowed a client with AIDs, using video footage and interviews to tell the customer's story?

Building this kind of "experiential learning" into the professional development process could have a powerful impact on both staff's ability to empathize with the people they help, as well as on their motivation to come in day after day after day. It could re-energize and re-invigorate  them and it could help them find new ways to do what they do. 

Unfortunately, I haven't seen this kind of thing going on too much, although I'm not sure why. Do you know of any organizations that do this kind of customer experience? Or any ideas on why they don't?
 

When We Have to Practice What We Preach

I was doing some surfing today and found Charles King's essay, "The Need for a New Paradigm: Social Entrepreneurship" in Powering Social Change, a publication from Community Wealth Ventures. King, President and CEO of Housing Works in New York, urges non-profits to embrace social entrepreneurship as their primary form of income generation for a variety of reasons. But one that really got my attention was this:

As Mike Burns of Pioneer Human Services explains, “What we try to tell our clients is that they need to take responsibility for their own lives because, if they don’t, nobody’s going to take that responsibility for them. It’s all about building self-sufficiency. And if we’re going to get our clients to be self-sufficient, it’s only going to happen if we, as an organization, are prepared to role-model that and take responsibility for being self-sufficient ourselves.” I think that applies to so many nonprofits across the country and in Canada.

This is something I've thought about before, how organizations can unwittingly communicate exactly the opposite of what they intend. To me social entrepreneurship should stand on its own merits as the most viable option for the long-term health and growth of any NPO. But it becomes even more important when the mission of an organization is to help people become self-sufficient. Before such NPOs start telling clients to stop expecting "free money,' they need to look at what they're doing to reinforce this expectation.

If you want to read more on social entrepreneurship and why non-profits need a paradigm shift, check out Powering Social Change.

Carnival of Non-Profit Consultants

Catch the latest at FlIP's place on young professionals in philanthropy.

When Your Drowning in Data and There Isn't a Drop of Impact to Drink

The Stanford Social Innovation Review has a must-read article posted on their site. It looks at the issue of "accountability" and how funders are increasingly demanding reams of data to prove that the money they give to non-profits is well-spent. (ALERT--Little of this will surprise you, but most of it will depress you).

The article notes that while grounded in good intentions, there are a number of problems with the current "data-driven" approach:

• Every funder wants different data, presented on their forms and analyzed according to their requirements. For organizations that are working with a number of different funders, this can make data collection and analysis a full-time job. According to the article:

"Because funders have their own home-brewed definitions, methods, and measures, many nonprofits spend a lot of time tailoring their reporting to each funder’s tastes. 'Every single grantor we have has a different evaluation tool or format or criteria they want us to use, and we measure all of them,' says the executive director of a nonprofit in Northern California who wanted to remain anonymous. 'Once you get it down and can fill it out quickly and easily, it changes and they want different information than they were asking for before. It takes time away from what we actually get to do with people.'” (Sound familiar?)

• Funders generally don't want to fund the evaluation component. In most grants, the costs of collecting and analyzing data will either have to come from the administrative allotment (generally no more than 10% of the grant total and increasingly only 5%) or from some other source. At the same time, they want more data and more analysis, making the process even more expensive.

• Nobody can agree on the best methods and options for evaluation. Should you be measuring impact or gathering data to improve the process? Should you gather qualitative data or quantitative data? Should you evaluate individual programs or the entire organization? And since you get what you measure, this confusion can often create issues around the actual performance you get. We've previously discussed the fact that when you focus on outcomes, you often don't get the quality process you want. But if you focus only on process, how do you know if you achieved impact?

• "Summative" or impact evaluation is expensive and complex. The only way to TRULY measure whether or not your program or organization "made a difference" with your clientele is to have a control group that didn't receive your services and then track various data points for both groups. This is time-consuming, costly and most staff wouldn't have a clue how to set up such a process. It also raises ethical issues as many organizations would be very uncomfortable refusing services to a population just to have them in the control group.

• Social change works differently than profit. In the business world, profit is the easiest and quickest measure of "success." There is no such analog in the non-profit world; there is no single measure that cuts across all programs that would give us a good idea of how well the organization is operating. Further, as the article points out, social change works at "the speed of molasses. A program that looks like a failure at year 2 or 3 might be a raging success 20 years from now." But of course we often don't get a chance to find that out.

Probably the most disheartening take-away from the article is the experience of Rubicon Programs, which invested in a sophisticated data collection and management system so that they could provide funders with good data cut any way they wanted it.

Before Rubicon installed its data system, the organization faced a struggle familiar to many nonprofits, says Rick Aubry, the organization’s executive director. Each funder demanded different data, reported on different forms. The result was that many staff spent large chunks of their time generating the one-off data, while several directors spent large chunks of their time filling in the one-off forms.

Despite all of the time and money that Rubicon invested in creating these reports, they contributed little to improving the program’s effectiveness. Funders seldom asked Rubicon to explore ways that it could improve its services. Instead, they often wanted to know only how Rubicon spent their money. These reports “added zero value to our decision making, and did not help us improve our services,” says Aubry.

With its powerful new evaluation system in place, Rubicon can now deliver data to its myriad funders in all kinds of permutations, with time and resources left over to collect the numbers that it wants for itself. Ironically, the system has uncovered a new problem: Most funders don’t actually care about the data.

“Everyone says they want to be data-driven in their decision making. But now we have all of this robust data, and it doesn’t seem to have any effect on funders’ decisions,” says Aubry. “From the viewpoint of financial sustainability, we are no better off than before.”

What really seems to drive funding--surprise!--is the whim of funders:

"Carolyn Roby has reached a similar conclusion from her perch as the vice president of the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota: “Big changes in funding strategy are not the result of unhappiness about the impact of previous grantmaking. It’s just that someone gets a whim.

“Ten years ago in the Twin Cities, for example, employment was the big issue,” says Roby. “Now, the sexy new thing is ready-for-kindergarten programs. It’s not like our employment problems have been solved, or that our employment programs were bad. It’s just that pre-K is hot, hot, hot. It drives me nuts.”

The converse is also true – there are plenty of programs that are not proven effective, but that still bask in the warm glow of federal funding. DARE, which places police officers in classrooms to teach kids about the hazards of drug use, and abstinence-only interventions for teenage pregnancy have yet to show that they are better than – or even, in some cases, as good as – other programs.^{8, 9} Yet DARE has been continuously funded for several decades, and abstinence-only programs show no signs of falling out of favor."

The article suggests that if possible,  most organizations should ditch summative evaluation, as it's too difficult and complex to manage. Further, it discourages innovation and change:

“Innovations by their nature are adapting solutions to conditions of uncertainty,” he notes. “And so when you want people to be innovative, what you need is a process that allows you to try out things, alter things, change things, get feedback, and adapt.” Summative evaluations require the opposite of innovation: deliver the same program over and over again, regardless of whether conditions change."

The article also suggests that funders should be partnering with other funders to consolidate evaluation requirements so that NPOs don't have to satisfy hundreds of different funder requests. They should also be partnering with NPOs to turn evaluation into opportunities for learning, rather occasions for judgment.  The overall goal should be to create a culture of inquiry in which data is used to find successful models of change that can be used on the front-end to design good programs rather than on the back end to judge failure or success by, at best, dubious means.

For more information, you can download the article. You may also want to explore The Center For What Works, which is developing common evaluation frameworks for a wide variety of programs, as well as providing Benchmarking Toolkits to teach NPOs more effective evaluation processes.