Blogs

The following Washington Post story highlights an issue that many nonprofit boards must face at some point: when is donor money "too" tainted? The question, presumably answered through long and tedious debates, is about values and of course, just how much a particular board's values are worth in the pursuit of mission. And, in the pursuit of mission, why doesn't "any means" justify the "ends"? The story about the National Parks asks these questions while recognizing that the "public" via Congress has opted to not fully support Park preservation and service. What to do? In the case of the Park Service, philanthropic sponsorship, corporate specifically, offsets the costs of doing its job. Is it really so bad that Budweiser or Subaru or Starbucks sees opportunity to position themselves as supporters of the Parks while simultaneously positioning their brand and sales opportunities? Is this really "selling-out"? At this point I am not so inclined to think the answer is "yes". I'm also not so imaginative that I can think of when these sponsorships begin to diminish what the Parks have to offer. I do however believe that it is incumbent upon the honchos or perhaps even the Congress to establish guidelines for what does diminish the Parks - put it in writing and make it clear. This is what I would expect of any nonprofit board who will likely face similar challenges. After all, are we really offended by all the corporations who have jumped on-board to support breast cancer research?

Here's the story.
Park Service and corporate advertising, a dangerous mix
By Joe Davidson | Columnist May 9

National Park Service (NPS) rangers won’t be decorated with corporate logos à la NASCAR drivers, but the agency’s plan to allow advertising-like recognition of donors, including a beer maker, flirts with making national parks resemble ballparks.

The plan is outlined in “Director’s Order #21: Philanthropic Partnerships,” as my colleague Lisa Rein also has reported, and is designed “to create positive philanthropic partnerships with the NPS and on its behalf.”

Those partners are donors who boost the Park Service budget. But they often want more than a good feeling in return.

Although NPS expects the proposal, initially issued in 2006 and updated in March, to take effect by the end of this year, the impact is already evident. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published in December carries a photo of a Park Service car adorned with this Subaru advertising — “Built to take you to the place you’ve never been.”

The Park Service is being taken to a dubious place.

“Large corporate donations exert a not-so-subtle gravitational pull on park managers increasingly dependent on these donors for their budgets,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “We are concerned that influence peddling will soon become a major recreational activity in our national parks.”

GAO also is concerned.

A 2009 GAO report lists several potential risks to NPS from these donor relationships, including:

“Partner exerts undue influence over Park Service priorities”
“Public confidence in the Park Service is compromised”
“Parks and Park Service become commercialized.”

An indicator of the last risk, GAO said, is “Corporate donations made to parks or partners and tied to advertising.”

Already parks hoist banners with Budweiser beer and other corporate logos. Where will it stop? Can you imagine Disney presents Yellowstone?

While allowing corporations and other donors to get too deeply involved in any government service presents conflicts of interest, the Park Service apparently felt it was driven to this point because of inadequate government funding.

“DO21,” Park Service shorthand for the order, “is intended to empower NPS employees to take a more active role in the philanthropic process, but by no means requires it,” Park Service spokesman Jeffrey G. Olson said by email. “The realities of NPS funding or lack thereof mean that private dollars are going to be increasingly more important as we move forward and the expectations and responsibilities of the Park Service grow. DO21 simply recognizes this evolution.”

Does this evolution mean federal employees will become increasingly more involved with corporate pitchmen because Congress won’t adequately fund the parks?

Congressional appropriations for the Park Service fell 8 percent, adjusted for inflation, from fiscal years 2005 through 2014, according to GAO. Yet, “Fees, donations, and other funding sources … increased 39 percent after adjusting for inflation.”

Cozy relationships pay off, but at a cost – the credibility of a federal agency and its employees.

“For me as a federal employee and a taxpayer, I think it is unethical … to be advertising for a corporation,” said a Park Service superintendent who insisted on anonymity, fearing retaliation from superiors.

This employee said some NPS staffers are pressured to spend a significant amount of time fundraising and working with donors, who sometimes want special accommodations, such as access to park areas off-limits to the public.

“I was shocked when I read the director’s order,” the superintendent said.

Perhaps it should not be so shocking given the source.

The latest update on these donor partnerships comes less than three months after NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis was reprimanded. Michael Connor, the Interior Department’s undersecretary, said he would dismiss Jarvis from his role as manager of the Park Service’s ethics program after the director wrote a book with an ironic title: “Guidebook to American Values and Our National Parks.”

In February, the department’s inspector general reported the book was “published by Eastern National, a nonprofit that has cooperating agreements with NPS to operate stores and sell merchandise in numerous national parks.” Jarvis was not charged with receiving any money from the publication. Nonetheless, the inspector general’s report said Jarvis “approved Eastern National’s use of NPS’ ‘arrowhead’ logo on the book’s cover” and did not inform the department’s ethics office of his activity.

After reviewing the findings, Connor, in a memo to the inspector general’s office, said the department has “come to the conclusion that Director Jarvis did violate Federal employee ethics standards.”

Now, with his order, the entire Park Service is adopting Jarvis’s ethical standard — such as it is.

Nonprofits across Greater New Haven inspired a spirit of giving last week during The Great Give^® 2016. Nearly $1.4 million was raised by the online giving event to support a broad range of organizations working in the arts, basic needs, education, environment, and other sectors that, taken together, strengthen the entire Greater New Haven community.

“It’s a great way for us to spread our mission throughout the community,” said John Noonan, director of development for Christian Community Action, which raised $9,500 in support of its work to aid, shelter and advocate for poor families in New Haven. “We had a record number of donors and we’re very happy with enthusiasm the that this was able to generate.” Continue reading.

There's still time to join a team and race in the Canal Dock/New Haven Dragon Boat Regatta on June 4th at Long Wharf Pier. A mixed crew is coming together and several seats remain. A team-building, high-flying, harbor & river tour practice session will take place Friday evening, June 3, from 6-7 PM. Reserve your spot by contacting the regatta manager today. The fee is $100/paddler (or drummer if that's your thing!), and as soon as we hit 18 takers the race is on. Send an email today to: manager@dragonboatregatta.canaldock.org

Don't miss out on some free fitness for the entire family. Beyond Fitness was honored to participate for its 3rd Year at the Fair Haven Family Stroll. Incase you missed all the fun check out the link ;) Here

Life after a traumatic injury or illness might never be the same. But it still can be lived to the fullest. Helping such patients recover to this level is the mission of Gaylord Hospital.  

“It’s not good enough to say you’re going to go home and watch TV. If you want to be an athlete, or return to something else that gives your life meaning, we’ll help you achieve your goals,” says Tara Knapp, Vice President of Development, Public Relations and Marketing at Gaylord. 

Licensed as a Long Term Acute Care Hospital, Gaylord treats patients who were released from short-term hospitals but still have long roads to recovery. The patients have medically complex injuries and illnesses such as spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, often combined with other conditions. 

“What makes us so special is our depth of expertise for very specialized illnesses,” says Knapp. 

Gaylord is also renowned for assisting patients long after they leave the hospital. Its adaptive sports program draws people with physical disabilities from all over New England. It offers equipment for more than a dozen games and activities, including rugby, waterskiing, rock climbing, and golf. The hospital also has a garage filled with adaptive bicycles and other equipment, and even runs a para-triathlon team.

“We’re all about living life to the fullest extent possible,” Knapp says. Read more.

The Child Nutrition Reauthorization legislation currently being discussed in Congress includes a provision that could eliminate several New Haven schools from access to free school meals, would impact several New Haven high schools food programs, and would seriously impact the Summer Meals program, through changing the guidelines for community eligibility, thus undoing many of the gains our community has made over the past few years to reduce childhood hunger in New Haven.
 
The New Haven Food Policy Council is asking concerned residents to consider doing the following:

1.       Contact Rosa DeLauro, as a resident, and voice your support for her opposition of the current legislation.  Rosa is standing with us, and she needs a strong showing of support from her district. Information is in the letter below. Call Rosa at 202-225-3661 or fax her a letter to 202-225-4890, or mail it to: The Honorable Rosa DeLauro, 2413 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC  20515

2.       Contact people you know who work in organizations that benefit kids and/or teens, and ask them to use the template below, to draft a letter, which they will fax to Rosa’s office: 202-225-4890 or mail to: The Honorable Rosa DeLauro, 2413 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC  20515

3.       Contact anyone you know who benefits from their child/grandchild having free meals in their school, and ask them to call Rosa’s office to share their story: 202-225-3661.

Please act by Monday, May 9th, since action will be taken on this legislation next week. Thank you for your support in securing this important resource for New Haven!
______________________________

Sample Letter to Rep. Rosa DeLauro in Opposition to the House Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016 (H.R. 5003)

Dear Representative DeLauro,

I am are writing to support you opposition to the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Chairman Rokita’s bill reauthorizing the child nutrition programs, the “Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016” (H.R. 5003).  As [insert your role here], I strongly oppose several provisions of the bill as they would significantly increase the administrative burden of operating the school meal programs, divert school nutrition program resources and staff time away from providing nutritious meals to students, and inevitably impede access to school meals for many vulnerable students.

The Chairman’s bill significantly weakens the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal option in its second year of nationwide implementation that reduces administrative work and increases school lunch and breakfast access in high-poverty schools. The bill proposes to reduce substantially the number of high-poverty schools that are eligible to implement community eligibility. In New Haven, this would impact at least 10 schools directly, and would compromise the access to free meals for students in our magnet high schools, as well as access to meals for hungry kids during the summer. To quote our School Food Service Director, Gail Sharry, “How do we pick which schools would be taken off the list?”.  Choosing any school will lead to kids facing hunger and a decreased ability to thrive in school.  We consider that result to be absolutely unacceptable.

Many schools in the 40 to 60 percent Identified Student-range, including New Haven, that would no longer be eligible under this proposal, have very high concentrations of poverty – typically between 64 and 96 percent. Those, like our school district, that are currently participating have made a determination at the local level that the program is financially viable and want to ensure the nutritional needs of their students are met. Such schools should continue to have the option to implement community eligibility to support the academic achievement and health of their students. Taking this program away from the thousands of schools already participating would be a step backwards for schools leading to more paperwork and administrative burden.

Additionally, the bill dramatically increases school meal application verification requirements in ways that inevitably would cause eligible students to lose access to free or reduced-price school meals. The number of household applications to be verified would increase significantly for thousands of school districts, creating unnecessary paperwork burdens for schools and families. A disproportionate number of the most vulnerable students, such as those who are homeless, migrant, immigrant or have limited English proficiency, would be particularly likely to fall through the cracks in the process and lose access to school meals even though they are eligible.

Any increase in the amount of applications would further stretch limited administrative and school nutrition staff time for all school districts—rural, suburban, and urban. Every dollar spent to verify school meal applications is a dollar diverted from the food and labor costs necessary to provide healthy meals to students. Schools across Kentucky and in our district are working hard to provide healthy and appealing meals—this proposal would undermine these efforts.

I strongly support your opposition to this bill as it does not lay out a path by which the reauthorization process can move forward and benefit the millions of children in need of help from the programs. This legislation instead will significantly reduce access to the school nutrition programs, significantly increase administrative burden for schools, and harm children’s nutrition and health, exacerbating the problems that the programs are designed to address.

       Sincerely,
       [Your name]
       [Your organization or role]

Hello !!!

A new season of lectures/tours will begin this coming weekend May 7th and May 8th.

So each Saturday beginning with May7th the tour begins at 11:00am. Each Sunday beginning May 8th the tour begins at Noon.

So all are welcome. If you would prefer a private/group/school tours/lectures, please call Patricia Illingworth at 203.389.5403. Or please send an email for any questions or for arrangements - p.b.i.newhaven@att.net. 

                                                 ALL ARE WELCOME

All the best,

Patricia Illingworth

Chief Docent

To Connecticut Legislators and Governor Malloy:
April 29, 2016

Urging You Not to Cut Long Term Services and Supports

Image Source: Eli Whitney Museum.

Eli Whitney is most often remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin and a proponent of interchangeable parts, the manufacturing standard that helped usher in the Industrial Revolution. Less well known, though critical to his success as a manufacturer, is how he taught his workers how to craft tools and other artisan skills needed for his factories. Today, this legacy of workshop education is carried on by the Eli Whitney Museum. 

For more than 30 years, the Eli Whitney Museum has been a place for young people to build, tinker, and experiment. A wide range of programs are offered for students after school and during vacations, and the apprentice program for high schoolers has been an incubator for high-achieving designers, builders, and computer engineers. 

“Education happens both inside and outside the classroom, and it turns out many people are more adept at learning in the workshop than with books,” said Executive Director Bill Brown. “In classrooms learning is directed by an expert. But in the real world there are a lot of circumstances where no one is there telling you the answers and you have to figure out how to solve problems on your own. We happen to like good learners.” Read more.

On Thursday, April 28, The Eli Whitney celebrates this year's submissions to The Leonardo Project, an annual benefit for the museum. Tickets are $75 per person at the door or you may call 203.777.1833 to pay by credit card ahead of time.

A feral cat colony Photo courtesy of The Greater New Haven Cat Project

Sometimes the best of intentions leads to the problem of cat overpopulation. A person finds a hungry cat and decides to rescue it. Then another kitty shows up to the door and is taken in as well. If they are different sexes and not spayed or neutered, a new litter can arrive in just two or three months. Because females can go into heat as young as four-months old, owners who don’t alter their cats can quickly be overwhelmed.

Educating people to avoid such scenarios is part of The Greater New Haven Cat Project’s mission to control cat overpopulation. Run by an all-volunteer network of cat lovers since 1996, the organization also spays or neuters about 500 abandoned and feral cats and facilitates 100 adoptions yearly. Read more here.

According to the 2015 study on nonprofit boards compiled by David F. Larcker, Nicholas E. Donatiello, Bill Meehan, Brian Tayan, "Many nonprofit boards need significant improvement. Directors lack sufficient skills, resources, and experience to meet the needs of most nonprofit organizations. Over a quarter of nonprofit directors do not have a deep understanding of the mission and strategy of their organization. Most boards lack formal governance structure and process, and nearly a third are dissatisfied with the board’s ability to evaluate organizational performance. A majority do not believe their fellow board members are very experienced or engaged in their work. The authors outline and recommend practices that nonprofits need to incorporate to improve success." It's not a pretty picture painted by this study. But the research team offers the following recommendations:

Ensure your organization’s mission is focused and its skills and resources are well-aligned with it.

Ensure your mission is understood and embraced by the board, management, and other key stakeholders.
Establish explicit goals and strategies directly tied to achieving your mission.
Develop rigorous performance metrics that reflect those goals and strategies.
Hold the executive director accountable for meeting those performance metrics and evaluate his or her performance with a sound, objective process.
Compose your board with individuals with the skills, resources, generosity, diversity, and dedication that address the needs of the organization. This includes ensuring that there is a small group of committed and cohesive leaders.
Define explicitly the roles and responsibilities of board members to best leverage their leadership, time, and resources.
Establish well-defined board, committee, and ad-hoc processes that reflect your organization’s needs and context and ensure optimal handling of key decisions and responsibilities.
Regularly review and assess each board member’s leadership contributions as well as the board’s overall performance. This includes ensuring that board members view their time as well spent.

I suppose....

Here's a link to the study: http://pacscenter.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2015-Survey-on-Board-of-Directors-of-Nonprofit-Organizations_Meehan.pdf

After listening to a story, children work on a related craft project. Photo Credit Matthew Higbee

The Connecticut Children’s Museum makes accessibility, in the broadest sense of the term, its highest priority. The exhibit rooms are designed to stimulate the unique interests and abilities of every child. There is a music room, a nature room with a glass enclosed beehive, a room with puzzles and logic games, rooms for reading and rooms for playing make believe. 

Physically, the museum makes a special effort to accommodate children with special needs. All furnishings are compliant with American with Disabilities Act standards for children and all signs are duplicated in braille.

In addition, children of various backgrounds and income levels are brought to the museum on field trips, opportunities created through partnerships with schools and early childhood programs. 

“What is most important for us is that every child can come here, and that we are ready for them when they come,” said Director Sandra Malmquist. Read more here.

Four obligations: this is what my associate Jeff Wilcox ((Jeffrey R. Wilcox, CFRE, is president and chief executive officer of The Third Sector Company, Inc.) contends are the simple parameters a nonprofit board should follow to be great.

The first obligation is guaranteeing to the community that a resilient organization is at work on its behalf. Fiduciary accountability is just the beginning. Community equity runs a close second. A vote of no confidence in an organization and its leadership can send an organization down in flames while there’s still money in the bank.

The second obligation is making sure an efficient and defined infrastructure of paid and unpaid people are working towards defined results to benefit the community. An organization’s picture of success, whether an annual or multi-year set of stated deliverables, requires a structure that operates within clear policies; and, each element of the structure, including the board, has performance measures to contribute to the organization’s success in accountable ways.

The third obligation is making sure the organization is evolving with the community it serves. The duty is relevance. Not resting on the laurels of the past, integrating technology and new methodologies, stopping old and stale programs, collaborating with competitors, and making sure the faces of the organization resemble the faces of the community being served are just the starting places for demonstrating relevance in a changing world.

The fourth obligation is assuring sustainable human talent and financial resources are in the pipeline at all times for the next generation to carry on. Term limits; a robust leadership development strategy for volunteers, staff and board; a commitment to succession; and clear methodologies, strategies and expectations for everyone to have a defined role in stewarding the financial contributions from the community creates an insurance policy and investment portfolio to face the future.

I think Jeff has done a good job of translating how a board's can live its fiduciary duties (care, loyalty and obedience) while adding some of the dimensions to how these duties are executed (policy, planning and evaluation). Obligations? Maybe if understood as executing the fiduciary duties.

The balance of this article is found here: http://thirdsectorcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/LBBJ-Column-145-The-ABCs-of-Great-Boards.pdf

Greetings!!

2016 Spring is bringing in another Walk For Autism. Come rain or shine it promises to be another great success for this coming year. There will music, food trucks, entertainment, bounce houses and so much more. It will be on Sunday, May 1st beginning at 9:30am at Choate Rosemary Hall Athletic Field Wallingford, CT.

If you need full information then please contact: Grand Apizza, 111 Grand Ave, New Haven @ 203/624.7646 either Lisa or George can give full and detailed information concerning this great event for Autism.

The website is: www.ctautismwalk.com.

Thank you and hoping you can join!!!!

Patricia Illingworth

Grove Street Cemetery

By Anna Bisaro, New Haven Register

Photo Credit: Catherine Avalone — New Haven Register 

NEW HAVEN >> As Aly Tatchol Camara biked to the very edge of Criscuolo Park, fishing poles slung on his back, he found he would not be alone at Grape Vine Point this cold, March evening.

Two poles already rested on the stone wall, lines dropped into where the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers meet before emptying into Long Island Sound. A 13-year-old boy told Camara through his shivering that he hadn’t had any luck yet that night in catching anything. The boy said he was there to try to bring fish home to his family.

Just to the right of the poles was a sign from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protectionwarning that if anyone spots raw sewage in the water, they are to call and report the sighting.

Combined sewer overflows, contaminated storm water runoff, lawn fertilizers and lingering chemicals from dozens of power and manufacturing plants are just some of the pollutants hurting Greater New Haven watersheds. All three rivers in Greater New Haven — West, Mill and Quinnipiac — are on theimpaired waters list of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

While pollution limits activities like swimming and paddling in these rivers, it also poses a significant risk to those who consume fish from them. Thestate Department of Public Health advises that any fish caught from the Quinnipiac River should be consumed only once a month, due to the dangerous contaminants present in fish tissue. Blue crab from the Mill River should not be eaten at all, the department warns in its 2016 consumption guide.

Camara, 51, said it was still a little too early in the year to catch much, but he said he likes spending his summer evenings at the edge of Criscuolo Park. A native of West Africa, Camara has been in the United States since 1996, he said, and he now teaches African dance and drumming in New Haven.

He mostly fishes for sport, releasing much of what he gets, he said. Fishing in the evenings keeps him away from television and out of trouble, he said with a laugh.

“This is a place for us to spend time,” Camara said. “You meet a lot of friends here.”

CONTAMINATION THREATS

Based on the health advisories from the state health department for 2016, fish in the Quinnipiac may be contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly referred to as PCBs. The recommendation that any species of fish caught in the river only be consumed once a month applies to both high-risk and low-risk groups.  Continue reading . . . 

L-R Erika Vergara, Sister Doretta D’Albero, and Sister Mary Ellen Burns standing in front of their offices in Fair Haven.

In 1906, a small congregation of nuns from the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus left their home in Tuscany to perform missionary work in New Haven. The United States was in the midst of a great wave of European immigration, and the Sacred Heart sisters were called to help other newly arrived Italians in need. They took in orphans, taught sewing classes, provided religious instruction to children, and assisted new arrivals with the difficult transition of starting over in a strange place.

A century later, sisters from the Sacred Heart congregation are once again helping recent immigrants find stability in Greater New Haven. Located in the former convent of Saint Rose of Lima in Fair Haven, Apostle Immigrant Services offers legal assistance to immigrants trying to navigate the dizzyingly complex immigration system. The core of their work is resolving visa issues that risk breaking families apart or are preventing individuals who are stuck abroad from reuniting with families already in the United States. Many of the clients come from horrific war zones or countries with oppressive governments.

“The stories you hear make you think twice about ever criticizing or complaining about anything,” says Sister Doretta D’Albero, an accredited Bureau of Immigration Appeals representative with Apostle. Continue reading.

The second election for student representatives to the Board of Education will be Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8 in all New Haven Public high schools across the district. Last year, several members of City Hall, the Board of Alders and the Board of Education volunteered to monitor the elections in the schools.

Volunteers are needed for the following roles:

          Election Day observers:  

           -- Stationed in each school to ensure that the process is going smoothly.

          -- Also need extra volunteers to help with actual election process (checking in students, etc) in the larger schools like Cross & Hillhouse

         -- Between the hours of 7:30am-2:30pm, for as many or as few hours as your availability allows

         Ballot Counters:

         -- Work with Committee to count paper ballots after elections close

         -- Begins at 3:00pm on Friday, April 8 and continues until counting has finished, for the duration of the count

If you can help out in any way, please contact Randy Goldson at nhpsstudentvoice@new-haven.k12,ct.us or 347-295-5931. Please let us know the capacity in which you are volunteering, your preferred school and/or role (if applicable) and the hours that you can commit on each day.

A Much Happy Spring To All....

April if the month of Poetry. Today, I would to bring forward a writer residing at 22 Cypress Ave John William DeForest.

DeForest is well known for his writing genre The Great American Novel.

Or the more general movement of literature toward realism, and he also wrote poetry.

Born in Seymour (known as Humphreysville) he was the son of a very prosperous cotton manufacture. DeForest spent must of his time overseas writing and creating literature and poetry.

One of his most scholarly works is entitled The History of the Indians of Connecticut, from the Earliest known Period to 1850.  He served in the Civil War in the 12th Connecticut Volunteers. He is also praised for his work Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. He was a contributor to The Altantic Monthly and other magazines.

Photo is from Wikipedia:

He died in 1906 from heart disease in New Haven.

All the best,

Patricia B. Illingworth 

The Concord Leadership Group via Associations Now has completed their 2016 survey of 1000 CEOs, board members and others to provide some lessons about nonprofit strategic planning, CEO succession planning and other nonprofit matters. I would pose that 1000 responses is certainly worth a heads-up.

I must observe that the survey authors have a pretty negative feeling about the nonprofit sector (read their forward) and even their interpretation of the survey responses was pretty negative - more negative than even I generally believe. For instance, one result is I that 70% of nonprofits having strategic plans. This is great news!

And maybe it's just good marketing on the author's part,but I found the points for "why" strategic planning pretty good.

Specifically, for those who do strategic plans, they are:

More likely to collaborate with other nonprofits
More likely to have boards “open to taking calculated risks”
More likely to evaluate its CEO annually
More likely to have a process for measuring leadership effectiveness

These would indeed be great resulting outcomes from planning, presuming of course, these are actually results from strategic planning processes versus just values and beliefs shared in the survey.
WHAT GETS A BOARD TO SUPPORT STRATEGIC PLANNING?
BY MARK ATHITAKIS / MAR 28, 2016

A new study suggests that strategic planning remains a struggle for boards. A clearer picture of life without a strategic plan may help.

We don’t seem to be getting much better, as organizations, at strategic thinking.

That’s one of the main takeaways from the Concord Leadership Group’s “Nonprofit Sector Leadership Report,” a study by the nonprofit consultancy of more than 1,000 CEOs, board members, and other leaders. Some of the results echo familiar points: Nonprofits are weak at succession planning, for instance (only 77 percent have one, pretty good compared to other surveys), as well as CEO evaluation (only 61 percent of boards do it annually).

It’s not surprising, either, to see that so many organizations are weak at strategic planning as well. According to the survey, 29 percent reported not having a strategic plan, and 19 percent of those that said they do have a plan said it’s not written down.

Which must make those quarterly board-meeting prep sessions rife with intrigue.

“Problems are best expressed as real threats rather than specific solutions.

But one thing the survey does a good job of highlighting—in a way that isn’t often done—is finding the correlations between strategic planning and other measures of success for an organization. Those with a written strategic plan were:

More likely to collaborate with other nonprofits (83 vs. 76 percent)
More likely to have boards “open to taking calculated risks” (65 vs. 51 percent)
More likely to evaluate its CEO annually (36 vs. 21 percent)
More likely to have a process for measuring leadership effectiveness (75 vs. 50 percent)

It seems almost commonsensical, then, to put in the time to put together a strategic plan. So why do we resist it?

Partly, to put it simply, because it’s hard. “Many board members, at least in my experience, in their day jobs they’re not necessarily used to being in roles that require them to think or act or work strategically,” Jolene Knapp, CAE, told me in January. And many boards, uncomfortable with the rigorous process of environmental scanning and self-contemplation that goes into a useful strategic plan, wind up with ones that mostly ratify what they’re already doing (or not doing). So much so that I proposed killing the term “strategic plan” and replacing it with something that hinted more strongly at the forward-looking nature of the document. (I still like “futures committee” as a term for the task force charged with this work.)

The advice of the Concord Leadership Group survey is to boil down the strategic-planning process to four straightforward questions:

What are we doing, and why are we doing it? This is effectively the mission statement, with a nod toward the changing environment in the industry.
How are we going to get it done? This lays out the goals and objectives for the span of the strategic plan.
How will we fund it? This can mean dues, nondues revenue, and donations. But as the study points out, this can also identify partners and collaborations that can support a nonprofit’s work.
Who will we tell about it? That is, how will the goals be communicated to the staff who will implement it, the volunteer leaders who will hone and expand it, and the public who will support it? (The last particularly meaningful for associations that do government-relations work.)

Beth Gazley and Katha Kissman, authors of the bookTransformational Governance, based on their research on association leaders, echo that rough outline, and point out some of the ways they can encourage boards to actually begin to do the work that goes into it. In many cases, highlighting the perils of doing nothing can do the trick. So can getting the board to look squarely at the problems it faces. “Problems are best expressed as real threats rather than specific solutions (which come later),” they write. “Some boards and CEOs in our study reported member dissatisfaction, apathetic board members, missed opportunities, and other real threats to their association’s future.”

Strategic planning is never going to be easy, if it’s done well. But clarifying the stakes of not doing it, talking through the benefits of the process, and making the process as painless as possible can help make that essential work happen.

What do you do to get your boards engaged in the strategic-planning process, and how do you make that process effective and meaningful? Share your experiences in the comments.