Working for the Earth

I’m sure this speech is making the rounds.  May this posting  provide inspiration and hope to all of you who inspire and serve.   The text speaks for itself!

PAUL HAWKEN’S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS                                            

 Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009

“Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.”

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it is doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Related link:

Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken

GuideStar Survey: Hard Times for Charitable Organizations

May 2009

Last November, when we reported on the results of our annual nonprofit economic survey, we warned, “Fasten Your Seatbelts: It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Giving Season.” As 2008 ended and 2009 began, we saw a deluge of news reports about the economy’s impact, including its effect on nonprofits. Given the severity of the downturn and the number of stories about organizations adversely affected by it, we decided to do a follow-up nonprofit economic survey.

We invited Newsletter subscribers associated with 501(c)(3) public charities and private foundations to participate in the survey. Readers representing 2,979 organizations took the survey on-line between March 2 and March 16, 2009. Here’s what they told us.

Bumpy Giving Season and New Year, Indeed

We asked, “Did total contributions to your organization increase, decrease, or stay about the same between October 2008 and February 2009, compared to the same period a year earlier?” Some 52 percent of organizations reported a decrease. That figure was significantly higher than the 35 percent who reported lower contributions for January-September 2008, which was nearly double the 19 percent who reported a decline for January-September 2007

Change in Contributions

Period Covered by Survey	Contributions Decreased	Contributions Stayed about the Same	Contributions Increased	Don’t Know
October 2008-February 2009	52%	27%	20%	1%
January-September 2008	35%	25%	38%	2%
January-September 2007	19%	25%	52%	4%

 

Some 31 percent of organizations stated that contributions had dropped “modestly,” and 21 percent said that they had fallen “greatly.” An equal number-71 percent-of organizations for which contributions had dropped cited “Gifts from individuals were smaller” and “Fewer individuals gave” as causes of the decrease.

Grantmakers also felt the pinch. About a third (31 percent) said they gave less money in grants over the five-month period than during the same period a year earlier.

A total of 59 percent of organizations reported increased demand for their services between October 2008 and February 2009. Some 32 percent said demand had increased “modestly,” and 27 percent said it had grown “greatly.”

Eight percent of organizations reported that they were in imminent danger of folding because of financial reasons.

How Nonprofits Are Coping

In addition to learning what charities and foundations were experiencing, we wanted to find out how they were responding to the crisis. Only 35 percent of organizations had cut their 2009 budgets from 2008 levels. That more had not done so, however, reflected more of an increased need for their services than prospects for raising money to meet that demand.

Of the organizations that had cut their budgets, 57 percent had reduced services, 45 percent had frozen staff salaries, 37 percent had imposed hiring freezes, and 30 percent had resorted to layoffs. Other strategies included salary reduction (20 percent), reduction in employee benefits (20 percent), and reduction in operating hours (13 percent).

Although a majority (57 percent) of grantmakers reported that they had not altered their grantmaking practices or guidelines in response to the downturn, the remaining grantmaking organizations (less the 2 percent who did not know) reported that they had:

• Cut back on types of programs funded-17%
• Reduced amounts of payouts they had previously committed to-8%
• Stopped accepting grant applications-7%
• Only accepted applications from organizations they had funded before-5%
• Increased grantmaking specifically to help grantees cope with the economy-5%
• Did not make payouts they had previously committed to-1%

Read the survey report

More Follow-up This Year

Because of the severity of the current crisis, we will conduct another nonprofit economic survey next month. The results will be published in the August issue of the Newsletter. We’ll conduct our annual nonprofit economic survey in October. Those results will appear in our December issue.

Courtesy of GuideStar

Author:
Suzanne E. Coffman, May 2009
© 2009, GuideStar USA, Inc.

Suzanne Coffman is GuideStar’s director of communications and editor of the Newsletter. Chuck McLean, GuideStar’s vice president for research, and Carol Brouwer, research assistant, conducted, analyzed, and prepared the report on the March 2009 nonprofit economic survey.

Related Links:

The Quiet Crisis: The Impact of the Economic Downturn on the Nonprofit Sector

Volunteer Engagement and Coordination in Tough Times

Nonprofit Survival Course:  Lessons from the Recession

 

How The Recession Is Affecting US Volunteering

Unemployed people are spending large amounts of their time volunteering. Recent evidence of this includes:

• NYC Service had 30% more visitors in February 2009 than in February 2008.
• The Philadelphia Chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters had a 25% increase in inquires about mentoring from February 2008.
• The Taproot Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization that places skilled professionals in volunteer positions, had more people sign up on one day earlier this year than in an entire month a year ago.

Benefits of volunteering:

• Volunteering gives people something to do while job hunting that allows them to feel good about themselves.
• Volunteering is a way to stay active and stay in touch.
• Volunteering fills a gap in one’s job history and answers the questions, “What have you been doing?”
• Volunteering can lead to new job opportunities.
• Hard economic times give people a renewed sense of compassion and a better understanding of how others are struggling.
• Volunteering relieves stress from constantly thinking about economic matters.
• Because of the current economic climate, teens have become more aware of the needs of others and are volunteering.

The impact of increased number of volunteers on nonprofit organizations

• Smaller organizations without volunteer coordinators are struggling to absorb the influx of volunteers many of whom are highly skilled.
• Funding cuts can make nonprofits less able to take advantage of volunteer support.

Courtesy of Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.

Adapted from:

“From Ranks of Jobless, a Flood of Volunteers,” by Julie Bosman, in the New York Times, March 16, 2009

“Some US jobless find hope and solace as volunteers” by Andrew Stern in RUETERS, February 24, 2009.

Related links:

“How Will the Economic Crisis Affect Volunteering”   by Susan Ellis, energizeinc.com, November 2008.

“Turning Down Volunteers”  by MBA Publishing, volunteertoday.com, May 2009.

Older Adult Volunteers Bring New Expertise and New Life to Nonprofits

(ARA) -When Margaret Ross retired from a career in nursing, she had no idea that her new life as a volunteer would lead her right back into healthcare. Neither did Mike Chesnut, whose work building retail partnerships looks a lot like his volunteer service for a group of Denver nonprofits that are fighting homelessness. The same is true for retiree Berlin Hall. Since leaving his accounting executive career, Hall’s desire to help at-risk families led him to volunteer to manage the books for a family services agency.

As they move into roles in service and volunteering, older adults like these are discovering that what they know is just as important as how much time they can give. Their help couldn’t have come at a better time. With demand for nonprofit services skyrocketing, fundraising and revenues are way down. Some experts predict as many as 100,000 nonprofit organizations could run out of money for their programs completely.

The recession has spurred more interest in volunteering among older adults, particularly among boomers, says Jill Friedman Fixler, a nonprofit consultant and co-author of “Boomer Volunteer Engagement.”

“This is a group with abundant skills and profound circles of influence and they believe they can have an impact in their community right now,” she says.

That was the idea for Chesnut. After leaving his job as a retail sales executive with Procter & Gamble, Chesnut, 64, spent several years as a counselor for small business owners. When he moved to Denver a few years ago, he decided to focus on helping nonprofits. As he explored his options, Chesnut was struck by Denver’s homeless problem. Millions of dollars were being spent pulling families out of shelters, but programs that were trying to keep families out of them to begin with were underfunded. After organizing a coalition of local nonprofits, Chesnut began a research project that eventually led to a successful $600,000 grant.

“Coming from the corporate world and working with large retailers, you learn to look for common interest,” he says. “What I did was put numbers to the problem.”

Nancy Benyamin, a volunteer coordinator for Jewish Family Service who worked with Chesnut, says he’s an example of the increasing importance of skilled volunteers to nonprofits that want to expand their capacity in lean times.

“Mike really enabled us to apply for this large grant,” Benyamin says. “Without his assistance, the new funding just wouldn’t be happening.”

For Ross, 72, the serious needs she saw as a volunteer for SeniorsPlus in Lewiston, Maine, made her rethink the decision to step away from healthcare completely. After retiring as director of nursing for a state Medicare program, Ross signed up to help answer a referral phone line for SeniorsPlus, an agency that helps the local aging population get services and support. The organization was so impressed by her knowledge of medicine and healthcare benefits that they asked her to take on a new role as a counselor, and even get additional training. Seeing the healthcare system from the point of view of at-risk seniors has been an eye-opener, Ross says.

“[In my old job], I rarely was aware whether the patient was insured or not,” she says. “Now I’m on the other side of the fence saying, ‘Let’s get this person the coverage they need.’”

For Hall, a Hughes Aircraft retiree, volunteering for Family Assessment, Counseling & Education Services (F.A.C.E.S.) was a way to shield some families from the challenges his own family faced when his father, an alcoholic, left. After reviewing Hall’s background, Mary O’Connor, the executive director at the Southern California nonprofit, asked him to set up a new accounting system for the cash-strapped group. Five months later, the books are on the way to being balanced and Hall has become a strong F.A.C.E.S. supporter. He says his experience getting involved on a skilled basis, while frustrating at times, has been extraordinary.

“If my mother had access to this kind of thing, I can see how much better off we would have been,” he says with emotion. “But I had no idea that the kind of challenges this organization faces even existed.”

To find skilled volunteer opportunities, visit www.VolunteerMatch.org.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

It’s Tax Season For Nonprofits Too

Just because your organization is a nonprofit does not mean that it can sit back and ignore the tax filing season. In particular, it’s very important for small nonprofits to understand that while they may not have had to file anything with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the past, they now may have a new form to file, called the e-Postcard (or Form 990-N).The Pension Protection Act requires small organizations that normally have $25,000 or less in gross receipts to file an annual electronic notice with the IRS. This means that many small organizations — like local sewing leagues, sporting clubs and food pantries — may need to file the e-Postcard to protect their tax-exempt status. There are, however, some exceptions to this filing requirement. For example, an organization that is part of a group return or is a church, its auxiliary or an association of a church is not required to file the e-Postcard.

The first e-Postcard filings were due in 2008. For many organizations that missed this deadline, there are only two years left to start complying with the new rule. It is critical to note that organizations that do not file for three consecutive years will automatically lose their tax-exempt status. If you work with a nonprofit organization — especially a small one that never had to file with the IRS before — check with your leadership team to see if they are aware of this new form. And help spread the word about the e-Postcard to other small nonprofits in your town.

How to File
The e-Postcard can only be filled out and filed online, but you do not need any special software to do so. You just need access to a computer and the Internet. Visit www.irs.gov/charities and click on “Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations” to learn more about the e-Postcard and to access the form.

It requires a few pieces of identifying information about your organization and should only take a few minutes to fill out. But it is important to take the time to do so in order to protect your organization’s tax-exempt status.

Know Your Deadline
Unlike personal income taxes, the e-Postcard does not have a universal deadline. Instead, it depends on the closing date of each organization’s tax year, so your deadline may be different from another nonprofit in your town.

The rule is that the e-Postcard is due by the 15th day of the fifth month after the close of the organization’s tax year. For example, if your tax year closes on Dec. 31, the form is due by the following May 15.

More Information
For the latest information for tax-exempt organizations, sign up for the EO Update, a regular e-newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, at www.irs.gov/charities. To get more information about maintaining tax-exempt status, go to the IRS Web-based training program, www.stayexempt.org.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Speed Up the Board Recruitment Process!

Imagine getting excited about volunteering for something, and then waiting six or seven months before you actually get to do it. Can we accelerate the process by “pre-qualifying” candidates?

One of the most frustrating parts of board recruitment is the length of time — often months — between talking with a prospect and then bringing him onto the board . . . months during which the candidate usually becomes less interested. For instance, a person might be tentatively asked in January, discussed by the governance/nominating committee in February, have her name brought to the board for discussion in March, officially interviewed/asked in April, elected by the board in May, and her first board meeting is in July! Some boards invite potential recruits to observe a board meeting before deciding whether to join, which adds even more time.

To accelerate this process, some boards invite candidates to the board meeting at which they will be voted on. The hitch, of course, is that it makes it very difficult for a board NOT to approve someone who is already in attendance (albeit asked to sit in the hall for a few minutes).

Instead, think about “pre-approving” some candidates. Often a few names arise of people who are already known well by several other people on the board: perhaps a community leader, a mayor, a long-term activist, and so forth. In such cases, the board can have a preliminary discussion about the candidate and provisionally approve him or her as a board member. The full board then cedes to the governance committee the power to make a final decision on the candidate based on the outcome of the governance committee’s discussion with him or her. The committee members will interview the candidate, then quickly discuss among themselves how the interview went. If the committee members agree, the person can be immediately notified of his or her acceptance, and can attend the next board meeting.

The accelerated process:

1. The governance or nominating committee brings a list of perhaps five prospects to the board. Of the group, there is immediate consensus that one of them would be terrific, and she is pre-approved: elected to the board pending confirmation by the governance committee and the board chair.

2. The governance committee approaches the pre-approved candidate, and if committee members are still positive and she is interested, the committee reports by phone back to the board chair. Assuming there are no other problems, the committee goes back to the candidate and tells her she has been accepted. For the candidate, the gap between agreeing to join and being accepted is only a couple of weeks.

3. The other four prospects are also approached, but the governance committee discusses each of them before deciding which to bring to the board. They may, for example, decide to pass on one of them, and bring the other three nominees to the full board for a vote.

Remember that most board candidates need to be investigated before being invited to join. Even just one bad board member can set back the board and the organization for years. But with life moving at Internet speed, let’s accelerate board recruitment — when we can — to keep pace.

See more board recruitment strategies

Author: Jan Masaoka • February 14, 2009

This article is reprinted with permission from Blue Avocado, a practical, provocative and fun online magazine for nonprofits. Subscribe free by sending an email to editor@blueavocado.org or visit the site at www.blueavocado.org.

Seven Steps To Compete In The 21st Century

Every year is finding nonprofits with more challenging environments for funding their programs and operations. There is less support from Federal and State Governments as they reallocate resources to meet their own expanding needs. Grants from foundations are harder to qualify for, and more difficult to obtain. Yet expenditures keep going up. Programs are more costly to fund, and salaries need to be kept competitive with the commercial sector. There are things every nonprofit needs to do to stay viable. Nonprofits need to recognize that they are operating in a competitive environment. Every donor and every grant are being sought by other nonprofits. Here are seven things you can do to stand out from the crowd.

1. Modernize your website. Make it a place that people come to for current information. Keep adding new features as your webmaster makes them available to you. Incorporate features like webmail, flash, search and other applications. Use your website as a conduit to accept donations online. Be sure to include an ‘About Us’ section that does much more than list staff email addresses. Use pictures and biographies to make your web visitors feel they know that person on your staff. Read more

The Value Of Teamwork

Have you ever been part of a highly functioning team? One where your unique talents were valued, and where you were highly energized every time you were with this team? If you have been so fortunate, you are probably in the minority.

Many of us have had negative experiences being on a team. In fact, often the term “team” is used to describe any group of people assembled in proximity to each other. So, what is a team? There are numerous definitions out there, but here is a particularly good one: “A team is a group of people who go out of their way to make each other look good.”

A team is made up of a small number of people (seven to nine is ideal) who have a common goal, who are accountable to each other and who have a diverse set of talents and skills.

Most of us have probably been involved in some form of “teambuilding” activity over the years. Although they can be fun for an afternoon, how do you create any lasting value? And why should you create a culture that values teamwork anyway? Isn’t it just faster and more efficient to tell people what needs to get done? Read more

Managing Behavioral Styles

How do you handle the differences in style among your employees? Do you wonder how to motivate someone who seems not to care? Are you dismayed when your management style seems to work with a few beautifully, but misses the mark with others?

First, you must come to grips with a rather tough realization: you really cannot motivate another person. Perhaps you can cause them to get motivated for the short term (”If you are late one more time, you are fired!”), but we all know the motivation for true, lasting behavior change must come from within.

Yet you can do much to create an environment where people will become self-motivated. Understanding different styles of behavior and what each style needs is the key. You also can begin to create a high performing team when you use these principles. Read more

Decision Making For Nonprofit Boards

Many nonprofit organizations struggle, quite understandably, with technology planning and investment. New computers, sophisticated websites and database systems can be expensive. Staff members may be resistant to change and to learning new applications.

But, to quote a famous saying from my homeland: “penny wise can be pound foolish”. Sound and well-thought out purchases in the short term have the potential to save significant resources in the medium to long term.

So, how should your Board of Directors and/or your Technology Committee approach technology planning and investment?

One technique is to start out with a “blue-sky” session. First, take an inventory of the capabilities that you currently have, what’s working in your operations, and your limitations and frustrations. Then, without consideration of constraints such as cost or staff resources, list the things that you should ideally be able to do.

I like to use “What’s the One Thing” questions for this process to help you focus and prioritize:

• What’s the One Thing that you’re currently doing that is most valued by your constituents? (i.e. Board, members, founders, staff, the general public . . .)
• What’s the One Thing that you currently don’t do that your constituents wish that you would?
• What’s the One Thing that would give you maximum competitive advantage? (or fundraising edge, or whatever is your most burning need . . .)

Look at the procedures that are currently absorbing staff time and resources. Is there potential to streamline these, or to recreate them in a way that would be more cost-effective?

For example, many organizations produce small informational leaflets, brief white papers, or regularly updated research findings. These are sold for a few dollars, which may not cover the true cost of printing, mailing, and check or credit card processing.

An alternative is to provide these as downloadable e-books on your Website. When the buyer enters their credit card, they gain instant access to your materials in whatever format you choose – Adobe Acrobat (pdf), Word, html, etc. Once this system is set up, you should have few maintenance or support issues, and you’re in business on a 24/7 basis. You can change the documents whenever you need to, without leaving stocks of outdated print copies.

Are you using e-mail as effectively as you could?  There are elements to successful implementation of e-mail:

• Maintaining a comprehensive database of all the contacts that your organization has, including appropriate details of your dealings with each one.

This allows you to create personalized, targeted and timely e-mail messages that you can send to selected recipients, such as:

• News updates about your organization
• Special events, discount purchase offers
• Legislative alerts and tracking notices
• Fundraising appeals
• Membership renewal reminders

Of course, you should include and adhere to a privacy policy whenever using e-mail, and you must honor requests to be removed from your mailing list.

Having clear e-mail usage procedures. Sometimes it is preferable to use direct personal contact such as telephone or letters instead of e-mail – for instance, when responding to complaints, or thanking donors for gifts.

• But your staff should be clear and comfortable about using e-mail to save time and resources. Sending bulk e-mail from a good database is faster and cheaper than sending bulk faxes. One association that I consulted with recently linked their staff bonuses directly to savings realized from using e-mail over fax.
• A great deal of Board business can be conducted via e-mail. This may not include actual voting (check your by-laws and legal obligations for this). But much of the background information that is provided at a typical Board meeting could be disseminated by e-mail ahead of time, thus freeing up valuable meeting time for substantive discussion.
• How effective is your Website in promoting and achieving your strategy? An intranet (password protected area) can be very useful if you have staff or chapters geographically distant from your head office. It can provide training materials, mentoring discussion boards, templates for frequently used documents, etc. And, you can have a private section of your site for your Board, as an alternative to sending information via e-mail.

Depending on your operations, there are other technologies that might be appropriate for you to consider as you plan your future strategy and investments. These could include handheld devices and laptops if you have employees who are often out of the office. Voice recognition software can be used for dictation by disabled staff, or those who are really not comfortable with keyboards. For larger organizations, virtual private networks may be appropriate for file sharing and synchronized database maintenance.

Whatever your size, use the strategic and prioritizing “What’s the One Thing . . .?” questions that I listed above, together with your estimation of current inefficiencies in staff time and resources to come up with a wish list. Then you can start to analyze the potential investments that you need to make, and the potential savings or revenue that you can realize in the longer term.

About The Author

Philippa Gamse helps her clients develop e-business strategies and maximize their use of technology to gain sustainable competitive edge. She has extensive corporate experience both in Europe and the US, ideally positioning her to interpret our increasingly global market place. She brings to her clients and audiences a continuously growing body of knowledge about emerging technologies, their integration with existing “real-world” strategies, and their effect on marketing, public relations and customer service techniques. For information about inviting Philippa to speak at your next event, contact the FrogPond at 800.704.FROG(3764) or email susie@FrogPond.com

Copyright© 2002, Philippa Gamse. All right reserved.

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