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Next Steps Workshops
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EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION
EXTENDED UNTIL SEPT. 16th
A Two-Day Event
Exclusively for Nonprofit
Founders & Long-Term
Executives
Three Vital Tools:
- Sustainability Planning
- Executive Transition Planning
- Succession Planning
- Executive Preparation
- Organizational Preparation
All to ensure the sustainability of your organization, increase board succession competency and staff resiliency for transition.
TWO 2011 WORKSHOPS
October 18-19, 2011
Philadelphia Foundation
Philadelphia, PA
Early Bird Registration Fee: $375
Registration Fee: $450
Includes: Continental Breakfast and Lunch (both days)
Seats are Limited
December 15-16, 2011
NeighborWorks Training Institute
Washington, DC
Register Through NeighborWorks
Registration Fee: $485
All workshops include:
Session Materials, a Comprehensive Resource CD, and Complimentary Book
Seats Are Limited!
Back to Top
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Resources
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The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide: Proven Paths for Leaders and Organizations
by Tom AdamsAvailable from Amazon
Kindle Edition Also Available!
Chief Executive Transitions: How to Hire and Support a Nonprofit CEO by Don Tebbe
Available from BoardSource
Founder Transitions: Creating Good Endings and New Beginnings, by Tom AdamsAvailable from TransitionGuides
Building Leaderful Organizations: Succession Planning for Nonprofits by Tim WolfredAvailable from TransitionGuides
Managing Executive Transitions: A Guide for Nonprofits
Resilient Leadership by Bob Duggan and Jim Moyer
Available from Books on the Web
The Executive Director's Guide to Thriving as a Nonprofit Leader
by Mim Carlson and Margaret DonohoeAvailable from Leadership in TransitionNonprofits: Founder Syndrome
by Bren Monteiro
Available from AmazonWhy Nonprofits Fail: Overcoming Founder's Syndrome, Fundphobia and other Obstacles to Success
by Stephen Block
Available from Amazon
Succession: Are You Ready?
by Marshall Goldsmith
Available from Amazon
Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability
by Jan Masaoka & Steve Zimmerman
Available from Amazon
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 Greetings!
Welcome to the September 2011 issue of the Leadership Guide. We hope you find this issue useful and will forward it to others who may benefit from the ideas, lessons, and stories. As always, we value your feedback and comments. Let us know what topics you would like to read about or personal experiences and insights gained through your work that we could feature in a future issue. Feel free to contact Melody Thomas-Scott at mthomasscott@transitionguides.com.
Best wishes for a continued thriving and leaderful 2011! |
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CEOs: Four Ways You Can Sustain Your Organization
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By Don Tebbe, TransitionGuides, Inc.
At some point, you will leave your nonprofit. And when you do, you want to be sure that it will run well into the future. Its success is your legacy.
That's one reason why sustainability is on the lips of nonprofit leaders everywhere. Another is the fierce tenacity of the Great Recession, which has stressed even the most affluent nonprofits.
In 15 years of research and practice with 500-plus organizations we've found four areas that every nonprofit must assess and solidify to ensure sustainability. They are business model & business strategy, leadership, resources, and culture. Here are some quick questions to help you assess your strengths in each. For deeper help, contact us at (301) 439-6635.
1. Business Model & Business Strategy
The business model is how your organization creates and delivers value, and how it finances the value-creation process. Your business strategy guides the model. The strategy encompasses all the actions needed to create and sustain your market position so you can continue to deliver your mission. Business model and strategy work together to maintain your competitive advantage--the reason why clients, donors, funders, and other constituents continue to support you.
To determine your sustainability in this area, ask these questions:- Does our business model have at least five to seven years of life in front of it?
- Is it built on quality services that are needed by clients and valued by donors and funders?
- Do we have a business strategy in place?
- Does our strategy position us to meet future needs and demands?
- Is our strategy written clearly?
- Do board and staff understand our model and strategy?
- Can board and staff describe how their actions contribute to our model and strategy?
2. Leadership
Executive and board leadership are critical to sustainability. Answer these questions to assess your leadership sustainability:
- Do our chief executive and senior executive team meet our current and future leadership needs?
- If our current executive will be departing in 1 to 4 years, do we have a clear transition plan? (See our upcoming Next Steps workshop for specific help here.)
- Do we have written succession plans in place to ensure leadership continuity?
- Do we have adequate "bench strength" to replace leaders temporarily or permanently?
- Do we have a system to nurture new leaders in the organization?
- Is our board a high-value asset to the organization? If not, in what ways does it need to change?
- What improvements in work style or membership does our board need?
- Is our board performing the three core roles of board: (1) shaping mission and direction; (2) ensuring leadership and resources; AND (3) monitoring and improving performance, including its own?
3. Resources
Resources generally refer to the funds and in-kind donations (such as donations of equipment or food) that power your organization. The term may also refer to nonfinancial assets, such as intellectual capital, human and organizational capital, and social or reputational capital. Sustainability questions should address both recent trends and future outlook, as follows:
- Are the trends in revenue, expense, and margin trending upward (favorable), flat (not so favorable) or downward (clearly unfavorable)?
- Do we have sufficient financial resources to meet our short to midterm commitments (6 to 24 months)?
- Do we have an appropriately diverse complement of revenue streams?
- What are the long-term prospects for each component of our revenue portfolio and for our revenue mix as a whole?
- Are we managing our funds and other assets well?
- Do we have a forward-looking resource development strategy? Is it written and clear?
- Do our executive team and board understand our resource development strategy and can they clearly state their particular role in it?
- Is there a sound business link between our business model, business strategy, and resource development plan?
4. Culture
Culture is a pattern of shared basic assumptions that shapes the way people in your organization perceive, think, and feel, particularly in relation to opportunities and challenges. These questions will help you assess your culture's sustainability:
- Are we resilient -- can we bounce back quickly from setbacks?
- Are we agile -- can we adapt quickly to a dynamic environment?
- Is our culture future-focused, results-oriented, and action-based?
- Are our board and staff cultures complementary and connected to one another or incongruous and disconnected?
- Are our board and staff teams focused on their jobs, and are they aligned in that focus? (Times of financial uncertainty demand an all-hands-on-deck sense of focus and alignment.)
- Is the value and worth of our organization widely understood by board, staff and volunteers? Could everyone on our team make a compelling case for support? Do we have oft-told stories that affirm and transmit our value among constituents?
Finally, the leaders should ask themselves, what's our sense of urgency about sustainability and what's the next action to take to ensure sustainability? Most organizations have a "presenting" challenge that is most pressing but is typically related to underlying issues in one of the other areas. For example, an identified problem with sustainable financing may be linked to having the wrong board, which may be linked to a board culture that's out of step with today's dynamic environment.
TransitionGuides can help your organization sort through these issues.
For more on organizational sustainability, leadership succession and transition, visit TransitionGuides at www.TransitionGuides.com or call us at (301) 439-6635.
TransitionGuides is hosting a Next Steps workshop in Philadelphia on October 18-19, 2011 at the Philadelphia Foundation. Next Steps is a two-day intensive program exclusively for nonprofit chief executives. It offers a safe and confidential space to explore best practices in organizational sustainability, leadership succession, and chief executive transition. For more information visit: TransitionGuides/Next Steps
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Don Tebbe is Executive Vice President - TransitionGuides. Don is the author of Chief Executive Transitions: How to Hire and Support a Nonprofit CEO, published by BoardSource and winner of the 2009 Terry McAdam book award. He is also the author of For the Good of the Cause: Board-Building Lessons from Highly Effective Nonprofits. He is currently writing a book about organizational vitality that will be published Spring 2012.
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Prepping Your Nonprofit for Your Departure
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Upcoming workshops provide confidential support for executives considering transition
Exclusively for nonprofit chief executives, the Next Steps workshop offers a safe and confidential space to explore best practices in organizational sustainability, leadership succession, and chief executive transition.
Next Steps helps you step out of the day-to-day fray and focus on personal, professional, and organizational issues related to your transition and succession planning. These "tough-to-talk-about" topics are skillfully guided by facilitators who are national experts.
TransitionGuides is the national thought leader on nonprofit chief executive succession and transition. Our Next Steps workshop covers three vital tools - Sustainability Planning, Succession Planning, and Executive Transition Management and two tracks - executive professional/personal preparation and organizational preparation. Combined, these ensure the sustainability of your organization and increase board succession competency and staff resiliency for transition.
2011 Sessions:
October 18-19: Philadelphia Foundation -Philadelphia, PA
December 15-16: NeighborWorks Training Institute - Washington, DC
To encourage candid discussion, enrollment is limited to 30 participants in each workshop, so it's best to register soon. In the past nine years, over 500 nonprofit chief executives have attended this intensive two-day event. The workshop provides the right place and time for planning, rich discussions among peers, interactive presentations, individual exercises, small group work, and panel discussions.
For more information, click here.
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TransitionGuides Workshops
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TransitionGuides provides workshops across the country. If you would like to schedule a workshop for your organization, customize a workshop for your members, or learn more about other workshops we offer, visit our website and call our TransitionGuides office (301) 439-6635 today!
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| Open Searches |
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- ActionAid USA, Washington, DC - Executive Director
- Advocates for Children & Youth, Baltimore, MD - Executive Director
- Alexandria Neighborhood Health Services, Inc., Alexandria, VA - Executive Director
- ASPIRA of Florida, Miami, FL - President and CEO
- Community Design Center of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA - President and CEO
- ISED Ventures, Des Moines, IA - Executive Director
- Mobile Medical Care, Inc., Bethesda, MD - Executive Director
- National Children's Center, Washington, DC - Chief Executive Officer
- National PTA, Alexandria, VA - Executive Director
- Neighborhood Housing Services of Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA - Executive Director
- Ohio Association of Independent Schools, Sunbury, OH - Executive Director
- Transparency International-USA, Washington, DC - President
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Back toTop
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We hope you found this issue useful and will forward it to others who may benefit from the ideas, lessons, and stories. As always, we value your feedback and comments. Let us know what topics you would like to read about or personal experiences and insights gained through your work that we could feature in a future issue. Feel free to contact Melody Thomas-Scott at mthomasscott@transitionguides.com.
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TransitionGuides is a consulting firm committed to leadership excellence. Our team of experienced and knowledgeable consultants helps find, support, and guide nonprofit leaders to build and sustain effective, vital organizations. Since 1995, TransitionGuides team has led over 500 executive search, transition, succession and sustainability projects for nonprofits across the country. Clients include local and national nonprofits, foundations, associations, and select government agencies. TransitionGuides offers the wisdom and experience that leading organizations need to identify and harness the power of change.
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