Tag Archives: nonprofit

What I’ve learned working at Habitat for Humanity

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A photo of the author, Jayne Cravens, wearing a Habitat for Humanity plastic construction helmet with Habitat for Humanity on it.
Jayne Cravens

Since August 2022, I have been working the equivalent of two full days a week, sometimes a bit more, for a local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International. I’ve been working in marketing and outreach, primarily social media and web site content, and also for three months, I helped onboard volunteers for home builds and home repairs, as well as looking at the volunteer onboarding, support and tracking processes at the Restore, Habitat’s thrift store, and making recommendations to make them better.

My primary goal in my job is to increase local awareness about this Habitat affiliate’s efforts to address affordable housing and about its efforts to help vulnerable homeowners with critical home repairs that allow them to stay in their homes. I also have a focus on increasing sales of the affiliate’s ReStore, which is a vital funding component for the local affiliate, as well as increasing awareness of the ReStore regarding its connection to Habitat for Humanity and as a recycle and reuse option. I would also like to see a LOT more diversity among Habitat’s volunteer engagement, and that’s going to require special, targeted efforts in messaging – putting a lot of my own recommendations to the test. I manage the Habitat affiliate’s web site and the local ReStore web site, and you can see examples of my online outreach via the affiliate’s Facebook and Instagram pages, the local ReStore Facebook and Instagram pages, and the affiliate’s Mastodon, Twitter and Reddit accounts. 

It’s been a fascinating, challenging experience. I’ve long been a fan of Habitat for Humanity’s model for engaging volunteers in home construction, as you know if you have attended my workshops related to volunteer engagement. Getting this behind-the-scenes look at all the various aspects of Habitat’s programming, which goes well beyond building structures, has been fantastic and inspiring. It’s also so wonderful to be in a small, frontline nonprofit, especially one serving a largely rural community: the affiliate serves a large, mostly rural area of less than 400 sq miles / 940 km2, much of it unincorporated and outside the Portland Metro Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), which bisects Washington County. The overall population of the area served by this affiliate is less than 50,000. The three argest cities in the service area have populations of about 26,000 people, about 13,400 people and about 3500 people, respectively. More than 10 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.

In the time I have been at this Habitat for Humanity affiliate, here are some things I’ve learned – or relearned:

  • There’s nothing like testing your recommendations made as a consultant in real-world settings. It’s one thing to write a blog or a book or hold a training; it’s another to actually apply those strategies yourself. I’ve always been proud to be able to tie what I recommend in a workshop to what I’ve actually done.
  • Working with people in rural Oregon really isn’t that different from working with rural people in Afghanistan: people want a safe, stable place to live, most especially a place of their own, and in most cases, if you give them the opportunity to work for that, they’ll embrace it – and their neighbors will help. Political and economic obstacles in nonprofit work are shockingly similar across countries.
  • Some of the most important work you do as a communications manager is getting what people know in their heads into a form that can be read and referenced by others. Often, employees aren’t that aware of all their fellow employees are doing. When a key employee or volunteer leaves, and their work and knowledge isn’t documented, it can bring some work to a standstill. Plus, what is in people’s heads and what they experience in their work is fantastic for blogs and grant proposals.
  • The people with whom most customers interact should be regularly briefed on program activities, on upcoming events and on important dates. The cashiers of the ReStore regularly get questions about Habitat programming from customers, and since my office is right next to checkout, if the cashiers don’t know the answer, they will grab me to talk to the customers with questions, something I welcome. And they listen to what I say and sometimes comment later, “I didn’t know any of that.” Everyone is a spokesperson for your nonprofit, whether you like it or not. I’m now working to make sure they know how to answer our organization’s most frequently asked questions, and how to direct people who need detailed answers. I’m working to make sure they know they can use their smart phones to pull up our organization’s web site, right then and there, and read answers to customers with questions. Have a look at When some nonprofit employees & volunteers don’t really understand what the nonprofit is trying to address & why for more on what I suggest to ensure everyone is representing your nonprofit appropriately.
  • Just because you work for an agency with a well-known name does not mean people really know what it does (including some employees and board members!). So many people think Habitat for Humanity gives away houses – it doesn’t (it partners with families for affordable mortgages – the families DO make payments for the house). I didn’t know Habitat did critical home repairs for vulnerable home owners until I started working there.
  • Online tools aren’t enough to market an organization: executive directors and board members have to get out into the communities. You have to show up at the big events of other organizations. You have to present to city councils and county governments. You have to immediately respond to every call from the media – especially in this age of fewer and fewer newspapers, and fewer local radio stations and TV stations. You have to leverage banner placements over key streets and doorways, buy ads in newspapers (if you are lucky enough to still have a newspaper), put flyers up at grocery stores, and rely on other marketing tools many said would go away with the Internet. You have to be at farmer’s markets and the super popular food cart pod on a Friday night. And the opposite is true too: just going to onsite events and relying on traditional paper postal mail and onsite displays isn’t enough; you have to regularly use and update online tools.
  • People love social media posts that have photos of LOCAL PEOPLE in them. You can, therefore, never have enough photos of local volunteers and employees “in action.”
  • People also love social media that’s fun. And dinosaurs are terrific props.
  • Bureaucracy can be wonderful. Rules, regulations, protocols, official messaging – these are NOT automatically bad. Official policies and procedures MATTER because when they are based in reality, understood and followed, it keeps everyone on the same page and it prevents missteps. I loved that, at the United Nations, I could always find the policy, the manual, the official statement, that I could use to justify something I wanted to say or do. The same has been true of Habitat: their official policies regarding communications, safety and volunteer engagement have made my job easier! And what a joy to see Susan Ellis, my mentor and guru, quoted in Habitat’s official guidance for staff regarding volunteer engagement. It’s also been great not to have to agonize over how to phrase something – I can usually find exactly what I need in official Habitat materials, some public, some on our extensive national intranet/knowledge base.
  • People don’t like change. I’ve known this for years, and I’m relearning it yet again. And if I hear, “But that’s the way we’ve always done it” one more time…
  • There is a delicate, difficult balance in an organization that fights poverty hosting a gala event.
  • Contacting TV stations an hour away 48 hours before an event can sometimes get them to cover it during a slow news week. It’s always worth trying.
  • I’m not the only over-40 woman in my area that has so much professional experience I scare potential employers when I apply for jobs – and it’s amazing how many Generation Xers I’m now encountering on their third or fourth careers.
  • It’s still not easy to create group volunteering roles – things that three or more volunteers could do together, just once (though it’s usually 10 or more people). The agency could have three of these every month and not meet volunteer demand.
  • People are willing to travel outside of their area to volunteer for a day. As noted earlier, I’m in a county that’s half rural and half urban. The Habitat that serves the urban area can’t as easily accommodate groups of volunteers, or specialized volunteers, as we can, so we end up with volunteers from the opposite side of the county, often from groups of employees from very large employers – and that’s fine with us!
  • As I wrote on a blog in 2016 called “If no one is complaining, we don’t have to change how we do things”, “Often, when I do a little digging myself, talking to people that wanted to volunteer at the organization but didn’t, or to current members, or to former clients, and on and on, I find that, indeed, there is dissatisfaction among a few, maybe even more, but no one says anything to the organization itself… they don’t say anything about something they would like to see changed or improved because there is a culture within the program or the entire organization, that discourages complaints or suggestions.” No further comment.
  • Everyone that works with volunteers should have some training on how to work with volunteers. Period.
  • It’s so still oh-so-easy to recruit volunteers for online tasks and onsite, short-term roles. People are so, so hungry for those kinds of roles! I remain confused by people who struggle to recruit volunteers for short-term roles or online roles. I’ve put up three such assignments VolunteerMatch and had to take them down in just a few days because I had enough great volunteers to do them. I’ve recruited online volunteers to update our contact list of every community of faith and every nonprofit in the area, as well as to update our list of and contact information for every elected official that represents any part of our area. It’s not too late for you to get up-to-speed on virtual volunteering!
  • It’s really hard to recruit new volunteers for longer-term, ongoing roles, and people under 50 have zero interest in coming to a ReStore even twice a month to help in an ongoing role. And that’s not a criticism of these generations – I think they would volunteer if we built a relationship with these folks, if we enticed them with short-term gigs and gave them a really worthwhile experience.
  • Online sales requires a dedicated staff member who can spare the role several hours of every week – it can’t be done as a simple add-on to an existing role, something attended to just a few minutes a day.
  • Bicycling to work is awesome except when it’s icy outside. Just like in Germany! But it’s brutal in the increasingly over-headed summers we now get.

This experience has also affirmed my belief that, if you want to work abroad in humanitarian endeavors, you need deep experience working for nonprofits in your own community, as an employee, consultant or volunteer. And any Habitat for Humanity affiliate and its ReStore are great places to start.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Videos Your Nonprofit Should Have Online

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Video continues to surge in popularity as a way to meet just about any outreach goal. And that means every nonprofit, big or small, needs to be thinking strategically about what videos it needs to produce and share – and where it should be sharing those videos.

Videos aren’t difficult to produce: if you have a smart phone that records video and/or audio, you can create videos to share online about your organization. That includes Androids, not just Apple devices. If any employee or volunteer has an Apple Macintosh computer, you have easy-to-use video editing software already on that computer: iMovie. Affordable video-editing software for non-Apple computers is easy to find online. Even if you have only photos, you can use them to create a video with audio for most of the proposed activities below.

As always: volunteers can be a GREAT help in producing these videos! If you don’t have an employee that can produce these videos, and cannot afford to pay a consultant, volunteers may be a great option – in fact, there are people actively searching for these kind of online volunteering tasks. Any volunteer that knows how to use iMovie or its equivalent can produce videos from you from any raw video you have from a smart phone, recorded Zoom meeting, camera, etc. Volunteers can also provide closed captioning and transcriptions of videos. Volunteers can also help you brainstorm ideas for videos your nonprofit should create.

My latest resource on my web site offers advice on what videos your nonprofit, NGO, charity or other mission-based organization or community group should have online. Unlike other articles that offer such advice for nonprofits, I offer a long list of actual suggestions for content, including on micro-video-sharing sites like TikTok.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

What’s the difference in for-profits & nonprofits?

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Misconceptions abound about the differences in a for-profit business/corporation and a not-for-profit business. I’m hearing misconceptions in particular from the for-profit world, the corporate world, regarding what nonprofits and are and how they are different from the corporate world.

This is how I explain the difference, and how I try to address the misconceptions people have about these two different sectors:

A for-profit business or corporation exists to make more money than its expenses (a profit). It can have a mission – to provide a certain kind of product or service – and it can throw words in that mission like “quality” and “care”, but its success is ultimately judged regarding whether or not it’s profitable: whether or not it generates enough money to cover all expenses, to pay all employees a salary (usually enough to make people not want to seek employment elsewhere), to pay the senior management a hearty bonus beyond their regular, competitive salary and to pay all investors a profit on their investment. That for-profit business could have frequent staff turnover and low morale and not have very good products or services, but if it’s paying all of its bills and generating a good profit margin, it’s considered a successful business. A for-profit business may have a board of directors, a board that gets paid with profits from the company, or it may be owned by one person, who decides to share the profit with employees beyond their salaries (profit-sharing) or may pocket those profits entirely.

A not-for-profit business, also known as a nonprofit, exists to fulfill a mission, and this mission statement drives the development of all programs. It often does this through activities and services that are not provided by the for-profit sector. A nonprofit’s ultimate success is judged on whether or not it engages in activities that fulfill that mission. Some nonprofits are staffed entirely by volunteers (unpaid staff). Some nonprofits are staffed entirely by paid employees. Some nonprofits are staffed by a combination of both. Most nonprofits are pressured by funders not to pay their employees the same rate as their for-profit counterparts – the funders believe that nonprofit staff should be paid far less than for-profit staff, for a whole variety of reasons that I’m not going to get into here. Nonprofits are funded by a combination of donations from individuals, grants from foundations and corporations, and, just like for-profit organizations, contracts or fees for services from corporations, government or individuals. The healthiest nonprofits, financially-speaking, have a combination of these revenue streams – in other words, a healthy nonprofit doesn’t rely on just one source of income. Many nonprofits charge for some of or all of their services, but they have a focus on keeping fees affordable, so that their programs aren’t financially out-of-reach by most people. Since a nonprofit cannot exist without money to pay staff, to pay for its space and to cover all of the expenses incurred in the process of providing its services, then it is possible for a very successful nonprofit, one that is meeting its mission to do whatever it exists to do – shelter abandoned or surrendered animals and offer them for adoption, provide dance classes for inner-city children, tutor young people to improve their grades, provide outdoor activities for people with intellectual disabilities, whatever – and has a big demand for its services or programs to cease operations because it doesn’t attract enough funding to cover expenses. A nonprofit has a board of directors which legally owns and the business and is fiscally-responsible for the business – and is entirely volunteer (unpaid). If the nonprofit generates a profit – and this DOES happen – the nonprofit cannot pocket that money.

I prefer to call the latter a mission-based organization, or a cause-based organization since, in fact, not-for-profits CAN and DO sometimes generate a profit.

So, in sum, the difference in a nonprofit and a for-profit is the first one exists to fulfill a mission, primarily, that will improve or preserve our quality of life or environment, regardless of the profitability of such. Its success is measured on meeting that mission. The second one exists to make money – that is its primary purpose, and it might choose to do that ethically and with a secondary measure, but if a for-profit doesn’t make money, it is a failure, period.

A nonprofit isn’t automatically better or nobler than a for-profit. A nonprofit doesn’t necessarily operate with more passion or integrity than a for-profit. A nonprofit does not necessarily have happier, more dedicated employees.

A for-profit isn’t automatically better than a nonprofit. A for-profit isn’t automatically more efficient or more professional than a nonprofit. A for-profit might be far more ethical than a nonprofit, and have staff that are far more committed to doing quality work than a nonprofit.

Staff at nonprofits can have as much training, education and experience – and even more – than staff at a for-profit. Staff at for-profits aren’t always more “expert” in a particular subject, like marketing or project management, than staff at nonprofits. 

There are for-profit homes for people with disabilities and nonprofit homes for people with disabilities. There are for-profit hospices and nonprofit hospices. You cannot tell the difference in them by just standing in the lobby or living room, or observing staff, or looking at the credentials of staff: you can tell only if you look at where the home gets its money and if it has a board of directors that gets paid.

What does the difference in a nonprofit and a for-profit really look like? Consider a for-profit movie theater and a not-for-profit movie theater. Picture them as being across the street from each other. 

The for-profit theater shows first-run movies and movies expected to be blockbusters because those movies make the most money – the most profit. It doesn’t matter for the theater’s success if the movies have any cultural relevance, if they attract a diverse audience, or if they are considered “good” by critics – what matters is they attract a lot of paying customers, who buy lots of snacks for the movie, enough for the theater to be profitable. 

The nonprofit theater has a mission to show movies that celebrate human diversity and differences, that address humanity’s most serious concerns, and that represent the range of creativity possible on the screen. It has goals to both entertain, to build the awareness in its audiences about the diverse ways film can be used to communicate a variety of messages and celebrate, and to use movies to bring people together for a shared experience, to create more community understanding and cohesion. As long as there are enough people attending for the theater to say that they are meeting their goals – and has some audience surveys or feedback to demonstrate this – it is considered a success.

The aforementioned nonprofit theater would sell tickets to its movies, perhaps at the same price as the for-profit theater, but it probably has just one or two screens and it probably doesn’t attract the full houses that the for-profit theater does, therefore, ticket sales and concession sales are never going to cover the costs of its operations. The nonprofit theater may even have a “pay what you can” night, ensuring that no one is prevented from experiencing a film because they cannot pay.

The owner of that theater may be a more knowledgeable, more passionate movie fan than the nonprofit theater owner across the street. The for-profit theater owner may be more generous and nicer than the theater owner across the street and may provide better customer service than the nonprofit theater – for-profit staff doesn’t have any relation to the quality of the character of the staff or even the leader.

Both of these theaters add value to their communities. Some people may choose to move to the community because of access to one or both of these theaters. They may share some of the same moviegoers. They may even sometimes want to show the same movies: a low-budget, highly-acclaimed independent film may become a massive commercial success, and those two theaters may compete to see who gets the rights to show the film. 

For the most part, nonprofits fill a niche that for-profit companies don’t and provide services or activities that at least a small group of people feel are important, even vital, but that aren’t fully commercially viable. A community may urgently need more services for adults with intellectual disabilities, but there just isn’t enough promise of income for a for-profit to want to offer the services – so a group of concerned citizens forms a nonprofit to provide those services. A group of people may want the community to be able to regularly experience live theater, so it forms a nonprofit to provide that. 

There are both for-profit and nonprofit hospitals. And hospices. And music festivals. And sports leagues. I live three doors down from a for-profit group home for adults with intellectual disabilities. Often, it can be difficult for an outsider to see the difference between a for-profit and a nonprofit: they may look the same in terms of the services they provide and the way their staff members approach their work, and they may provide equal quality of care and services. 

A way you might be able to tell the difference in a for-profit and a non-profit is in how they use social media and how they measure success in their use of such. A for-profit is going to use its social media almost exclusively and ultimately to try to sell its products and services. Its success in using social media is measured by how many followers it has and how much it can tie sales and income to its social media activity. By contrast, a nonprofit is going to use social media for a range of goals, some having to do with income-generation (attendance at events, sales of something, donations) but others having to do with its goals, which might be to build community cohesion, to create greater awareness about a particular issue, to encourage people to volunteer, to vote, to recycle, and on and on. Its success in using social media is measured in how many exchanges it has with others on that social media platform, comments it receives on retweets, and WHO retweets – if the US Congressional representative for that nonprofit’s region retweets a message, that’s social media success. 

That’s how I explain the difference between a for-profit and a not-for-profit. I offer all of the above both for all the people who don’t seem to know, and also for all the people trying to distinguish nonprofits from for-profits by culture, efficiency or expertise. It’s a baseless comparison.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

My top blogs for 2019

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It’s the time of year when I have a look at what people read most on my blogs. It helps me to know what resonates and what I might need to do a better job of promoting. Blogs that get a lot of traffic are the result of people who post about them on their own social media, or refer to them in a workshop they are doing, so if that’s you, THANK YOU.

I was quite pleased to see a lot of my blogs that have to do with communications, with community relations and with ethics end up in my list of most popular blogs this year – usually, the list is dominated by blogs related to volunteer engagement, which is fine, but I pour just as much energy into those blogs about outreach, so it’s nice to see that, this year, that reached a good number of folks.

In case you are wondering, I promote my blog through my Twitter account, my Facebook account, my LinkedIn account, some Subreddits, and some LinkedIn groups. I’m a one-person shop and create and promote these resources entirely on my own – and it’s getting harder and harder to get my voice out there in a sea of noise.

The visitor numbers are great – but the emails and comments on resources are what really keep me going, so please keep them coming!

What did I write that got people’s attention in 2019? Here’s the list:

Here’s to 2020!

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Your favorite non-English resources re: volunteerism or nonprofits?

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I asked this back in 2011, but it’s time to ask it again:

I would like to know YOUR favorite online resources regarding volunteerism / volunteers (especially the support and management of such), nonprofits or NGOs (non-governmental organizations), including Tweeters, in languages OTHER than English.

Spanish, French or German are most desired, but any language – Arabic, Persian Farsi / Dari / Tajik /, Hindi, whatever – would be welcomed.

In short, I’m looking for the Spanish, French, German, Arabic and other non-USA, non-English-language versions of Energize, Inc., of VolunteerMatch, of resources for those that manage volunteers like what I have on my web site, etc.

Please send the name of the resource, the URL of the resource, and a summary of what the resource is – does it focus on volunteer management? On nonprofits / NGOs / charities using the Internet? Or helping organizations recruit volunteers? Or fundraising / resource mobilization? Or any aspect of management? Is it a web site? A database? A Twitter feed?

I have some of these resources already, but I would like to have more. Plus, mine need updating:

I will share what I’ve compiled already and what’s submitted – and is what I’m looking for – on my web site, and announce the page here on my blog, as well as my Twitter feed and my Facebook page.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

Please vote for “Living & Loving Digital Inclusion”

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There are only a few hours left to vote for my proposed session at NTEN: Living & Loving Digital Inclusion!

Voting is open only through August 31. The 2019 Nonprofit Technology Conference will be held in Portland, Oregon, March 13 – 15, and I will be able to go if I get to present! If I can’t present then – let me be blunt: I won’t be able to afford to go.

Digital Inclusion means working to ensure ICT tools, resources and associated spaces are welcoming to the widest audience possible. Helping children in communities with rates of high poverty to access the Internet and gain skills might be the first thing most think of when they hear the term digital inclusion, but it’s also about accessible web and app design, providing safe, encouraging spaces for women and girls in community tech centers and hackathons, and being mindful of our language when promoting or talking about public tech initiatives. This energizing session will give attendees lots of ideas to consider and employ.

Learning Outcomes

  • understand what is meant by “digital inclusion” in practical terms
  • understand the benefits of making “digital inclusion” a priority
  • put into immediate practice activities that improve an organization’s “digital inclusion”

Update: “Although your session received a strong level of support during the voting stages it was not selected as part of this final process to balance out the overall range of topics in the related category.” That’s the final word from NTEN. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to attend the conference (it’s VERY expensive), so even though NTEN will be right in my backyard in Portland, Oregon, I won’t be there. Very sorry to miss out once again on NTEN.

I have already developed the workshop and hope I will get a different opportunity to deliver it.

Would you like for me to speak at your conference or train at your organization? Here’s is more about my presentations and trainings. Also read more about my consulting services.

the first steps for a nonprofit dream

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Some years ago, I worked with a very specific community – I prefer not to say which one nor where it was – that wanted its own cultural center. The community members envisioned a place where they and their families could celebrate their unique culture, host activities that could help address the needs of community members (job training, skills development, counseling, etc.), host events that could educate people about their culture’s history and challenges, offer low-cost childcare for pre-K children, offer after-school activities for teen members of their community, offer activities for elders in their community, offer legal clinics, and on and on.

The challenge I faced in trying to help this community reach their goal is that, in talking about the community center, they wanted to focus only on what the building would look like. They wanted to talk about the kinds of rooms it would have, how it would look on the outside, the murals that would be drawn inside, etc. They even spent time talking about what the logo would look like. And, indeed, those conversations were important, but what was so much more important in starting to talk about the center was their answering these questions:

  • What documented data do we have that shows who makes up our community, in terms of their ages, their backgrounds, their most critical needs and their desires regarding the programs offered via a cultural center? What data do we still need to gather and how might we gather that information?
  • What programs might we launch at first, and which might we want to have later? What data do we have that shows we are prioritizing our initial programming correctly?
  • How do we envision the staffing for our initial programs – by volunteers? If so, what tasks might these volunteers do? Could the tasks be divided into different roles: leadership roles, one-time group activities, short-term individual roles, online volunteering, university classwork, etc.? And what might the costs be to involve such volunteers (recruitment, screening, support, etc.)? Or will we staff these initial programs by paid employees or consultants? If so, what might these roles look and what would the costs be?
  • What will the decision-making and leadership of the center look like? How will the board of directors be chosen? How long will each member serve? How will their fiscal responsibilities and other oversight responsibilities be defined? Will there also be an advisory board?
  • What could we do in terms of programming without our own physical space? Could we leverage church fellowship halls, library meeting rooms, other cultural centers, arts spaces and other existing facilities to offer our own programming until we get a physical space of our own?
  • What would success look like in the first year of our operations? How would we collect data that proves our success?
  • How much would all of the above cost for the first two-five years?
  • What would we need to have in place to get fiscal sponsorship or become an independent nonprofit, and how would we get those things in place? What would the timeline look like?
  • When would we be ready to start accepting financial donations for our efforts and what avenues could we accept those donations (how would we accept and track checks, online donations, even cash donations)?

Altogether, the answers to these questions create both a business plan and all of the information a group needs for a funding proposal. All of these activities create a cultural center without anything having to wait for a building to be built or a rented and, at the same time, make funding an actual building all the more attractive.

Sadly, the cultural center, as a building, didn’t happen, and efforts to offer these programs in other spaces have come and gone over the years. I think community members still dream of a magical mega donor descending into the area and offering them millions of dollars to make this happen.

I think about this situation frequently as I am asked by so many people, “How do I start the nonprofit of my dreams?” The steps are all neatly listed in my blog, but the reality is that it’s messy in execution. None of these steps are easy, but I regularly see new nonprofits flourish after diligently completing each.

If you have an idea for a new organization, a new program or a new project, I recommend you have a look at this UNESCO project planning tool. It’s developed for youth and the projects they want to undertake, but it’s something that a lot of adults could use as well. This can be a good tool to use in a group exercise with the core leadership of your effort to establish a new program or organization.

Also helpful is this free NGO Capacity Assessment Supporting Tool. It can be used to identify an NGO’s strengths and weaknesses and help to establish a unified, coherent vision of what an NGO can be. The tool provides a step-by-step way to map where an organization is and can help those working with the NGO, including consultants, board members, employees, volunteers, clients, and others, to decide which functional areas need to be strengthened and how to go about to strengthen them. Share the results of your using this tool in your funding proposals – even on your web site. The tool was compiled by Europe Foundation (EPF) in the country of Georgia, and is based on various resources, including USAID – an NGO Capacity Assessment Supporting Tool from USAID (2000), the NGO Sustainability Index 2004-2008, the Civil Society Index (2009) from CIVICUS, and Peace Corps/Slovakia NGO Characteristics Assessment for Recommended Development (NGO CARD) 1996-1997.

Also see:

Lessons from UN Cares re LGBTI inclusion in the workforce

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UN Cares is the United Nations system-wide workplace program created to provide support for UN staff and their families impacted by HIV. In recent years, UN Cares has expanded its focus to also address the rights of LGBTI people working within the UN system.

Laurie Newell, global coordinator for UN Cares at the U.N. Population Fund, says in this Development Ex article that people have come to her over the years describing the UN as a “really homophobic place to work” and asking if there was something that UN Cares could do about it. She says that one of the methods that has worked well in changing UN workplace cultures to be more welcoming for LGBTI people at the UN has been engaging the most senior leaders, because these are the people that can delivery the message with authority and emphasize what the organization expects “in terms of building an inclusive workplace of dignity, fairness and respect, including LBGTI colleagues.” She also says that, if your organization works in the area of human rights or the Sustainable Development Goals, you should “align the purpose of your initiative to the larger goal of the organization,” borrowing language from the SDGs. “We can ‘leave no one behind.” That means starting in-house with making the goals of the SDGs a reality.

The entire Development Ex article is worth your time to read.

Being gay and working in a humanitarian agency is wrought with difficulties and risks, and the biggest challenges can come from co-workers, as this Guardian piece illustrates. Sexual harassment and violence against female aid workers while on mission is widespread, but what’s under-reported is that many gay male aid workers are also targets of such, specifically because of their sexual orientation, and the majority of perpetrators of sexual violence and harassment against aid workers, including blackmail, are their own male colleagues.

International aid agencies and NGOs have mandates that include deliberately, publicly supporting human rights, equality, inclusion, protection and social justice, yet these same agencies will often ignore conditions in their own work place that make it hostile to gay staff members, justifying their lack of action as respecting religious or cultural views of anti-gay staff – something they would not tolerate were those views about a different tribe or ethnicity.

LGBT Aid Workers is a very new online platform for LGBT aid and development workers to come together, share stories and advice, and get support from each other. It’s worth checking out.

I made a personal commitment years ago to be supportive of gay co-workers in my humanitarian and development work: I will staunchly, absolutely protect their privacy, I will never, ever do anything that could “out” them (to be “out” is their choice to do or not, it is not mine), I will listen to their concerns and ask how they would like me to be an ally, particularly regarding their safety, and I will speak out with co-workers if I hear anti-gay rhetoric, reminding staff – even a supervisor – that human rights includes all humans.

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Civil Society Capacity Building: Why?

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logoMy favorite kind of professional work is building the capacities of civil society organizations, especially in transitional and developing countries, to communicate, to change minds and to engage a variety of people and communities, through communications, dialogue and volunteering. But the term civil society isn’t used in USA as commonly as it is elsewhere, and many don’t understand exactly what I mean when I talk about my favorite type of work.

Civil society is a term commonly heard outside the USA when discussing community development. Civil society is a term for the assortment of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nonprofit organizations, activist groups and institutions that, together, demonstrate the interests and will of residents of a particular area. Note, however, that these interests do not have to be the will of a majority of residents.

Civil society organizations include:

  • academia
  • activist groups
  • charities
  • clubs (sports, social, etc.)
  • community foundations
  • community organizations
  • consumer organizations
  • cooperatives / co-ops
  • foundations
  • non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
  • non-profit organizations (NPOs)
  • political parties
  • professional associations
  • religious groups
  • social enterprises (an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being)
  • support groups
  • trade unions
  • voluntary associations
  • foundations, government funders and international agencies have been supporting civil society for many years in developing countries. The goals with such support is to:
  • foster social equality (access to civil rights, freedom of speech, property rights, health, economic prosperity, education, social engagement, etc.)
  • foster civic engagement, including volunteerism
  • create a greater sense of ownership of what happens within a community by those that live there
  • create greater participation in addressing critical community and environmental needs
  • ensure a diversity of voices are represented in community decision-making
  • act as a counter to negative forces such as corruption, extremism, anarchy, etc.
  • ensure that civil society can work within the range of actors required for a country’s development.

This new resource explores why is it important for a country to have a robust, sustainable civil society, what is meant by the phrase civil society capacity building, and how capacities of civil society are strengthened.

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A grassroots group or nonprofit org = disorganization?

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logoThree comments I received or read in the last few weeks via email or social media:

As a nonprofit, we can’t always make updates and changes to our web site quickly…

As an all-volunteer organization, we won’t be able to do much marketing for this event…

We haven’t replied to people that have posted on Facebook saying that they want to volunteer because we’re an all-volunteer movement and we’re progressing methodically…

Being a nonprofit, or being an all-volunteer organization, or being a grassroots group organizing a march, has nothing to do with a group or organization’s ability to:

  • make simple changes to its web site
  • market an event
  • provide quality customer service
  • have an up-to-date list of the board of directors or senior staff on the web site
  • say on the web site what volunteers do at the organization and how to express interest in volunteering
  • say on the web site what the organization needs in terms of volunteer support
  • respond to emails in a timely manner
  • refer all phone calls and emails to the appropriate person immediately
  • quickly reply to every person who wants to volunteer, even with a simple message that says “you will hear from us in the next two weeks with next steps”

Legitimate reasons for not doing those things is because the organization or group:

  • is suddenly and severely understaffed (mass staff walk out, mass layoffs…)
  • has other immediate, urgent priorities in that specific moment (building burning down, death of a client, etc.)
  • is inefficient
  • is disorganized

If you have ever wondered why so many people from the for-profit sector think nonprofits are incompetent, that people that work at nonprofits aren’t experts, this is why: because we use our nonprofit status, or our volunteer staffing, as an excuse for not being able to do the basics of customer service, management and marketing.

My reaction to someone who says As a nonprofit, we can’t always make updates and changes to our web site quickly… or As an all-volunteer organization, we won’t be able to do much marketing for this event… is this: maybe you should dissolve your organization, or seek new leadership for your organization and its programs. And my reaction to anyone that says their group doesn’t have time to respond quickly to every person that expresses interest in volunteering is this: in fact, you don’t have to involve volunteers at all, and you should say so.

Yes, I’m talking to all you folks organizing marches as well.

When you get an email from someone asking why certain information isn’t on your web site, or why you aren’t updating your Facebook page, or why your nonprofit wasn’t represented at some event, here’s an idea: apologize to the person for not having the information or activity that you should have had, tell that person you are currently understaffed, and ask if he or she would be interested in volunteering with the organization to help you correct this. For instance:

Thanks so much for the email noting that we haven’t updated our Facebook page for four months, and haven’t posted any information about our upcoming event. Our marketing manager is currently on maternity leave, and we are looking for a volunteer to help us with social media management for the next four months. Would you be interested in helping us? 

Or

Thank you for writing about your frustration about trying to volunteer with your organization. People that want to volunteer with us deserve a quick response to their expressions of interest. Would you like to help us do that? Would you be interested in volunteering to help us quickly respond to people that want to volunteer?

Yes, I know, I wrote a similar blog back in 2012.

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