We now have evidence that these concerns are unfounded. In fact, EDs who go on sabbatical are more likely either to remain in their positions or extend their tenure, not cut it short. And rather than causing chaos, disruptions in an organization’s day-to-day affairs may be beneficial. Perhaps most importantly, a sabbatical can be a relatively inexpensive but highly productive capacity-building tool that yields measurable results.

We’ve proven the truth of that conclusion first hand here at Nonprofits Assistance Fund and at MAP for Nonprofits. Judy Alnes, Executive Director at MAP, took a sabbatical in October 2009. She wrote about what she learned during her time away in a thought-provoking guest commentary for Minnesota Council on Foundations. I’m still digesting my ideas and thoughts after a one month sabbatical in February of this year. It’s not really a surprise that having the opportunity and luxury to step back for a while benefited both Judy and me. Our absences had an entirely different benefit for those who were called upon to step in the lead while we were gone. Amy Wagner, Associate Director of MAP, and Janet Ogden-Brackett, Loan Fund Manager at Nonprofits Assistance Fund, deserve a thousand thanks (and some extra vacation). We asked them to share their thoughts about the experience.

Amy Wagner

Recently, Judy Alnes, Executive Director at MAP, known to me as “my boss,” took a sabbatical. While Judy was taking some time to travel, read, learn, connect, meet, think, recharge, etc., I had the chance to serve as MAP’s Acting Executive Director.

Judy was gone for five weeks. While that sounded like a long time when we were planning for it, it actually went by in a flash. Judy worked closely with MAP’s board and staff to prepare for her time away and there was clear communication on roles and responsibilities in her absence. One MAP staff member commented:

Staff at MAP know their roles and responsibilities and operate independently, which also led to a smooth operation. Everyone was willing to do what was necessary to help out.

And there was a need to help out. Judy’s planned sabbatical happened to fall exactly at the same time that we were preparing to launch GiveMN.  Since MAP was the nonprofit rollout partner in this effort, and I was the project manager and lead trainer, we were stretched. In addition, a key staff member was called away to address a family emergency during this time. Thankfully, everyone was willing to step up, pitch in and work as a team to keep things moving smoothly. In retrospect, it may have been better to plan for the unexpected and think proactively about who would be “on deck” to help in various scenarios. That may have taken some pressure off of me and given others more of a chance to contribute in new ways.

Personally, Judy’s sabbatical gave me a chance to develop and demonstrate my leadership abilities. I gained a greater appreciation for the role of the ED, and all the different constituencies with whom the ED interacts and to whom they are accountable. I gained a greater appreciation of the role the ED has in setting the tone in the office and creating an environment in which people can share their talents. I gained confidence in my ability to work with our board and our funders. I saw, and I know others sensed as well, that while serving as an ED is a big and important job, leadership does not reside in one person – there’s a whole team of staff and board members leading the organization. Since Judy’s return from sabbatical, I’ve been named MAP’s Associate Director. This new position is part of an organizational change that in large part resulted directly from what Judy and MAP as a whole learned during the sabbatical. The organizational shifts aim to give Judy more time to focus on MAP’s voice and impact in the community, me more time to work on new collaborations and partnerships, and others at MAP new opportunities to learn, lead, collaborate and contribute. I think we will feel the positive impact of this sabbatical for years to come.

Janet Ogden-Brackett

When I thought about what to include in this blog, I just knew I wanted to share some funny stories from the four-week period in which Kate Barr was on sabbatical. There is the story where the construction crew announced they would be removing the doorframe from my office at the exact moment that I was on a conference call. Maybe I would try to describe the amount of dust that sanding drywall produces or the screeching sound of the hydraulic lift. I only wish I could share a recording of one of the carpenters who loved to sing along to the oldies radio station.

Wait, I’m getting a little ahead myself.

Let me explain that the same four weeks that Kate was out coincided with the renovation of our office space. We had never planned for this to happen but as we saw the two events align, there was no real reason to change either one. We knew there would be the additional challenges of managing construction, but everything was very well planned, right down to the last detail.

The real value of the sabbatical is not how we addressed the unexpected and often hilarious challenges, or gained greater appreciation for scenario planning and always having at the ready a good plan b. Rather the value is in the rare opportunity for our organization to gain increased capacity through renewed leadership and an empowered staff.

There has to be a very special team in place in order to pull off a sabbatical. The first step comes not from a beleaguered Executive Director who makes the request of the Board because they need a long vacation, but rather from thoughtful leadership that can see the benefits of the break to staff and board as well as themselves. The Board must buy in that the benefits are identifiable and real and staff must be willing to step up and work as a team while assuming a great deal of responsibility. A successful sabbatical inspires and empowers everyone.

The changes here at Nonprofits Assistance Fund are large and small, obvious and subtle. The most obvious difference is to the office space; the change is big and audacious. Other changes took place as we developed our skills in unfamiliar areas from capable to proficient. We all raised our expectations for each other and ourselves. The more subtle changes will have a greater lasting impact to our organization. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.”  We asked every single staff member to step up into more responsibility and take on more work. After the sabbatical, there was no reason to step back. The entire team is better for the experience and our internal capacity is far superior to what it once was. To me it feels like we took a giant step forward and with every new undertaking, we now start closer to the finish line.

Resilience: Frankly, the people who lead and work for arts organizations have always been about as resilient as you could be, if resilience means the ability to improvise with what’s at hand and bounce back.

Innovation: How about innovation? The arts shine as innovators in creating art, but much less so on the organizational side. Most nonprofit arts organizations are structured using a management and financial model that’s been around for a long time. More and more questions have been raised about the model that will eventually lead to some more options. On his great blog The Artful Manager Andrew Taylor frequently writes about these questions including here and here. There are other interesting developments in helping arts organizations to innovate for long-term structural change. The James Irvine Foundation states that “we define innovation as instances of organizational change that stem from a shift in underlying assumptions and provide new ways to fulfill the mission.” Incremental change isn’t enough for arts organizations to confront their long-term challenges.

Adapting to the new normal: I’m not so sure that we ever had an “old normal”, or that change is a new dynamic. Regardless of the current terminology, though, arts organizations are facing deep and sustained changes to their funding sources, audiences, and role in the community. There is a lot to learn about becoming more adept at identifying the questions and leading the necessary changes. The article Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis describes adaptive leadership as the capacity to sort out and balance the short and long term issues. Facing immediate problems, many managers will hunker down and nibble around the edges of problems.

People who practice what we call adaptive leadership do not make this mistake. Instead of hunkering down they seize the opportunity of moments like this one to hit the organizational reset button. They use the turbulence of the present to build on and bring closure to the past. In the process, they change key rules of the game, reshape parts of the organization, and redefine the work the people do.

The time is critical for many arts organizations to understand their current situation, envision the extent of changes, and learn to truly and continually adapt.

What if? Last week I was sad to read that the Harlem School of the Arts closed its doors. The school was an institution in the neighborhood for over 40 years. The news report paints a case story of their failure to adapt – years of financial, management and governance problems and attempts to address them with short-term cuts, emergency fundraising efforts, and fingerpointing. If we don’t want to see this happen elsewhere we need to learn some new approaches.

Yes, they’re the buzz words of the day, but I can’t argue with the importance of resilience, innovation and adaptive leadership.

This blog was cross-posted at Springboard for the Arts’ Springblog.

Live Heart Healthy

Have you noticed the articles that accompany tax season each year, with advice about which financial records to keep and which to toss out? That inspired a little file purging in my office, or, as I thought of it, clearing the clots out of the office arteries. One item I found (and kept) got me thinking that nonprofit organizations also have to keep their arteries clear – not just once a year, but continually.

I found notes from a philanthropy conference I attended in 2002, in which the speaker urged his audience to “get comfortable with the new reality” following the post-9/11 economic downturn. Sounds a lot like the “new normal” we hear about today, doesn’t it?

In July 2009, the Pohlad Family Foundation made grants totaling almost $5 million to more than 70 nonprofits that provide housing for the homeless, human services, and community health care in the metro area. I had the privilege of being part of the team that assisted the Foundation and MAP for Nonprofits in making these funding decisions. As Scott Russell reported in a MinnPost piece about the Pohlad initiative on August 13th last year, “waiting lists and overstretched services are commonplace” at these organizations:

Many foundations and philanthropists have focused on meeting basic needs. The federal stimulus package has helped in some cases. Yet clearly money is tight from both government and givers.

Are tight funding, waiting lists, and overstretched services the “new reality” for nonprofits working to meet essential human needs? If it is, how can nonprofits keep their arteries healthy even as they serve more people with fewer resources?

Insight into the first question comes from our review of reports six months later from organizations that received these Pohlad funds. Among other things, grantees were asked to assess whether their financial condition had changed in the last six months of 2009. Of the 68 organizations reporting, 43% said their financial condition was better, 37% said it was unchanged, and 21% said it was worse. Operational efficiencies, expense controls – often including staff layoffs and elimination of retirement contributions – and Federal stimulus funds contributed to “better” financial positions. On the other hand, changed priorities on the part of public and private funders were the chief reason for “worse” financial positions. Huge increases in uncompensated care for people without health insurance or resources to pay deductibles and co-pays was another major stress on community-based providers of health and mental health care. “While we are effectively managing the downturn, we have been less successful stemming the tide of declining revenues and changing [funder] priorities,” wrote one grantee.

This anecdotal evidence suggests to me that settling into the “new reality” or “new normal” is not a one-time event for nonprofits. Cutting budgets, the work of 2009 for many, was necessary but insufficient. Rather, keeping a nonprofit’s arteries clear is a continual process of assessment and adjustment, just as watching our diets, exercising, monitoring cholesterol, and, if necessary, taking medication is for people who want to keep their arteries healthy. Here’s a three-part prescription for nonprofits’ heart health.

1. Scan the environment – both inside and outside the organization – continually. Planning for change is preferable to being surprised. Staying ahead and in touch is an added responsibility for executive directors who are already more than busy, but it is essential in the “new normal.”
2. Monitor priorities and strategies and make course corrections. Change is happening too fast for the old-style strategic plan that was adopted and treated like a fossil to still be useful. But that doesn’t mean that the whole idea of strategic planning has become irrelevant. To the contrary, having a clear strategic direction, overarching priorities, and well thought-out goals and strategies to realize them is more important than ever. Organizations that remain effective and use scarce resources efficiently do so, in large part, because they have a plan. What’s different in the “new normal” world is that a strategic plan must be dynamic, re-calibrated every 6 to 12 months in response to progress (or lack of it) and changes in the environment in which the nonprofit operates.
3. Confront the gnarly issues. Programs rarely operate in isolation; organizational problems tend to be intertwined; and changes in funding streams often affect multiple aspects of a nonprofit. Loss of support for a particular program or service, for example, may also mean a reduction in administrative funds or ineligibility for a different funding source. Understanding each program’s true costs and financial contribution can be empowering. Data, no matter how discouraging the story they tell, often pinpoint decisions that can no longer be postponed. If most discussions in an organization end by circling back to the same complex issues, it’s time to unravel them.

We know from our personal behavior that maintaining a healthy heart takes effort and discipline; so too with nonprofits that want to be healthy. But just as there are websites and coaches for personal fitness, there are great resources on the internet to help nonprofits stay healthy. One of the best is the site you’re on now, www.nonprofitsassistancefund.org. Another of my favorites is The Bridgespan Group,  especially an article written for the Harvard Business Review, Delivering on the Promise of Nonprofits, that includes a useful matrix for analyzing mission relevance and financial contribution or cost of each program.

About Carol Berde

Carol Berde has worked with nonprofits for 30 years from both sides of the desk: a long career at The McKnight Foundation and, more recently, as a consultant to nonprofits and foundations. She can be reached at carolberde@comcast.net.

I was glad to be asked to fill Kate Barr’s blog shoes while she is on sabbatical. I often write pithy blogs, if only in my mind. This assignment forced me to round up some of those loose ideas and put pen to paper; or rather, fingers to keys.

It’s Time to Innovate

Social innovation is on the tip of a lot of tongues these days. Most of us in the nonprofit sector are facing the fact that financial resources will remain tight for several years. Many of us have tried to do “more with less.” We’re now awakening to the fact that it is time to do things differently. In other words, it is time to innovate.

So what is social innovation? I especially like the definition used by Andrew Wolk of Root Cause in a recent speech he gave to the Texas Governor’s Nonprofit Leadership Conference:

Social innovation is the process of developing, testing, honing, and spreading transformative approaches to pressing social issues. It is finding ways to do things better and utilize resources more wisely.

Just as important is what social innovation is not! It is not only the purview of those who are leaders of social enterprises. It’s not just for Ashoka Fellows; though they are a remarkably innovative group. In fact, innovation is a discipline that each and every nonprofit and institution needs to incorporate in its work.

Getting Started

Where do we start?

We start by nurturing the seeds of discontent most of us share that we’re not making the progress we want to make on the issues facing our communities and our world.

Next, we arm ourselves with information about innovative processes. I highly recommend two books: The Medici Effect and Blue Ocean Strategy. Then add a daily Google Alert on social innovation or on the innovations in your particular field. It is okay to copy other nonprofits’ innovations in your own organization. Take a look at www.ideaencore.com – an online marketplace of other nonprofit organization’s best practices and resources.

Inside our organizations we can form teams that work on “developing, testing, and honing” advancements in our fields. We can charge individuals with responsibility to work on the next improvements in our processes, products, and services. We can start to admire the breakthroughs being achieved in other fields and think through how those breakthroughs might translate to our own challenges.

Innovating won’t be easy. Many organizations have stretched their people thin in an effort to keep delivering services at a pre-recession level despite a decline in resources. It’s not hard to predict what will happen if we don’t get around to innovation. Our results will look a lot like they do today. As the great inventor Thomas Edison said, “there is a way to do it better – find it.”