Helen Brown Group

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So you’re managing virtual workers now…

Picture of the door to the Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy, Manchester Museum

Chances are pretty good that you didn’t expect to be where you are right now, managing people who are no longer sitting within 100 feet of you. I will admit that when I started this company and hired my first two virtual employees, I got really lucky. Both were (and are) self-motivated people with a sense of responsibility and respect for their teammates.

I had never managed a virtual team before, and back then there really weren’t any examples for me to copy. We just sort of made it up as we went along.

There have been a few hiccups along the way, but thankfully not too many, and in that time we’ve learned a lot. I wanted to share some of the best lessons I’ve learned personally, as well as some I’ve gotten from some expert advice along the way to help you be successful in the weeks (and months?) ahead.

The ship is rocking. You are the stabilizer.

You’ve hired good people. One of the best things you can do now is to avoid micromanaging them. Everybody is figuring out this new world of working from home, and there are going to be bumps in the first few weeks for your staff – and for you personally. Factor in wiggle room while people are getting settled in.

Also, remember that this is just a very unsettling time, and people are going to react to it differently. Some will just “keep calm and carry on” (or maybe that’s just what they’ll project to the world). Others will be overwhelmed as the primary caregiver and salary earner. People that have always been a calming force on your team may suddenly become unreliable as they have difficulty processing what’s happening. And the normally unreliable one may prove to be a huge sense of comfort or laughter when you least expect it. People will settle down, but probably not for a few weeks.

Your demeanor as a supervisor will really matter now, too. When times are unsettled, people long for normalcy and they appreciate steadiness. I’m not saying that you need to memorize Churchill speeches or become someone you’re not. But right now is the time to be that leader you’ve always wanted to be.

You’re going to have to be flexible

If you can, extend non-critical deadlines. Although someone used to be at their desk at 9:00 on the dot, if they’ve got kids that are not in school that’s probably not going to be the case anymore. Other workers might be more productive from dawn until mid-afternoon. As a manager who wants to keep and motivate your team, you’re going to have to find your zen about this. When there are non-moveable deadlines, be sure you’re crystal clear about them.

Trust, but verify

To help your team manage their time, and enable you to spot trouble areas before they happen, you and your team may need to start using and relying on tools like Toggl for time management and project management tools to stay productive, even if you haven’t tracked staff time before. Most of your team are going to be conscientious, but some will find it harder to concentrate at home and you’ll want to pick up on that quickly and figure out how to help them be successful. This will also give you key data points if you eventually need to discipline someone.

Make sure you set clear expectations. “I’ll need to see that soon” is not a useful deadline anymore (if it ever was). You can’t just drop by someone’s desk to see how things are going with a project. Communicate specific deadlines in email so there is a(n electronic) paper trail.

Transparency is really important

You might want to start a Google doc or have a document on your shared server with important dates or deadlines that everyone has access to. We use a group calendar to track meetings, medical appointments, and vacations and we also have a shared document with everyone’s contact information in case of emergency.

We use Zoom Projects for managing team-work, and we log all completed work in a shared spreadsheet when it’s complete. Anything that you can centralize and make transparent for everyone, do it now. For example, in order to ensure that everyone is aware of resources, handbooks, or deadlines that are important for your team’s success, you may want to put them in a shared document. Those sorts of documents are helpful for new employees starting, too.

This is a great time to be on the lookout for new ways to work

One person on our team is designated as our Efficiency Lead, and he is constantly looking out for ways of improving our business practices. Now might be a good time to appoint someone or even create a small committee to be an advocate for the team and to recommend better ways of working. Be open to work processes evolving on the fly.

Communicate lots more now

It’s a thin line between not bothering people/just letting them do their work, and trying to reach out and be supportive and available for them. That said, even the most introverted member of your team will be glad for increased positive contact right now. The extroverts are already pinging you.

Most experts say to check in daily with your teammates. This is easy to do if you use something like Slack or Zoom where you can start or pick up conversations as a group or one-on-one anytime you want. While we use Zoom for group and individual chats, each of the three HBG managers also have weekly individual check in phone meetings with the people they supervise. We also meet as a full group twice a month in a video chat. It’s always nice to see each other, Brady Bunch style.

While that has always been our normal way of communicating, we now have a new normal, so last week as schools closed we created a new Zoom chat room just for the parents on our team so they can share ideas and kid activities with each other. We may even have two new junior HBG pen pals as a result! It’s important to keep tabs on what your team needs now to be productive, and understand that those needs are going to evolve.

This isn’t forever

This may not be forever, but we’re also not going to quickly forget these days. There are long-held “truths” our organizations had that we’re going to learn really weren’t true at all. And also it’s inevitable that we’re going to develop new, innovative ways of working, and that part is genuinely interesting and even exciting.

Those of us who help re-envision leadership (whether from the front or from the middle) and those who pull together are going to be the most successful in this new brave new world. What are you doing now to manage your team remotely? Share in the comments so we can all benefit and learn!

Next week: what we’ve learned about hiring virtual staff

 

 

 

 

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A missed opportunity – and how to avoid it

“Ruby Red Horse Chestnut Trees – Backlit blossoms” Photo by Rod Raglin

A few years ago in the late spring I went to a botanic garden and saw a tree in bloom that just knocked my socks off. I love gardens, but I’ve never before just stood staring at a tree for a good five minutes. I knew that if I ever had the opportunity to plant a tree in my garden, that was going to be the one I picked.

Four years later, here I am, looking up the tree on the web, planning the purchase.

Turns out this particular tree, Aesculus carnea or red chestnut, has a few different varieties, including ‘Fort McNair,’ ‘Briotii,’ and ‘O’Neil’s Red.’ I wanted the exact same one, so I contacted the botanic garden to find out which cultivar I’d fallen in love with.

Fell in love

I actually wrote those words in my email to the contact-us email address for the gardening staff: “There is a tree in your garden I fell in love with…”

Now if that’s not a potential donor begging to be asked for a donation, I don’t know what is.

I did get a response – and it was exactly 9 words:

Aesculus × carnea ‘Briottii’

red horse chestnut hybrid

[Responders Name]

As a future tree owner, I was thrilled. As a fundraising professional, totally crestfallen.

“I’m so happy to hear that our Briotii delighted you!” they could have written. “In case you’re ever interested, we have an adopt-a-tree program and you could take care of our Briotti as well as yours!”

I mean, wow. What a missed opportunity.

And honestly, this isn’t a rare case. I think that we in fundraising are all so busy doing what we’re doing that we don’t take the time to think about the other stakeholders within our organizations who could help us.

As fundraising professionals – especially in small nonprofits – we need to do a better job of raising awareness so that everyone on our team recognizes a potential donor engagement situation when it bops them on the nose.

We prospect researchers have maintained for decades that we’re fundraisers, too, even if we’re not usually interacting directly with donors, and I’m pretty sure that any one of us would be prepared to represent if an opportunity came our way.

But there are loads of people in various roles across a nonprofit that interact daily with the general public, with members, volunteers, visitors, students, alumni, grandparents, etc. They all support the fundraising effort, perhaps without even being aware of it.

Every one of those people could benefit from a brown bag lunch from the front-line professionals on recognizing funding opportunities when they fall in their lap. Just as we prospect research pros provide brown bag lunches to educate the front-line teams on what we do, every fundraising shop should do a dog and pony on how to be a great adjunct fundraising team member.

I’m not talking about training staffers to be fundraisers, just noticers with license to help.

I get it, you can’t train someone to care about the sustainability of the nonprofit they work for if they aren’t personally invested. But for those who are invested, raising awareness of how they can help could make a big difference.

And who knows, maybe one of them will contact the fundraising office and say “Hey, I just got an email from a woman with a question about our red chestnut tree. I get the feeling she might be interested in our Adopt-a-Tree program. I’m not sure if she’s already a donor. How should I respond to her?”

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Why I’m not proposing

A few weeks back I got an email with a request for proposal (RFP) from an organization I’ve wanted to work for since I was about six years old. This is a world-class nonprofit with a mission that doesn’t just sing to me – it roars.

They were looking for someone to do a research department audit, which is one of the parts of my job that I just love.

Meeting with the prospect development team and frontline fundraisers to learn about their goals…making sure the teams have the skills, human resources, and tools they need to achieve their goals…benchmarking them against similar nonprofits…making recommendations…mentoring…

So much collaboration, and learning, and advising, and sharing. So much incredibly important two-way communication.

But no

As much as it kills me, and as much I’d love to work with them, I won’t be responding to their RFP. I’m following the lead of a growing number of respected fundraising consultants who are saying no to responding to RFPs.

Why? Because this RFP shared some common terms of engagement I’ve seen in several other RFPs I’ve gotten lately:

  • “No telephone inquiries.”
  • “We won’t be taking questions – send a bid based on the following parameters…”
  • “Email questions to this address by 5PM on Friday; we will respond to all questions in one large email sent to everyone.”
  • “Based on this [three-paragraph] description of our nonprofit and fundraising office, provide a bid answering the following 32 questions detailing your assessment methodology.”

The kitchen remodel

Imagine a pair of homeowners who need to have their kitchen renovated. They email the kitchen store or a general contractor and say:

“Give us a bid for remodeling our kitchen. Attached is a one-sheeter to guide you. You can’t come by and measure the space. We’ll need the bid in a week. Don’t call with questions – email them to this address and we’ll answer all contractors together in one email. We’re not going to tell you how much we want to spend – you tell us what our budget is.”

That’d be crazy, right? They’re about to spend a ton of money! They want the end result to be the best possible option – a modern, efficient working and living space at a reasonable price. Not giving the contractor enough information to create an informed, reasonable bid for their ideal kitchen is a recipe for disaster.

And what if the contractor turns out to be a total jerk or a slob? Maybe they were great on paper (or the cheapest bid) but once the contract is signed the couple have to live with this contractor in their house for weeks and weeks.

On the flip side

Or let’s say they’re the gold standard of contractors. They have exactly the skills the client needs, but when the contractor receives the RFP they might not bother to respond, thinking that the client is sending out loud signals that they would be uncommunicative or uninterested in collaborating.

If someone has already stated right up front that they don’t want to talk, well…I think the vendor should believe them.

It’s a no-brainer – we should get rid of RFPs altogether

None of us provide those kinds of terms with any other professional we consult with in our daily life, so why would we do it at work?

And as fundraising professionals, isn’t vetting prospective partners what we’re (supposed to be) really good at?

Any consultation is about mutual trust, communication, and collaboration between the consultant and client. It may be my loss, but that request for proposal in my inbox will go unanswered.

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What to do when your PM system needs a reboot

What do you do when your existing prospect and performance management systems aren’t working for anyone? That’s the question Misa Lobato answers for us this week in our month-long Research Pride look at prospect management. Misa and her team embarked on a serious soul-searching, data-gathering, preconceived-notion-busting, solutions-finding mission to find out what would make their system actually work. Part of what they learned is that you have to measure what matters. And what matters? Read on! ~Helen

Photo by tracyshaun

Many years ago, when I first started learning about performance management in fundraising, I noticed a strange disconnect: there didn’t seem to be a correlation between gift officers meeting established individual goals and being promoted. In fact, often the gift officers who were promoted hadn’t met their goals. As I dug in a little further, I realized no one cares about these goals.

How did we get there, to the point where goals had been established to measure performance but no one viewed them as an indicator of success or failure? It seemed to me that goals had just been handed down year after year without being questioned. Goals were standardized across titles. Some were based on questionable industry lore–a gift officer should raise X times their salary. And some just seemed to be based on what had always been done. [Read more…]

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Prospect Management – Starting From Scratch

This week I’m delighted to share with you an article written by prospect management expert, Janna Holm. I was introduced to Janna at an Apra conference by Lisa Howley (more from Lisa later this month!), and Janna’s enthusiasm for our field and, specifically, her delight at building strong and dynamic prospect management systems simply won me over. I’m so pleased that Janna agreed to lay out the foundations for us in today’s blog post so you’ll get to meet her, too, if you haven’t already. ~Helen

Air Traffic Controlman Third Class (ACC) Wendy Parrett list a new aircraft arrival from her local control position in the air traffic control tower at Naval Air Station North Island. Photo by PH2 Eric A. ClementResearch Pride Month is such a special time to me—our friends and colleagues around the world come together to celebrate accomplishments and where our industry is headed. Our field has undergone some incredible transitions over the years. In my last job, I went digging for office supplies and stumbled upon a filing cabinet in an old storage closet, only to find it full of index cards holding tidbits of information and asset data on our alumni. This was their “research system” through the 1980s.

I’ve used databases built in the 1990s where cell phone and email fields were hidden away under “miscellaneous info” as they weren’t common enough to have a home yet. Now, in 2019, our conferences are full of discussions about machine learning and artificial intelligence. It’s amazing to think about how far we’ve come.

One of the biggest transitions over the years has been to incorporate prospect management into shops that historically focused on prospect research. I’ve seen and worked at organizations where prospect management was fully established and ingrained in the culture, and others where prospect management was still nascent or didn’t exist. But over the years, this has grown to become a vital part of a major gift shop. So how does it begin?

When to Begin:

Any organization with multiple staff involved in fundraising should start thinking about a prospect management system. An airport with only one flight per day may not need an air traffic controller, but the more planes you add, the more vital coordination becomes. The same is true for prospect management—when more staff and donors are involved, it becomes increasingly important to have a prospect management system in place.

To build out a strong prospect management system, you need to think not only about your constituent relationship management database (CRM), but also the policy around how you work and the procedures that delineate who does what and how that work is done.

Incorporating Prospect Management in your CRM:

Going back to our air traffic controller example, they need to know which planes are taking off and landing, at what times, and in which direction. They need to know their runways, and wind speeds, and who’s ready versus who’s running behind schedule. In order to ensure prospect management is coordinated, it helps to know some data as well.

No matter which CRM you’re using, there should be some ability to begin tracking prospect management or moves management. Most prospect management systems begin by tracking the following elements:

  • Who oversees the relationship with this prospect?

This could be labeled as a Gift Officer, Relationship Manager, or any number of titles, but it’s helpful to note which person is in charge of the relationship and responsible for coordinating outreach to the prospect.

  • Where is this prospect in their relationship to our organization?

Different organizations use different stages (see the 4-, 5-, 6-, or 7-stages of a gift solicitation), but you’ll want to know who is at each step of whichever cycle you choose.

  • What have we asked this prospect for previously, and how did it go?

You may refer to these as Asks, Solicitations, Opportunities, Proposals or myriad other names, but this would be a place to track what size gift you solicited, what program or project it would fund, when you asked for it, and what the outcome was.

  • What have we done with this prospect?

Tracking your actions or contacts with a prospect ensures you’re capturing their history. Did they attend an event? Did you send them a holiday card? What did you talk about in your last face-to-face visit? Some organizations will track every single “touch” that happens with a prospect, while others focus on more “substantive” actions that move the prospect along through the stages of their relationship to the organization.

As your organization grows in size and complexity, you may want to begin to track other things like additional staff involvement (secondary relationship managers, volunteers, leadership involvement), details about the prospect’s capacity and affinity, the short- and long-term strategy for a prospect, your metrics for fundraising staff, or more in-depth information about proposals or activities.

Creating a Prospect Management Policy:

Once you have those ideas for what you want to track, there are still some vital things to consider. Your system needs to have a policy behind it and procedures in place so your colleagues know how to use it.

Your policy document should cover questions that may arise as your colleagues adopt this new system. Those will look different based on your organization, and you can find some good examples online. It may include topics like:

  • How do prospects get assigned to a staffer?
  • When should prospects be added or removed from a portfolio?
  • How are staff expected to share information about a prospect?
  • What information are they expected to track in the CRM?
  • Who enters that data?
  • What happens if there’s a conflict about assignment, solicitation, etc.?
  • What information can and cannot get entered into the record (due to HIPAA, GDPR, FERPA, or ethical concerns)?
  • What happens when a staffer leaves your organization?

An aspect that should be incorporated into every prospect management system is a glossary to specify what each data element means—what counts as a “visit”? How are you defining “qualification”? It’s hard to stay coordinated if you don’t speak the same language, so make sure colleagues agree on how terms or data fields are defined at your organization.

Up and Running

Once a prospect management system has been crafted and implemented, it will still go through tweaks. Maybe a policy needs to change, or you’re adding some planned giving staff and need to think about their assignments differently, or you realize you need to add a new stage. Building a strong system that colleagues understand and use, and regularly adapting it are key elements of moving prospect management forward.

Our industry is dynamic and we’re progressing faster every year. Our systems should be built to track our history, but also to allow for evolution, so that in 10, 20, or 30 years, we can see a prospect’s journey from stage to stage and gift to gift (and so in 10, 20, or 30 years, we have a data set to use for all that machine learning!).

So, as we near the halfway point of Research Pride Month, I hope you all take a look at your prospect management system. If you’ve had one for years, does it need any edits or changes? If you’re just getting started, what can you do this month to move it forward a bit? Celebrate what you’ve done, and where our industry has been. Let’s keep adapting, growing, and improving!

Janna Holm is Director of Prospect Development at The Trust for Public Land. Currently a board member of Apra Minnesota and a longtime volunteer and speaker for Apra International, Janna is past president of Apra Maryland. She tweets great stuff here.

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A lot to love

There’s a lot to love about fundraising intelligence (aka prospect development), which, for those of you who are new to the term, is comprised of prospect research, prospect management, due diligence, and fundraising data science.

In research, each profile we build is a love letter, of sorts, to the donor prospect we’re writing about. We gather the information carefully. Ethically. Lawfully.

We are curious and diligent. We pull every loose thread. [Read more…]

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Innovation in practice

There’s a desire in fundraising and prospect development for innovation, but when our heads are down in the trenches, it’s hard to take time out to plan, strategize, or just daydream about what’s possible.

But last week I attended a fundraising gathering that was truly remarkable. The event itself was innovative, and the activities and presentations were designed to spark and broadcast creative ideas. It created collaborative opportunities and built community. It’s been a week and I’m still thinking about it. [Read more…]

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The forest for the trees

Last week I talked about the admirable foresight that transplanted American Lawrence Johnston had in planting a cedar tree in his English garden that he knew he would never see grow to its full glory. As I mentioned, I think of Johnston often when I am planning ahead for what’s to come here at HBG. [Read more…]

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Planting a tree

Back in July of 1907, an American named Lawrence Johnston bought an English manor house for his mother, Gertrude. Built in the 1600s, the house and its surrounding 287 acres of mostly farmland were a suitable place for Johnston to try out an experiment.

Over the next seven years (before he went off to serve and return from the Great War), Johnson and a small team of staff created something new at Hidcote Manor: a master outline for a garden containing a variety of rooms and vistas that would showcase the flowers, bushes, trees, and shrubs there, as well as the topography of the land. [Read more…]

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Is Your Nonprofit Ready for GDPR?

The new EU data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on May 25th and it brings with it an entirely new set of rules that nonprofits world-wide – not just in the European Union – will have to abide by. I’m not seeing a lot of discussion about it here in the US fundraising community* and that concerns me. [Read more…]

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