THE WHAT
My appointment was scheduled for 10:00. I submitted all the necessary paperwork to my counselor and waited for the promised confirmation to secure my spot and receive my session link. It did not come. I reached back out. And reached back out again. And reached back out once more. I never heard back.
The day before my appointment I contacted the organization, and they assured me that:
*My paperwork was good to go
*I would receive a link that night
An hour before my appointment, I had not yet received my link, so I reached out to my counselor yet again. And again. I finally connected with someone and after 10:00, I received my link. It would be another 10 minutes for my counselor to log on. Another 5 to upload their system and 5 more to pull up my documents. Documents that had not been read. Documents that, as it turns out, were not good to go. We spent more than half the session addressing questions I had been asking for weeks. At the end of the hour, I was no better off than when I had started. But my counselor was quick to point out that they always took care of their clients. I shudder to think they believed it.
I have been involved in almost every aspect of nonprofit life- frontline staff, executive, donor, board member, volunteer, consultant, client. Every step of the way I have had these kinds of experiences, experiences that could have been vastly improved simply by improving communication. Despite persistent frustrations and complaints, however, I remained an apologist, believing so much in the heart of the sector. I tried to convince myself that its shortcomings were unfortunate but understandable. That everyone was doing the best they could.
I was able to do this for a long time because I compartmentalized the bad experiences in terms of their effects on me. Like when
* as a staff, my annual review was rescheduled multiple times and delayed for several months, preventing me from receiving a raise I both deserved and was promised but was ultimately rescinded. Budgets are tight, I rationalized.
*as a donor, I sponsored a child to go to summer camp and kept receiving auto-generated emails from the organization to sponsor a child to go to summer camp. I reached out to make sure they had received my donation. No one responded. I followed up. Then followed up again only to receive a response of, “oh yeah, we got it.” There are so overwhelmed, I justified.
*as a volunteer, I spent months responding to requests for help only to be ignored by all but one organization. An organization that, when I showed up for my first day, had no idea why I was there. An organization that sent me home with an unfulfilled promise to call soon. Simple miscommunication, I offered.
*as a client, when I sought help and was repeatedly told to keep reaching back out no less than three times (!) before being reassured that they were looking into it. An empty reassurance in the end. They must be so busy, I conceded.
At first glance, these problems- inconveniences, really- appear to be my own, so who cares, right? Except they are not exclusively my own. Ultimately, these problems are our clients’.
That’s why I am fed up.
SO WHAT
Everything we do affects our clients. When we do not cultivate and retain enough donors, when we do not recruit and retain enough volunteers, when we do not hire and retain enough high-quality staff, these all negatively impact our clients. There are inherent challenges in securing quality donors, volunteers and staff and they are made worse when our communication is scattered and unreliable. When we do not respond, when we show up late, when we fail to follow through, we minimize our chances of working with the high quality people we seek.
We get too many phone calls and too many emails, but so much of this seemingly endless cycle of phone calls and emails is self-perpetuating. With every email and call we do not return, we receive yet another follow up and it goes on and on and on.
Every minute, every ounce of reactive energy we put into cleaning up after the fact, is time and energy we are not giving to our clients. Whatever is left over, we cobble together for services that are as fragmented as the planes we so proudly proclaim to be building while we fly them.
When we show up late, when we do not return phone calls, when we do not follow through, we put the onus on our clients to do the work of trying to receive the services we have promised to give. Many of them do not have the resources, time or ability to do so, and even if they do, it is not their job to ensure that we do ours.
The counseling session I had is a small, all-too-common snapshot of what I and countless other clients- and donors and volunteers and staff- face every day. Unlike many of our clients, however, I have great privilege that allows me to seek help elsewhere, bothered but unharmed. Too often our clients are harmed without the luxury of having an elsewhere to go. They are left with whatever we manage to give when we get around to giving it.
Most of us realize we need to do better and simply do not know where to begin. We work within systems and rely on funding that too often do not allow us to support our clients in the ways they need to be supported. We spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to increase this funding which takes away the time we can serve those we are raising money to serve. Meanwhile, we consistently create new nonprofits without an understanding of, preparation for or capacity to run them effectively. Our compensation is low, our turnover is high and we never seem to have enough of what we need. We are up against it in a thousand different ways.
There are so many areas that need improving and so much that is out of our control. We are already stretched so thin. How can we possibly find more time?
NOW WHAT
To help better serve our clients in ways that are manageable and impactful, we need to focus on what we can control. As we do the slow work of impacting systems, we need to do what we can in our respective organizations to improve our service to our clients. The first doable and significant way we can do this is to commit to timely responses and following through with everyone- every donor, every volunteer, every partner, and every client- when we say we will. This improved communication will increase efficiency, strengthen relationships, and improve outcomes. It will not solve everything (as no one thing ever can), but it will make significant positive changes.
At one organization, we did this by taking a good, hard look at where we were spending our time. It was clear we were spending a whole lot of it in meetings, and we realized we could reduce both the frequency and duration of these meetings to free up more time to reach our goal of responding to all emails and calls within one business day. This included responses to let people know we received their call/email and a clear timeline of when they could expect to hear back from us. To make sure we followed through, some staff used their online calendars, others used to-do lists, others still used databases or project management systems. There are lots of tools out there to help.
Once we put this in place, we were able to come up for air for the first time in a long time. By operating proactively and more efficiently, fewer things fell through the proverbial cracks and we were able to increase our retention of volunteers, donors, and staff, which of course all improved our client service.
How is poor communication impacting at your organization? What would it take for you to make a commitment to making it better? Do you also have far too many meetings that are far too long? Where is there opportunity to reduce some of these in frequency and duration to free up some time? What about your tasks? Which ones are not necessary or not being done by the right people? Where can you better minimize, delegate, or eliminate these? What systems can you put in place? How can you enlist your volunteers and board members to help? Do you have any money to hire another staff or give a few more hours for your current one? How can you model, coach and train your staff on these new expectations? How can you create a culture where this becomes your culture? We are a creative and resourceful sector and there are lots of ways to arrive at the same end. What would work best for you?
If you are an organization that is already committed to timely responses and following through, thank you. Keep up the amazing work and example of how it can be done. If you are an organization who is not quite there yet but wants to be, thank you for recognizing it. Then commit to doing something about it. Immediately. Commit to responding to every phone call and email you receive. Commit to showing up on time. Commit to following through. If you are in a leadership position, work with your team to develop a system that works for you. Commit to enforcing the expectation. Then enjoy all the positive changes that result from it.
IN CONCLUSION
I am fed up with nonprofits, but I am not giving up. With all my frustrations and strong words, I continue to be inspired by and grateful for people who dedicate themselves to making the world a better place despite great obstacles. I recognize that systems are powerful, that change is slow, and that it is taxing to care so much and work so hard and not have the support you need to do the work you know needs to be done. Despite trying to convince ourselves otherwise, it does not need to be this way. And it does not permit us to keep treating our clients this way. We have created this, and we can create something different. We can choose to operate differently. We can choose to commit to improving our communication and keeping our word.
I believe in the work we do and will continue to support the field. I encourage you to hold me accountable and would love the opportunity to hold you accountable too. How can you help me do my part? How can I help you do yours?
4 Responses
I have several issues with fund-raising activities by non-profits and one request.
1. I receive as many as three identical solicitations in a single day’s mail, despite the fact that I have written to one particular organization informing them of my correct name and my wife’s passing. This and similar charities seem not to be managing the cost of their by-mail fundraising activities.
2. I receive from one charity phone solicitations for contributions on consecutive days, despite the fact that I pledged on the first day and am awaiting receipt of a fulfillment form when the second call comes in. I also receive both mail and phone solicitations on the same days.
I want to be of assistance to the latter organization, since it is clear that is is operating on a shoestring with a large case load. My request: can anyone point me to a reference book that presents simple sample procedures to optimize the effectiveness of volunteer staff in accomplishing this charity’s mission?
Thank you for your comment. It rings all too true for me and I’m quite sure for so many others.
I have been a loyal blood donor with the Red Cross since I needed parental permission at 17 for my first donation. For decades, I have given pretty much right on schedule. But all of a sudden, I started getting emails, letters and calls to donate. Then the calls started increasing in frequency until I was receiving them every day and ultimately multiple times a day. After repeated requests to stop calling I asked to be removed from their call list. They responded with a disbelieving “WOW”.
I understand nonprofits are stretched thin and doing the best they can with challenging circumstances. But increasingly- and what prompted me to write this- is that this shouldn’t be the goal, or even acceptable really. It is inefficient and often harmful to keep starting nonprofits without any understanding and capacity of how to do it. Yes, the intention is good, but too often the result is not and I think we need to focus more on that.
There are ~ 1.5 million nonprofits in the U.S. There are undoubtedly still some gaps that new nonprofits need to fill. But more often than not, people are starting nonprofits simply to fulfill the goal of starting them despite a duplication of services and despite the lack of a viable plan to run it effectively.
This is hard for me, because I do appreciate the desire, but impact matters. There are so many ways to give back, with time, money, volunteering, board service, etc.
To finally get around to your question, I wrote a piece a while back that might be helpful to share with your organization (though the title is not so inviting so maybe just share some of the points.) I can’t link to it here, but if you search the site (upper right hand corner) for ‘volunteers’, it should pop up. It’s called “How We Keep Blowing it With Volunteers.”
I don’t have any book recommendations and am hoping someone else will chime in with one.
Thank you for the thoughtfulness and care you are putting into this. These organizations are lucky to have your support.
THIS!
*as a volunteer, I spent months responding to requests for help only to be ignored by all but one organization. An organization that, when I showed up for my first day, had no idea why I was there. An organization that sent me home with an unfulfilled promise to call soon. Simple miscommunication, I offered.
So common. So frustrating.