Month: October 2014

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New Way to Change Your Job

hands-holding-resignation-note-

There’s another way to Change your Job…

>> Struggling with finding your next job?

>> Tired of spinning your wheels applying to jobs on-line and not hearing anything from it?

>> Frustrated that you can’t get the interview, even though you are waaaaaay qualified for the job?

Allow what you Desire to Come to You

I’m a huge fan of Esther Hicks and her Abraham messages. I’ve used her ideas many times to consciously co-create.

Manifesting starts with Believing in Abundance. Knowing that there is Realm of Infinite Possibility you can tap into.

As Esther-Abraham often says, you have to turn on, tap in, and tune up to connect with the Vortex.

(The term Vortex is known by many names- God Consciousness, Source, Life Force, Energy , the Universe etc.)

Once you are powered up and connected to the Vortex, it’s simply a process of allowing what you desire to flow through you.

Saponi Spirit Guide picture The trick is in powering up- holding your thoughts, emotions and energy long enough to really tap into the Realm of Possibility– without letting your fears, doubts, worries, and judgments prevent what you desire from flowing to you.

Notice when you go after something but think contradictory thoughts like:

  • That will never happen,
  • I just don’t seem to get a break,
  • This is too hard, I’d better just forget about it
  • I’m too old for this

For help stepping through your Self-Limiting Beliefs, keeping your focus, and staying energized during your job search, consider working with a Job Coach.

And now for more on the Art of Allowing…

First and foremost, you’re not trying to find that job. You want to prepare your vibrational atmosphere so it can find you. That’s really the key. Because when you are looking for something that you can’t find, what’s your vibrational stance? I can’t find it. Which means you can’t find it because you can’t find something that’s lost and you can’t find something that you can’t find. You can’t find it. But it isn’t that you can’t find it. It is …. that you are not allowing it.

And the reason that you are not allowing it is because you can’t find it. So what you want to do is think in terms of all that you’ve done. You’ve lived life, you’ve selected carefully, you’ve put things in your vortex, you know what you want. So you can find the feeling of it even though you can’t find the specifics of it.

So when you take the time to find the feeling of it, now you are no longer preventing it from coming.

It’s like this, it’s like everything that you’ve asked for and we’re not kidding you at all about this. This is the way that it is. Everything that you’ve asked for is all queued up and the path is being given to you in the form of ideas. In the form of thoughts.

In other words, Source within you is giving you impulses, thinking about you. Thinking about what you want. Thinking about the full fruition of what you want. So there is a steady stream of path coming to you, coming to you, coming to you, coming to you. But so many of you, it’s like…you’ve got your umbrella out there like this [sideways] against the wind currents of everything that you want.

So even though it’s flowing to you, it’s flowing at you, it’s flowing to you, you’ve got your umbrella up because you are so wadded up in reality that you are not letting in the improvement, the idea.

So did you feel the new resonance in that? It’s about allowing it to flow to you, recognizing that it is flowing to you and preparing yourself, your vibrational atmosphere, your mood, your attitude so that you let in what’s flowing to you so you can be the realizer of it.

Boston 2014

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Linda J. Ferguson is an International Speaker, Author, Job and Life Coach, and Shamanic LightWorker.

Receive your tool kit for making positive changes in your life- the Transformational Empowerment series. Enter your name in the right hand side bar – www.lindajferguson.com

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“Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand: Awakening Soul Consciousness for the New Millennium”. Available in paperback and ebook- Kindle, Nook and iStore

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The PowerPoint Crutch and How to Fix It

a-lady-using-powerpoint-to-present-in-a-meeting

microsoftYou stand at the podium or in the classroom waiting to begin. You have all the symptoms of person who has to do public speaking and doesn’t do it all the time. You’re nervous. Your sweaty hands shake. Your knees wobble. You adjust clothing and eyeglasses. All those things you do when you are uncomfortable surface. Invisible or magnified, these involuntary twitches grip your entire body.

But, you can do this. You have Power–PowerPoint that it is. With it you won’t skip a beat. It will make you brave. Or, so you think. Your eye contact with the audience will be diminished. The audience won’t see your passion for the subject because you are reading from the screen, but you know you are there because you are the subject matter expert (SME) and that means whatever you do will be fine. Or, will it?

You begin doubting yourself: should you even be here? And, worst of all, while you stand there waiting, you are losing credibility. Then, disaster strikes! Something is wrong with equipment and your visual presentation won’t work! Do you “tap dance” or tell jokes until the equipment is working again? Or, do you go on with the show?

The simple path to good communication is sometimes hard to find however obvious it seems on the surface. The presentation isn’t the presentation.

Sometimes, it’s good to find lighter voice to tell us what we need to hear. And, she’s much nicer than me in talking about it.

I have enlisted the aid of Lorraine Ranalli, Philadelphia communications expert, and reposting her article from LinkedIn.

Q-tips

Don’t Let Microsoft Co-opt Your Presentation

At a restaurant, do you ask for a cola or a Coke?

After showering, do you reach for a cotton swab or a Q-tip?

When you tell someone to look up something on the Internet do you say, “Conduct a web search,” or “Google it”?

Do you have parents or grandparents who reach for Kleenex instead of tissues?

Perhaps you’re from the generation that made Xeroxes instead of copies.

Most of us recognize the marketing genius of companies that so expertly align their brands with a product that the two become synonymous.

Whether intentional or not, Microsoft is one of those brands. For better or worse—I will argue the latter—MS PowerPoint has become synonymous with presentation.

I mean no disrespect to Microsoft and no disrespect to the millions who use it. I draw the line with the synonymy that has become accepted practice in business and academia.

PowerPoint is an effective visual aid for public presentations but it is no substitute for the presenter.

When conducting public speaking workshops, I often have to re-educate participants as to the definition of a presentation. Because of excellent marketing and subsequent habitual usage, many don’t even think about addressing an audience without first putting together a PowerPoint. In fact, many rely on PowerPoint as a means of deflecting jitters, keeping organized or saving prep and practice time. The result can be disastrous for unskilled presenters.

Public Speaking Rule #1: You are the presentation! Your PowerPoint or any audio-visual aid is just that, an aid. Your visual aids should be gathered and put together after you’ve researched, outlined, and crafted your presentation.

You wouldn’t ice a cake before baking it, would you? (I can bring food into any conversation!)

At best, preparing your PowerPoint prior to researching and outlining your speech will likely leave you with unnecessary slides. At worst, you’ll have a very boring presentation.

I know some reading this are thinking, “I don’t care if I’m boring as long as I can get through the presentation and the audience has something other than me to focus on.” I’ve heard such comments from college students and from professionals. Don’t concentrate on getting through your presentation. Concentrate on getting TO it.

Think about the types of presentations you enjoy attending. Do you like to read or be read to, or do you prefer an engaging speaker?

I realize most of us aren’t born public speakers but I also have proof that with a little coaching 99% of us can become better public speakers. In addition to my personal experience, I’ve had the honor of helping hundreds of professionals and students through my classes and workshops.

So, why settle for mediocrity, especially if a promotion or a big-ticket deal is at stake?

When you have the opportunity to address a live audience, embrace it! Don’t waste your audience’s time. They can view a PowerPoint from the comfort and convenience of their PCs, tablets, or phones.

For tips to creating effective PowerPoint slides, please consider the wisdom of comedian Don MacMillan: “Life and Death After PowerPoint.”

*Random fact: Invented in 1920 by Leo Gerstenzang, Q-tips were first called Baby Gays.

About the author: Lorraine Ranalli is a Philadelphia media personality, writer, speaker, and soft skills trainer. She currently directs communications and marketing for CUNFL (Credit Union Network for Financial Literacy). Her book Gravy Wars: South Philly Foods, Feuds & Attytudes is a humorous narrative about the Italian-American culture—its traditions, superstitions, and idiosyncrasies—complete with 70 family recipes.

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Thanks so much to our guest blogger, Lorraine Ranalli. Please check her site and book. Meanwhile, Happy Training.

By the way, this is not all I do. I believe in connections. After 30 plus years of acting, speaking, training and coaching, I can’t help believing that effective communication is critical in both training and development as well as education. If you are interested in my approach on this blog or in other offerings on the site, you might also be interested in my book, The Cave Man Guide to Training and Development. “Cave” and “Man” are separate on purpose. The “cave” is simply where we train. I promise there will be a II and III based on my articles here. My personal blog site, Shaw’s Reality, is where I look at the world’s reality from a variety of perspectives. I have also published a young adult science fiction dystopian novel, In Makr’s Shadow.

By all means though, check out The Free Management Library’s complete training section.

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Performance Management: Why Aren’t We Using Performance Information

a-human-resource-manager.

Every once in a while it is necessary to get the details.

The following article is reposted with permission from John Kapensky via GovLoop. John is a Senior Fellow, IBM Center for The Business of Government in Washington, D.C.

WHY ISN’T PERFORMANCE INFORMATION BEING USED?

Champions of performance management in government are confounded. After decades of trying to integrate the use of performance information into agency decision-making, it still isn’t happening on as broad a scale as once hoped.

The initial premise twenty years ago was that if performance information was made readily available, it would be used by agency decision-makers. That turned out to not be true.
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Background. A recent GAO study conclude that the “use of performance information has not changed significantly” in surveys of federal managers between 2007 and 2013. More specifically:

  • “. . . only two [of the 24 major] agencies – OPM and the Department of Labor – experienced a statistically significant improvement in managers’ use of performance information.” And four experienced a decrease.
  • But “SES managers used performance information . . . more than non-SES managers both government-wide and within each agency.” And in 9 of the 24 surveyed agencies, the gap was statistically significant.While Congress was able to mandate the collection and reporting of performance information via the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, there hasn’t been a successful strategy to get managers to use the information. The Bush Administration tried, by focusing on program-level measures. The Obama Administration tried, by focusing on cross-agency and agency-level “priority goals,” supplemented with quarterly progress reviews. But the GAO survey doesn’t show any real changes over time.

So Now What Do We Do? GAO’s report offered some “better practices” that it thinks would help, based on some of its past work and observations. These included a series of “effective practices” such as improving the usefulness of performance information and better communicating performance information. These practices may help. However, a recent article (paywall) by Jeanette Taylor, a professor at the University of Western Australia, offers some new insights on what leaders might do differently. She examines the “lack of use” challenge from a different perspective – organizational culture. In her research, she found “the effects of performance information on organizational performance depend on the organization’s culture,” and that “organizational culture . . was the dominant antecedent of performance information use,” and that “. . . different types of cultures adopt performance management differently.”Her research tries to unbundle the distinctions in order to provide a roadmap of the different ways leaders need to approach the use of performance information in their organizations.

Four Types of Organizational Cultures. Drawing on the work of other academics, she highlights four distinct models of organizational culture:

  • The Individualistic Culture. This type of organization stresses individual effort and skill, and a belief in competition. It may, for example, adopt performance incentive structures.
  • The Egalitarian Culture. This culture emphasizes a high sense of belonging to a group. Staff in this kind of agency would be more receptive to performance dialogues instead of incentives.
  • The Hierarchical Culture. This type of organization stresses well-defined rules of social interaction. Employees and managers here will likely want performance management to be aligned with the professional and technocrat core of the organization.
  • The Fatalist Culture. Employees are skeptical about organizational prescriptions for human betterment and may “engage in ritualistic performance management exercises” (e.g., passive-aggressive compliance with requirements: “Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it”).

In practice, real organizations do not fall neatly into one or the other of these models. But understanding the distinctions suggest different implementation strategies.

Three Layers of Organizational Culture. Fellow academic Edgar Schein differentiates three levels of organizational culture that exist within each of the four types of cultures.

  • Observable Artifacts. In this layer, visible characteristics that an outside observer can see might include office layout, dress code, observable routines, and published documents. Some academics see routines as “the critical factor in the shaping of behavior.” Learning forums are examples of organizational routines, as are strategic planning and benchmarking. Interestingly, Taylor says that “routines can promote continuous change if they occur regularly, the organizational context support the changes, and “professional employees have discretion in the way they perform their tasks.
  • Espoused Values and Beliefs. This layer is comprised of documented norms, ideals, goals, and aspirations of the organizational group. Taylor says: “A clear, understandable, and distinctive organizational mission has been found to be positively related to employee mission valence.” She also observes: “The development of a common language, particularly for key concepts like performance indicator and benchmarking, can contribute to the successful use of in-project measurement.”
  • Underlying Assumptions. This layer is comprised of unconscious, taken-for-granted, non-negotiable beliefs and values that influence how group members think and feel about things and guide their behavior. This is the hardest layer for outsiders to influence because “. . . performance information involves subjective interpretation by the managers who acquire and use it,” and “Performance management requires that judgments be made on what to measure, how to measure and interpret it, what determines success and failure, and what information is relevant or important.” As a result, an organization’s underlying culture “can influence how it views and behaviorally responds to performance management.”

Just ask any VA executive over the next two decades about how its underlying culture affects their perception of performance management!Schein’s layered approach explains how understanding an organization’s culture differs, depending on one’s perspective, and how the deeper ones are harder to identify, measure, and change. His approach also recognizes that there can be subcultures within an organization (geographic, professional, hierarchical), and that it is inappropriate to assume that a single, organization-wide dominant culture will prevail across a department or agency.

So the bottom line, says Taylor, is that successful implementation “requires changes in the organization’s systems and structures (artifacts), its underlying values (assumptions), and the way management reinforces these values (espoused values).”In contrast, most federal agencies have emphasized the creation of what Schein calls “artifacts” – processes, methods, and technical know-how.

Re-Thinking Strategies. It may be time to re-think the strategies for how best to encourage federal managers to use performance information in their jobs. GAO and Taylor both help point the way to a more nuanced approach.Getting managers to use performance information isn’t just a procedural or technical exercise.It is a fundamental change in how they do their day-to-day jobs and how they approach problem-solving. Harvard’s Bob Behn says that using performance information is a leadership strategy, not a set of processes and procedures.In fact, GAO found that training managers on how to technically develop performance measures actually led to a decrease in their use by managers! GAO found that training managers on how to analyze and use performance information was far more conducive to use.Is this too hard? Can managers’ mindsets be changed? It already has been done, in dozens of places across the federal government.

The challenge is to showcase and share lessons from existing efforts. The successes aren’t called “GPRA.” Instead, they go by different terms, such as “strategic analytics,” or “evidence-based decision-making,” or “moneyball government.” These efforts are not rooted in complying with GPRA requirements. They are energized by managers who use these approaches to get clear mission results such as reducing fraud, increasing air quality, speeding drug approvals, streamlining disability benefit approvals, and more. Showcasing these initiatives is happening, but more could be done. Maybe a mentoring program is needed. Maybe more targeted training could help. But it is clear that requiring new processes, procedures, organizational structures, and reporting isn’t going to increase managers’ use. The hard part will be that it has to be developed within each organization, and within their respective cultures.

Graphics Credit: Courtesy of Salvatore Vuono via FreeDigitalPhotosTags: , , , , , ,,

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Thanks to John Kapensky for this fine article. For more information, click on the tags above. Check out The Free Management Library’s complete training section.

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Humor in Presentations: Do’s and Don’ts

business women laughing during a presentation

laugh

Should you or shouldn’t you? There is nothing like sharing a good laugh during a serious presentation. And nothing worse than humor that backfires. No wonder so many people shy away from humor altogether. Yet…you want to give it a try. OK, then, here are some guidelines to help you decide when and how to insert humor during your next meeting or presentation.

1. Don’t try too hard. The more you push humor on your audience, the less funny it is. Watch for humor that happens naturally.
2. Don’t open with a joke; jokes are difficult to tell, easy to mess up, and often offend someone. Rather than a joke, find the humor in the moment or in a story.
3. Do find your special brand of humor. You might be good at word play, physical humor, or a clever remark.
4. Do test it out on others. Tell the story over lunch, or try it at a team meeting. If no one finds it funny, let it go.
5. Don’t laugh at your own stories. Watch comedians and entertainers; they most often watch the audience and refrain from laughing at the own jokes. Or if they do, it’s a chuckle only.
6. Do keep it short. Time is money—don’t spend it on what can be perceived as a waste of time. Make it short and pertinent or skip it.
7. Don’t go for the cheap shot. If there is a chance you will hurt someone’s feelings or speak in an inappropriate way, just let it go. Why chance it?
8. Do be cautious with sarcasm. If this is your preferred humor style—and you know who you are—be sure you know your audience really well, since sarcasm can easily be misunderstood.
9. Do try safer humor; cartoons, word play, spontaneous humor, dry humor, a funny quote. See how your audience reacts to these attempts before you go all-out.
10. Do take yourself lightly but no put downs. It’s a fine line to walk. If you can do it, take yourself lightly. Just don’t go too far with self-depreciating humor or your audience may not be able to take you seriously enough.

Bottom line: tread lightly, experiment with safer humor attempts, and yes, give it a try if you think your audience can handle it!

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Tony Jaques Introduces New Crisis Management Book

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[Editor’s note: Tony Jaques, our friend, colleague, and frequent contributor to our blogs has just released a new book on crisis management, and we’d like to share his introduction to this in-depth work with you.]

Companies which think they are crisis-prepared may in fact still be dangerously vulnerable to financial and reputational damage.

That’s the conclusion of Australian author and crisis expert Dr Tony Jaques, who says it is increasingly clear that while some organisations establish very basic procedures to respond to a crisis when it strikes, many are failing to take a strategic approach to preventing the crisis from happening in the first place.

“The real danger comes when organisations believe all that’s needed to protect them from a damaging crisis is a three-ring crisis manual on the shelf and an annual crisis simulation” he warns. “Research involving Australian CEOs showed a unanimous acceptance that the best crisis management it to take proactive steps to prevent a crisis occurring, yet companies consistently fail to implement effective crisis prevention.”

Dr Jaques says a ten year study of crises in Australia revealed that more than a quarter of the organisations concerned did not survive. That fact alone is a good reason for executives to introduce systematic plans to reduce the chances of a crisis occurring before it happens. At the same time, he added, international data shows that at least half of all crises are not sudden, unexpected events, but result from slowly emerging crises which could have, and should have been identified in advance.

The need for a fully integrated programme both to be prepared for a crisis, and also to identify emerging crises and prevent them occurring, is a key theme of a new book Issue and Crisis Management: Exploring issues, crises, risk and reputation by Tony Jaques, (Oxford University Press, 2014).

The book is the first of its kind in Australia devoted wholly to issue and crisis management, and highlights the difference between tactical crisis response and integrated strategic crisis management.

Tony Jaques manages Australian-based issue and crisis management consultancy Issue}Outcomes, and is the author of the upcoming book, Issues and Crisis Management: Exploring Issues, Crises, Risk and Reputation, available at most major retailers both in the U.S. and abroad.

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Technical Writing Communication Etiquette – (Part 1)

women shaking hands after a meeting

How not to communicate to others. The following are some pretty important rules about how Technical Writers should and should not communicate. Part 1 will be about how Technical Writers should not communicate and Part 2 will be about how they should communicate.

Writers who cannot communicate in a professional manner will not get to connect well with others nor gather the information they need. For Technical Writers (TW) to function well within any organizations environment, they must be approachable and receptive. Here are a few tips on how not to communicate to others.

  • Do not be the 3 A’s (assertive, aggressive, annoying). Do not let others perceive you as being over confident. This is especially true if you have not double checked your resources and data before communicating information. A TW is always diplomatic and only states the facts. Prior to any encounters, a TW should always analyze and ensure that all information communicated is accurate and valid.
  • Do not answer a question before thinking. This rule in essence applies to all individuals, but for a Technical Writer, who is supposed to be objective and factual, any miss-quotes can be taken as that individual to not be reliable nor responsible.
  • Do not use just any words to communicate. Make it appropriate and useful., clear, and concise.
  • Do not jump to conclusions – as always, listen and then think about what will be said and/or written. In other words, do not react with emotion. A TW always thinks about why and what will be communicated to others.
  • Do not assume that communication problems are due to someone else’s errors. It is possible that the error came from your end and not someone else’s, e.g., inserting the wrong dates or information on a project plan or document. A Technical Writer should always be open to any criticism or evaluation.
  • Do not rely completely on your gut feelings when communicating decisions. Double check everything first and then rely on your gut feelings to make a decision. This way you will know that the decision will also be based on valid and reliable information.
  • Do not rely completely on past experiences when you are going to collaborate with others on a new project. Environments often change within the technical arena. Attend all meetings so that you are kept up-to-date on all changes and more importantly, on new knowledge that allows you to be able to interact with others more understandably. In other words, remain technically versed.
  • Do not be dishonest when communicating what you know. No one knows everything. Similarly with instructors, if an answer is not known, simply state that you will try to get the answer or information. Technical Writers have a sense of curiosity so research and find out the correct answer.
  • Do not lose focus in communication via writing or speaking. Create your outline and make it suitable for you. Next change it up so that it is suitable for your target audience. Technical Writers communicate clearly, concisely, and accurately.

The above were just a few highlighted important ‘Do not’s’.

Do you have any ‘Do not’s’ to add to this topic? If so, please leave a comment. Thank you.

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Tech-Related Advice For My Fellow Millennials

Different tech gadgets on a desk

In my last post, I shared a few thoughts with fundraising managers about supervising “digital natives.” Today, I have some tech-related advice for my fellow Millennials.

1. Stay open to the possibility that the internet may not be the solution every time.

Sometimes, for example, emailing your prospect just won’t get it done. You may need to pick up the phone or meet face-to-face to move the conversation forward. I’ll talk more about this in the weeks ahead.

2. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn from your older colleagues.

Fundraising is about people – other people, specifically.

I mentioned earlier that many of the best frontline fundraisers I know have been at it for decades. These gift officers are beloved by whoever they meet and can build trust quickly with just about anybody. And a little secret: some of them don’t use a computer. Ever.

If anyone like that works at your organization, get to know them … in as great a depth as you can. Ask if you can listen in when they call prospects, or if you can tag along on donor visits.

In particular, focus on how they establish rapport and nurture relationships. What language do they use when speaking to prospects? Listen to their tone of voice, and watch their body language and mannerisms. It will be an education in people skills, I promise.

3. Be skeptical of your multi-tasking abilities.

A growing body of research shows that multi-tasking doesn’t lead to higher productivity. Why? There’s a small cognitive “cost” to switching between tasks – these add up over time. Moreover, Stanford professor Dr. Clifford Nass has shown that multi-taskers have a harder time tuning out distractions.

So, my recommendation is to test it. Schedule a few 45-minute windows in your day where you focus exclusively on your highest priority tasks. Put your phone on silent and place it out of reach. Close down your email program, along with unnecessary web pages.

Whether you’re making outreach calls, writing an appeal letter, or developing a project strategy, commit to focusing on nothing else for those 45 minutes. Try this for a few days and see if you don’t find yourself getting more of the most important things done.

That’s it for this topic, but keep coming back. In my next posting, I’ll talk about something most Millennials would rather avoid: phone calls.

In the meantime, leave a comment and share your funniest story about generational differences in the workplace.

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K. Michael Johnson is a major gift officer at a large research university
and the founder ofFearless-Fundraising.com ,
where he discusses the inner game of deeper relationships and bigger asks.
You can contact him at K. Michael Johnson.
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Have you seen
The Fundraising Series of ebooks ??
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99 – $4.99)
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Tesco Financial Scandal Leads to Reputation Crisis

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Already hurting, new scandal puts grocer in a dangerous position

UK-based grocer Tesco is under the microscope of investors and regulators that results in a reputation crisis, as well as being lambasted by the public, following the revelation that some seriously shady accounting had been going on.

Business Matters summed the situation up:

Tesco was once the darling of the high street but now the 95-year old supermarket chain is facing its worse crisis ever as it admitted to inflating its accounts by £250 million last week. This wiped more than £2 billion off its market value, saw shares drop by 40% and put them at the bottom of the FTSE 100.

As a result, four senior executives were suspended, including finance director, Carl Rogberg, with UK managing director Chris Bush also thought to be one of the four, whilst an investigation takes place into what has been going on. Questions will also be asked of former chief executive, Philip Clarke, and Laurie McIlwee, the chief financial officer who left last week.

Tesco said it discovered the overstatement of its figures, made as part of an August 29 profit warning, during its final preparations for its forthcoming interim results. It then announced that full-year trading profits could be as low as £2.4billion – some £400million lower than expected – after ‘challenging trading conditions’.

Scandalous as it is, this is the type of issue that a well-prepared business should have crisis management plans for, although the sheer magnitude of the executive’s deceit will make recovery a slow road. After all, while it’s a great asset to a rapid comeback, no amount of planning will instantly put £2 billion back into your coffers.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2014/10/03/crisis-management-case-study-digiornos-social-media-mistake/#sthash.U9llTzw7.dpuf

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Reason And Emotion In Grant Writing: An Observation

Someone writing a grant proposal on an office desk

On June 18 & 25, Lynne deLearie wrote about “Reason and Emotion in Grant Proposals.” Coincidentally, I’ve recently been involved in some discussions in which some folks were leaning much too far in one direction or the other.

Those conversations were prompted by what one participant reported as an interesting article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy (April 4, 2014) about “grantors acting more like investors.” An excerpt:

“For at least a decade, movers and shakers in philanthropy have been trying to persuade donors to behave more like data-driven investors.

But the so-called effective-philanthropy movement suffered a significant setback last month when the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a prominent champion of the idea, announced that it was ending an eight-year, $12-million effort to get donors to rely as much on their heads as their hearts.

After this year, it is dropping support for groups like Charity Navigator, GiveWell, and GuideStar that provide publicly-accessible information about the financial performance and social impact of nonprofits. (Editor’s Note: The previous sentence has been revised to more precisely describe the initiative.) [The Foundation, however] is continuing to fund groups that provide research on philanthropic strategies that produce measurable results.

The decision pleases some critics worried that philanthropy has become too heavily focused on short-term measurements at the expense of worthy efforts that may not bear results for years.”
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That excerpt has a few points made which are not as I have come to know them – the first being the relatively short time span cited by the writer of “at least a decade” of the philanthropic community working to convince donors to be more data-driven. (Head over heart.)

The head part of the dichotomy was in place over four decades ago, in 1971, when I began my career in non-profit fund-raising. I believe those contrasting approaches to what prompts donors to give their money had a head-related history long before my time. (Flexner/Carnegie and Rockefeller/General Education Board, as prime examples.)

Fast-forwarding to the 90s, I really saw the head rearing itself when the tech bubble was at its peak, and those tech billionaires greatly influenced the head, not only for reasons of giving, but as well bringing their entrepreneurship methods of making millions into non-profit board rooms – expecting, even demanding, that those non-profits operate in the same bean-counting manner as their Silicon Valley businesses.

Most of our local foundations, for the most part, still operated mainly by the heart, though some were beginning to weigh in on how to use financial ratios as units of measurement to gauge the sustainability of non-profits.

Thus, the worthless and harmful self-proclaimed arbiters of the worth of non-profits were created – such as CharityNavigator. (Interesting how those self-appointed judges of non-profits had no similar evaluations made on their own effectiveness.)

I also believe that the Chronicle writer ascribed too much worth to Hewlett’s decision to end an eight-year funding program. Over my long career, I could count on one hand the number of foundations granting for more that five years.

As well, what I interpret as conflicting are statements that Hewlett was ending grants to charity evaluators whose mission was head-based, but that Hewlett would continue to fund groups that provide those very same head-based outcomes. So, I do not see Hewlett’s action as a trend, rather than a grant program simply reaching the end of the line.

The argument which we continually make regarding head and heart giving differences implies – indeed asserts – that they are somehow far apart.

For the most part, I do not think they can be all one or all the other. It’s mostly a blend of head and heart. It must be, to some degree.

Few, if any, major granting foundations would make feel-good grants which had little or no operational or outcome sense. Conversely, they would not be inspired to give money to the best constructed, rational, proposal which did not excite or move the heart.

But, there are some caveats.

The granting foundation Program Officer does indeed have a heart. She or he could really care about your institution, but the money they help give away is not theirs. Except in the case of a tightly controlled family foundation, those people are stewards of other people’s money.

Stewards must, to a great extent, base their gift recommendations on logic and the value proposition placed before them. They are going to feel less comfortable making a judgment call from the heart, and are more likely to feel compelled to rely upon the reassurance of sound numbers. Further up the line, when there are volunteer review and distribution committees, heart-giving could indeed hold sway.

But, let’s not get too heart conscious when dealing (solely or mostly) with the Program Officer “gatekeeper,” whose very job depends on much more than gut instinct and having a heart.

So, carefully crafting proposals with the “right” blend is the challenge, and we more likely will know the correct weighting of head and heart when we know our prospects.

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Next week we offer some Tech Advice for Millenials
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Have a question or comment about the above posting?
You can Ask Tony.
There is also a lot of good fundraising information on his website:
Raise-Funds.com
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Have you seen
The Fundraising Series of ebooks?
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99 – $4.99)
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