July 2016 – Management Library

July 31, 2016June 10, 2022

Mitigating the Impact of Ransomware Attacks

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Simple steps to protect your systems

This infographic from F-Secure may be in comic strip form, but the topic is no joke. The use of ransomware is growing rapidly, largely due to the fact that it puts money directly in attacker’s pockets without them having to turn around and sell information on the black market. By taking the simple steps outlined below you can drastically reduce the impact a ransomware attack has on your organization.

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

July 31, 2016February 22, 2023

Crisis Prevention: Guarding Personal Info in the Workplace

Are you doing all you can to keep private information secure?

Just about every organization keeps private information regarding customers, employees, or both on hand. With attendant responsibility to keep that information secure. While it is true that skilled hackers may be able to penetrate any system, it’s important that you take every precaution to prevent that. This is not only for the up-front reason of making it more difficult for anyone who means harm to break in, but also that if a hack does occur you can point to your practices and say with honesty, “We made sure our security practices were those recommended by a security firm with impeccable credentials” or “our security practices were very much in keeping with industry best practices.”

The folks at ShareFile brought in experts to put together a list of the 5 key principles of an information security plan, which they state as:

Inventory your data. Keep track of all personal information stored in your files and computers.
Trim down and minimize. Store only the data that is crucial for operation of your business.
Keep it locked. Make sure to lock your computers and file storage to keep information secured.
Remove what is unnecessary. Trim down non-essential data and do away with the irrelevant and unimportant.
Be prepared for the worst. Devise a strategy for dealing with unfortunate events involving a security breach.

If you’re looking to assemble your own plan, or want to double-check that an existing one covers all the bases, ShareFile’s full Data Security Guide is a worthwhile read.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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July 27, 2016February 21, 2023

Free FEMA Course: Social Media in Emergency Management

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Great no-cost resource for crisis education

One of the great things about the internet is the vast amount of knowledge available on any subject. Near and dear to our hearts, of course, is anything related to crisis management. Resources with quality content are always a welcome find, and we realized many people aren’t aware that FEMA offers a completely free course focus on social media in emergency management. While FEMA has taken a beating in the past, the organization took those hard lessons to heart and made its emergency management efforts both realistic and effective, making it a great source for information on how to handle ugly situations.

There is always something more to learn when it comes to crisis management. We’ve checked out the FEMA course ourselves, and the information within is a solid resource for anyone looking to improve their emergency management capabilities.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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July 27, 2016February 17, 2023

Leadership: The Key to a Successful Major Gifts Program

The most critical factor in creating a Major Gifts Program is the availability of a group of volunteers and professionals who will accept responsibility for the success of that program.

This Leadership Cadre, which should (ideally) include one-or-two savvy and committed Board Members, must include a couple of current (preferable) or soon-to-be major donors, the CDO (chief development officer) and/or Major Gifts Officer, and (an educated) CEO. This is your Major Gifts Committee.

That committee would, first, be responsible for the initial creation of the list of those who they identify as “Suspects” – a term used to denote those people that we think might be able to make a major gift … and might want to do so if properly motivated, but for whom you do not yet have enough information to be sure.

Next is the linking (on paper) of each of those Suspects with a “Cultivator” – an individual (a volunteer leader who could be a board member, a current or a soon-to-be major donor, or other logically identified person) who knows him/her, who has access to him/her and can-and-will be involved in the process of turning him/her into a “Prospect.”

If your Cultivators build relationships with your Suspects that involves them in working with your organization toward attainment of its mission, when they are actually asked for the (major) gift, they are more likely to respond, “Of course, what took you so long to ask !?”

But, to get them to the point where they can be considered serious Major Gift “Prospects,” you must commit to a process that may not result in such a gift for months, or years — and it can be a different timeframe for each Prospect.

Sure, you might be able to get your Suspects to write one-or-more checks during the cultivation period, but the amounts of those checks would likely not qualify as “major” – they would not fit into one of the top categories on the “Gift Range Pyramid,” and not, therefore, move you significantly closer to your dollar “goal.”

Getting the Prospect to make those (non-major) gifts, however, is an important part of his/her buy-in process.

Since the Cultivators are the people through whom you have access to each Suspect, they are the most likely people to introduce the Suspect to your organization, bring him/her to see/participate in program or special activities, and do most of the educating of this new “Friend” of yours. (“Friend” often being used interchangeably with “Suspect.”)

The growth/success of your Major Gifts Program is dependent on the number of Cultivators working for and reporting to the MG Committee. Those reports will include their contacts with Suspects, suggestions for the substance of future contacts and, eventually, providing significant input for deciding each Prospect’s “Ask.”

Note the segue, converting a Suspect into a Prospect – that happens once the Committee has information to the effect that a person has the means to make a major gift, and sees that there is enough of a relationship between the Suspect, the Cultivator and the Organization to suggest that he/she will probably become a major donor.

Ideally, the Cultivator is someone who is-and-has-been involved with your organization and has already made one-or-more major gifts; but, the role of Cultivator may also be played by someone who is also in the process of being cultivated.

So, back to the role of the Major Gifts Committee: In support of the above is the creation of a file for each of your new Suspects … so you may record all relevant information, maintain a log of all contacts with them and keep a “calendar” of planned cultivation opportunities for them.

The Committee should meet on a regular basis – the old “textbooks” say weekly, but the current reality is likely to be less often. Those meetings would be to determine and/or modify strategies for cultivating each Friend/Suspect, to hear reports on contacts that have been made since their last meeting, to “Evaluate” Prospects and set a timeframe for Solicitation, and to maintain a level of expectation for the activities of the Cultivators and Solicitors.

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July 22, 2016February 8, 2023

Tear Down This Wall: What are “True” Social Enterprises?

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By Rolfe Larson, Joining Vision and Action

What constitutes “true” social enterprises?

Thousands of nonprofits that use the marketplace to accomplish their social goals call themselves social enterprises (SEs). Thousands of for-profit companies with social goals also use that term. Yet these two groups barely talk with each other. Why is that?

Benefit corporations and B Corps

Benefit corporations can make decisions based on impact on the community, the environment and workers – not just shareholder value. B Corps, a certification program, evaluates for-profit companies that take social responsibility seriously. B Corps undergo a rigorous assessment in areas such as governance, social and environmental impact. and employee practices.

You’d think that with such common characteristics, these movements would work together and learn from one another, right? Not at all. They operate as if there were a tall wall between them.

We say, Tear Down This Wall!

“True” Social Enterprises

The general perception among many nonprofit social enterpriser leaders is that B Corps and benefit corporations are not “true” social enterprises since social impact is not their primary purpose.

For example, Kevin Lynch, co-author of Mission, Inc., The Practitioner’s Guide To Social Enterprise and collaborator on Joining Vision and Action’s Mission, Inc. Basecamp social enterprise training, is worried that “the idea of social enterprise is now more associated with benefit corporations and B Corps than with the selfless, unsexy nonprofit social enterprise model in which impact is part of the DNA.” He added his concern that “the work of true social enterprises, that put real impact first, will be overshadowed and ignored.” Source: http://huff.to/29r1wsW.

Similarly, leaders and participants in the fast-growing B Corps movement generally assume that all nonprofits are dependent on grants and contributions, and are therefore ill-equipped to function in the marketplace.

What’s going on here? We decided to crowd-source this problem to the npEnterprise Forum (npE), the 10,000+ circulation, non-commercial, moderated online forum for all things SE.

It’s About Impact

Several people pointed out that what matters is impact, not structure.

“We should encourage people to focus on what binds us together,” said Hannah Pechan, “to keep our eyes on maximizing positive impact. Like most of life, it takes all kinds.”

Fernando Botelho indicated that “social problems or the damage being done to nature are indifferent to our intellectual limitations. If a small change in a large multinational prevents the dumping of 100 thousand tons of CO2, that is exactly as valuable as the same reduction being achieved by a specialized NGO dedicated entirely to that purpose.”

It’s About the People

Hildy Gottlieb says “it’s always about the people. When we start asking, ‘Who else cares about this?’ and begin engaging as people, we don’t have to work at the walls coming down. They come down on their own.”

Jerr Boschee took a philosophical approach to this question. “The philosopher Jacques Ellul once observed that we all get our hands dirty,” Boschee said. “the only question we should ask ourselves is just how dirty we want them to get.

“I’m willing to take the risk that some private sector social enterprises run off the rails in exchange for those that can scale more quickly and do more social good than they would if they were structured as nonprofits.”

In summary, we wonder if we should look more at the social impact each social enterprise has, rather than how “pure” they are at achieving it.

We say, Tear Down This Wall!

What do you think?

See how Joining Vision and Action’s social enterprise training and consulting services can help your business or nonprofit can tear down the wall.

Joining Vision and Action is dedicated to providing social enterprises, nonprofits and government agencies with the tools and resources they need to succeed, sustain and scale. We bring research and innovation to this work, which we call implementation science. This allows our team of experts to provide more effective and imaginative tools to increase community impact.

This post originally appeared at http://joiningvisionandaction.com/tear-down-this-wall-whats-a-true-social-enterprise/

July 20, 2016January 26, 2022

Ensuring The Future of Your Nonprofit: Major Gifts Are The Way

The biggest mistake that many non-profits make is believing that grants from corporations, foundations and government will continue, or (even) increase, over the long-term. Historically, those sources of funding for specific programs either remain the same or decrease – especially during rough economic times.

While overall costs of operation tend to rise, few foundations or corporations are likely to make long-term commitments to a nonprofit organization.

Most foundations tend to help a nonprofit initiate a program/concept, help them create the structure that will support it, and then go on to do the same with other organizations.

Corporations want to be perceived as supportive members of the community. The more nonprofits they support, from the same, limited pot of money, the more visible they’ll be and (generally) the better their image.

It’s also dangerous to rely just on events — no matter how successful, as someone else’s event or activity may prove to be a greater attraction for your attendees, or the economy may engender second thoughts about buying those event tickets.

So, when the grant for a specific program runs out, do you end that program and discontinue service to those who need it, or will you have a backup plan … a reliable source of ongoing funding ??

Ensuring the future of your nonprofit, therefore, involves identifying potential sources of funding sufficient to ensure continuation or expansion of the programs that satisfy the needs of the people and the communities you are serving … or want to serve.

Worded another way, “Ensuring future funding requires minimizing the risk of losing a large percentage of your income.”

Roughly 80% of dollars contributed to nonprofits come from individual donors or their estates. And the common wisdom is that at least 80% of that amount — or about two-thirds of all contributed dollars – come as major gifts from individuals.

A major gift program is easier to design/implement and more cost effective than direct mail and the vast majority of events. Major gifts are also a more reliable source of long-term charitable funding than all others.

And, by the way, the second biggest mistake that many non-profits make is to assume that this doesn’t apply to them !!

Many Non-Profit Organizations (nonprofits) use the term “Major Gifts” to refer to those that are larger than the usual range of gifts that arrive in the mail. Typically, $1,000 is the magic number. But, unless an organization’s budget and/or the amount to be raised via the fundraising process is unusually small, gifts of $1,000 won’t significantly aid in pursuing financial goals.

A Major Gift requires:

1• Amounts that will significantly help to attain fundraising goals — 1% or more of the goal would be significant. If your goal is $1,000,000, at $1,000 each, you’d need 1,000 gifts; and, unless you have the prospect base with that many donors who have given at that level in the past, that’s not very likely. Realistically, for a goal of that size, gifts of $10,000 and up are necessary.

2• That prospects be cultivated and solicited on a face-to-face basis. Consistent with the concept/practice of “development,” in order to get donors to want to make “major” gifts, there must be a relationship between the donor and the person doing the asking. And that person must also be one of the people, if not the person, doing the cultivating and educating of the prospective donor.

3• Ask amounts that are well thought out and well researched. When asking for ANY gift to a non-profit, it should always be for a specific dollar figure. For a major gift, it should be a figure based on the donor’s ability to give … and you should always be able to give the donor a good reason “why that amount” !!

4• The development and implementation of an individual plan, or strategy for getting each potential donor to the point where s/he is ready to make the gift you want him/her to make.

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Have you heard about
The Fundraising Series of ebooks?
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99-$4.99)

July 17, 2016May 28, 2022

Communicating Through Whiteboards

A whiteboard provides a form of visual communication for many businesses from healthcare to technology, to manufacturing to marketing or education. A whiteboard is like a blank sheet of paper, only it is made out of metal and is an erasable board similar to a blackboard. Because it is used for information communication, one can say it is a form of documentation.

Uses

There are many uses of the whiteboard. It can be used for displaying

project scheduling, task listing, check off lists,
groupings, procedures, processes,
mapping associations, diagramming, etc.

Advantages

A whiteboard has many advantages, which include ease of use, readability, be visually appealing, and the following benefits:

Users can easily describe and walk viewers through each step of a process or procedure that has to be accomplished.
Users can convey designs and prototypes more easily.
Users can design new software and work out details while collaborating at the same time.
Users can get inspired to generate more ideas and concepts, resolve issues, and map out plans.
Users can provide story telling for deeper clarity of various theories and models, and much more.

Benefits

Users like it because during any meeting or presentation, the whiteboard can provide a lot of uses, such as:

Helping viewers to be more organized by listing tasks.
Allowing writing and rewriting, or adding and removing thoughts and ideas via a list, such as when trying to develop standards, new systems, or new strategies.
Sharing information with everyone for easier reviewing in illustration form and which will in turn allow viewers to recall facts and information more easily as images and symbols can be used to enhance what is displayed.
Allowing the numbering of events of a, for example, meeting or process and then circling and segmenting out small model cases to focus on to complete a task.
Providing the ability to create charts such as flow and/or tree diagraming.
Providing easier grouping of objects where associated items are combined and categorized.
Creating a display of data bases and models of a system and how they are related.
Allowing free-hand diagramming of related items, such as through the use of mapping
Allowing the display of different ideas, questionable items, classification of systems, relations, processes, as well as timelines from beginning to end with all their critical paths.
Providing the atmosphere for collaboration, viewing, thinking, and individuals contributing ideas, resulting in producing immediate feedback.
Creating hierarchies for organizations and getting immediate reactions to what viewers see.
Communicating a clear and understandable direction from what is pictured, or an analysis, or evaluation of what is on the board.

A whiteboard allows viewers to create a physical representation from all the information that has been written, created, or designed on the board. Viewers immediately see what the topic is and can quickly respond to the information. They provide immediate interaction among viewers. A whiteboard has many advantages and uses.

If you have anything to add to this post, please leave a comment. Thank you.

July 13, 2016February 21, 2023

Top Ten “Rules” of Fundraising

1. All Board Members Must Be Donors … to the best of their ability. Not all board members are wealthy, but everyone should give at the highest level possible for their circumstances. It is important to be able to say to the public that 100% of your board supports your mission to the best of their ability. If your board members won’t give, why should anyone else?

2. You must give people reasons that will make them want to give. That you need money is not one of those reasons. Show prospective donors how their giving will make a difference in people’s lives. And, more importantly, show them how their giving will make a difference in their own lives.

3. The best person-to-person fundraiser is a well-trained and well-motivated volunteer who solicits his/her peers, friends, family and colleagues. Professional fundraising staff or counsel can help you design and run your program and train your volunteers, but staff and counsel cannot usually do as good a job soliciting as can an impassioned volunteer. (And, remember, Board Members are volunteers.)

4. You must do Adequate Planning/Research before implementing any fundraising strategy — no matter the size of the gifts you’re soliciting or the goal you need to reach. And, you should, periodically, test variations of your methodology to ensure that your efforts are as (cost-)effective as possible.

5. You must have a means/method of tracking your fundraising and leadership prospects, your donors and your contacts with them. If you’re a very small organization and only have a few prospects/donors, you could probably use file folders and/or spreadsheets; but, once you have significant numbers of individuals to track, you must have the appropriate computer software.

There are many brands of such software, some are free, some are expensive, but don’t buy on the basis of cost. Select the software that will allow you the best use of the data you will collect. And don’t try to design your own — unless you’re a fundraising database expert, you don’t know what information to collect, how to arrange it, and how you’re going to use it.

6. Please, do not write your own fundraising materials … not until you have the required experience/expertise/perspective. And, if you insist on doing so, pay an experienced development professional to review and comment on your writing.

Writing for fundraising is an Art. Most fundraising letters, case statements, grant proposals, etc, are nowhere near as effective as they could be. Many fundraising letters (and you’ve probably gotten some of them) are really terrible.

7. You must diversify your sources of funding for your fundraising program to be successful over the long term. Every time the economy takes a hit, foundations, government and corporations reduce their funding of non-profits. The greater the number of individual major donors an organization has, the smaller the chance that an economic downturn will force you to reduce services to your community.

8. DO NOT assume that a special event will make everything better!! You can’t expect to create a special event and have it be instantaneously successful. An event most often requires a multi-year period to establish itself and begin generating enough income to do more than pay its own costs.

A great number of attendees at special events are paying for entertainment or to “honor” someone they care about. You can’t count on those people buying tickets every year. They may find an event that’s more entertaining or that has an “honoree” to whom they feel a greater connection.

9. All donors must be thanked/recognized for their gifts, but not every donor wants to be thanked/recognized in the same way. Some like seeing their names in print, some don’t; some like plaques, some don’t; some like old-fashioned letters, some prefer email; the better you know your donors, the more appropriately you can thank/recognize them.

10. A successful fundraising program should be designed based on the needs of your donors, not on the needs of the organization. Donors give to satisfy their own needs, and then, maybe yours.

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Have you heard about
The Fundraising Series of ebooks?
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99-$4.99)

July 6, 2016June 10, 2022

Crisis Communications Principles Infographic

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Create a solid foundation for communication in crisis

Crisis communications plans cannot be cookie-cutter, but there are certain principles that apply to just about every situation. Get the core bits down pat, and you’ll leave yourself significantly more room to think about incident-specific actions or outside-the-box solutions to the issue at hand.

In a simple yet highly informative infographic, India-based reputation firm Astrum did a great job of presenting Crisis Communications 101 in visual form:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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July 6, 2016February 9, 2023

Guest Post: I’ll Have the Filet Mignon, Please

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[Editor’s note: This guest post, originally published on the Triad Strategies blog, looks at the impact of VW’s $14 billion U.S. owner compensation agreement, and what it may mean to the company if similar amends are to be expected overseas where nearly 20x the number of vehicles have been affected. Although VW’s annual revenue is about $236b, we’re looking at the potential for a devastating $300b payout if the EU deal looks similar to the one here in the States.]

A few months back, we posted a couple of items regarding Volkswagen’s diesel emission test cheating scandal. We opined that by blatantly violating the law, the company’s brand had been severely tarnished, and the Road to Brand Redemption would be exceptionally long and hard.

That ka-boom you may have heard a few days ago, even above the din of “The Brexit,” was another shoe falling on Volkswagen. U.S. government lawyers announced a proposed settlement with the company, totaling $14.7 billion for compensation to owners of the 475,000 emission cheating Volkswagens and Audis sold in this country, for buybacks of the vast majority of them and, essentially, in fines.

The size of that settlement, still subject to federal court approval, would be second only to that reached last year with BP for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which began at $18.7 billion and grew with additional claims. Until now, the largest class-action settlements against automakers were the $2 billion agreement with GM over faulty ignition switches and $1.4 billion with Toyota over flawed accelerators.

When last we examined the Volkswagen fiasco, we laid out the steps that the company had taken as it began its journey to redemption. To review, Volkswagen almost immediately admitted its transgressions, accepted responsibility, apologized, promised full cooperation with regulators and investigators, assured customers it would “make it right” with them, and replaced the company’s leadership.

The company completed those steps in the first two weeks after the scandal broke. It has taken nine months to reach the next milestone, which we’ll call “facing the music.” So far, so good.

But there are still a few worms under the rock. One is the question of how the affected customers will feel about the fairness of the settlement. Customers will receive cash compensation of $5,100 to $10,000 for the diminished value of their vehicles, plus buyback prices of between $12,500 and $44,000 based on the used car market prices before the scandal. For those who would rather keep their vehicles instead of selling them back, Volkswagen will repair the emission system, although the repairs will likely result in diminished performance and decreased fuel mileage.

We suspect that most Volkswagen customers will find the settlement terms pretty attractive, but there will also be a hassle factor affecting their satisfaction with the process.

Another worm under the rock is the possibility – let’s call it a probability – of criminal charges against the company and individuals who carried out the emission cheating scheme. Volkswagen faces a criminal inquiry by the Department of Justice and an investigation by attorneys general in 42 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, according to the New York Times. Whether accomplished via criminal trials or plea bargains, disposing of these matters will keep the company in a perpetual negative light for some time.

The largest worm, however, is that the settlement covers only the 475,000 cars sold in the U.S., and more than 10.5 million diesel vehicles with the same emission test cheating software were sold in Europe. However, the company is not offering European owners any compensation, because limits on nitrogen oxide are less stringent, and it’s easier to simply fix the emission control systems. The squawking among car owners and political leaders already has begun.

It’s hard to imagine Volkswagen or any company being able to withstand a financial hit some 20 times greater than $14.7 billion (it’s about 20 times the number of vehicles, so that should put us into the ballpark of the cost to give Europeans the same deal as U.S. car owners got). It’s equally hard to imagine that the Volkswagen brand can withstand the anger of 10.5 million Europeans who watch their U.S. brethren being treated to a steak dinner while they’re stuck with porridge and turnips.

For Volkswagen, there’s still a very long way to go on the Road to Brand Redemption. We’ll be back when we reach the next waypoint.

Rick Kelly is VP of Strategic Communications and directs Triad’s crisis management practice. For more information, click here.