I Never Pick the Right Lane

We’ve all been there. You’re standing in line with your small basket of groceries waiting behind the guy with the grocery cart piled high, parceling out coupons, scrutinizing every charge and writing out a check. If you’re me, your patience ran out the second time the cashier had to call for a price check on the item that he swore was on sale. So I start looking around -- is there a shorter line I can jump in? So I do, only to end up behind the gal who forgot something in mid-check out and has to run “quickly” to go get it. I smile at her as I silently scream, watching the moments of my day tick by.

I made the wrong choice, letting my impatience get the better of me thinking I could cheat time.

As a nonprofit leader your days are inundated with choices every moment and making the wrong one can have mildly irritating to potentially devastating effects. It can be a lonesome place to bare the weighty responsibility of the public trust but you aren’t really alone.

Nonprofit leaders do have a place to go to share their experiences, their choices, their weighty decisions; a place to grow as leaders and support the growth of their nonprofit comrades. The Center’s Nonprofit Leadership Certificate program and Leaders’ Circles provide safe harbor for shared wisdom, and personal-professional growth. Who says it has to be lonely at the top?

Pick the right lane. Make a smart choice. Submit your application today!

New programs starting in September:

Nonprofit Leadership Certificate
Leaders Circles

Stacey Bruenning

Director of Education

How Nonprofit Culture Impacts Our Work

Question: What is a nonprofit’s only renewable resource?

Answer: Its people.

Because people are so important to nonprofits, your culture can make or break your nonprofit organization. 

Today, in the 21^st century, it is important for all cultures to be more entrepreneurial and embrace the inevitable change ahead of all of us in the social sector. 

In next week’s Lunch and Learn – Assessing Your Nonprofit Culture & Plan for Advancement – we will utilize a research-based assessment to find out what culture you have and discuss four key concepts to convert your culture into a more entrepreneurial one that will enable you to succeed in the 21^st century.  

Register now for this action-packed session.

Suzanne N. Smith
Social Impact Architects
CNM Instructor and Consultant

Writer’s Block

If like mine, your job requires you to constantly generate content then you realize how exhausting this can be. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find that there are days (sometimes weeks) when you’re feeling decidedly uncreative and yet still have to come up with the goods.

However, it turns out we need not be re-creating the wheel all the time. There are many ways we can “cheat” and still churn out compelling and relevant material on a tight schedule (who knew?!).

This recent post by Danny Iny on Copyblogger offers 21 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue. Perfect for those days when you’re feeling uninspired.

Numbers 5, 10 and bonus # 22 are my favorites. Which are yours?

21 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue

Sometimes you’re just flat out of ideas.

It’s not a matter of talent — you’ve written great stuff in the past. But lately, when you go back to the well for a fresh idea, it’s coming up dry.

This happens to the best of us — even veterans who consistently produce quality content have their off days. Yet they continue to write.

They may grumble about how hard it is to get going and create something solid, but they still do. Again, and again, and again.

They aren’t super-human, and they don’t have magical content-producing powers. So what is the secret?

They do it by pulling out the well-worn toolbox of strategies for creating awesome content. Steal content and ideas. If you’re flat-out exhausted and out of ideas, then get them from somebody else — either content, or ideas, or both.

I’m not talking about real stealing, of course — it’s more like “borrowing with the author’s blessing”. Done right, this can produce some valuable content that the authors you “stole” from will thank you for using!

1. Curate content. Find your ten favorite websites, and then find your favorite post on each of them. Publish a post listing these top ten posts, and explain why you like them. You don’t even have to think about being creative, and everyone you feature there will appreciate it. This is what we do with our Best of the Web feature, and there are lots of other examples.
   
   
2. Ask friends for ideas. If you’re tapped for ideas, then reach out to your friends and colleagues, and ask them what they’d like you to write about. You can do this with offline friends, or with like-minded online entrepreneurs. If you’re not already part of a mastermind group, then reach out to a few bloggers that are about as big as you are, and suggest starting one. I’m in a mastermind group with Jon Alford, Paul Wolfe and Caleb Wojcik, and they’ve all been a great help to me.
   
   
3. Ask your audience. You can kick the last strategy up a notch by reaching out to your audience. This can be done in several ways — it can be as simple as running a “what would you like me to write about” post (which is a bit lame), or it can get more interesting by asking for their input on a problem, as Marcus Sheridan did to create his tag-line, or by asking a question so that you can compile their answers into another piece of content, like nittyGriddy’s free blog posting schedules e-book.
   
   
4. Do an interview. There are lots of reasons why interviews are great for blog content, but right now let’s focus on the simple fact that it’s a lot easier to write a handful of interview questions than it is to write an entire post! Plus, it can be a great way to connect with really interesting people. (I got to interview Randy Komisar, who is my hero in the business world – and all I had to do was ask!)
   
   
5. Solicit guest posts. This is a great source of content, and it’s easier than most people think – find a handful of blogs that are your size or smaller, whose content you really like, and invite them to write a guest post for you. They’ll be flattered, and happy to get exposure to your audience. They’ll work hard to bring their A game, and not only will you get a great post, but they’ll happily tell their contacts about it, and bring you a few new readers in the process.

Click here to read the full article.

Katy Spicer
Associate Director of Marketing

Mr. Armstrong Works Here

Stretch Armstrong was a large, gel-filled action figure first introduced in 1976, a well-muscled blond man wearing a pair of swimming trunks whose most notable features were his arms and legs that could stretch outwards for great lengths, presumably without breaking, and ultimately returning to his original state.

The youngest of four kids, my siblings and I definitely put good ol’ Stretch to the test, each one taking a limb and pulling as hard as we could in opposite directions, but he never broke.

Sound familiar?

The idea of being stretched beyond one’s conceivable limits and then bouncing back is a concept that is all too real in our world of ever shrinking resources and increasing needs. But the point is, we do bounce back. Just like Stretch, the amazing capacity and incredible resilience of nonprofit professionals is seemingly endless.

But even Stretch had time off from the torturous tugs of little tikes from time to time. When is the last time you took a vacation in the toy box of life? More and more Americans skip the annual vacation, and those of us that do manage to physically break away, find ourselves, with increasing frequency, bringing work along with us, or “checking in” via technology and ultimately keeping ourselves still in the work mindset we should be escaping.

The fact is vacations can help with your job performance! The psychological benefits that come with more frequent vacations leads to increased quality of life and that can lead to increased quality of work. Vacations promote creativity, stave off burnout, help keep us healthy and promote overall wellbeing. In other words, keep Stretch Armstrong elastic! Have you ever seen plastic get hard and brittle? It isn’t pretty.

The Center’s Department of Education spends eleven of the twelve months promoting best practices in nonprofit management through our various programs. But there is one month, July, when we stop our programming and focus on personal renewal.

Summer is fast approaching and your assignment; Mr. & Ms. Armstrong… plan a real vacation! Even if you don’t have the funds to go somewhere, find a way to really disengage completely from work and the demands of everyday life to restore yourself and ultimately prepare you for the next BIG S-T-R-E-T-C-H!

Stacey Bruenning
Director of Education

Which Came First – The Horse or the Cart?

I know that’s not how the question usually goes, but this is a question we sometimes need to stop and ask ourselves.  So often the greatest ideas for social change are ones that start with an action (the cart) rather than a theory for how actions generate the desired outcomes (the horse).

Don’t get me wrong, if we sat around thinking about how to make a difference all day long we would never see anything come to fruition.  However, even the best program ideas can benefit from periodically asking “is this program accomplishing what we want it to?” or in the case of new programs “how will this program drive the outcomes we want to achieve?”  Here is a great (fictional) example:

A well-intentioned group of concerned citizens recognizes a need in their community – high childhood obesity.  They know that childhood obesity has numerous negative impacts on children, so they want to help the children in their community get on track to a healthier lifestyle. 

What's their solution?  A weekend expo with healthy cooking classes from a local celebrity chef and a mile-long fun walk for fitness.  The group raises necessary in-kind donations, holds the event, and has a higher than expected turnout.  They did a great job implementing their solution and all the attendees had a wonderful time!  One year later the childhood obesity rates in their community are even higher.  What happened?

This well-intentioned group had a vision for change that they wanted to create in their community and a strategy for how to make it happen.  They had the dedication to see that strategy through, and yet somehow their vision didn’t materialize as they had hoped. 

The problem: they didn’t fully understand their theory of practice – the LOGIC behind their program.  They had the right idea – they wanted to raise awareness, show kids that healthy foods could be tasty, and encourage physical activity – but they didn’t think about the long-range impact of their efforts.  As a result, while everyone had a wonderful time at their expo, and probably much awareness was raised, it didn’t impact individual behaviors in a way that changed the overall childhood obesity rates for their community.

What could they have done differently?

While there are many possible solutions here (including collaboration with other agencies or using a different program model), the first step might have been to complete a Program Logic Model to analyze the anticipated short-term and long-range outcomes of the expo.  Both as a visual tool and as an exercise, a logic model would have helped the group better understand their underlying assumptions and identify gaps in their program.  It would also help them define how they would measure success.  They could then act on this to improve their outcomes and implement additional programs or collaborations to build on the expo.  This way they would be much more likely to see the change they set out to accomplish!

For more information on Program Logic Models and a template you can use, visit http://www.cnmdallas.org/downloads/Logic_Model_Templates.pdf. 

Rachel Leventon, MPA, CVA
Associate Consultant

The Great Divide

As graduation day comes knocking on the door for college seniors across the country, the decision will soon have to be made—make money or do good deeds?  Why is there such a great divide between the .com money-makers and the .org do-gooders?  Social entrepreneurs from across North Texas gathered one recent Friday morning to discuss this very topic with thought-leader, Robert Egger, Founder and President of the DC Central Kitchen.

Mr. Egger was the guest at an invitation only breakfast co-hosted by Spark Club and Social Enterprise Alliance North Texas Chapter (SEANTC). It was an inspiring round-table featuring coffee and pastries donated by It's a Grind Coffee House, a local social enterprise located in the Deep Ellum neighborhood in Dallas. 

The room was filled with enterprising minds behind such ventures as Translation and Interpretation Network, Soap Hope, Ability Connection Texas, Café Momentum, Belltower Chapel and Garden, Demeter Project and so many more.

Social enterprises connect money and meaning and philanthropy with everyday commerce. And as the gathering of these innovative nonprofit programs suggests, North Texas is leading the way in looking to social enterprises to bridge the divide between .com and .org. 

The discussion with Mr. Egger challenged North Texas to continue to support and build social enterprises that combine purpose and profit.  As he said in a recent blog post: “Let’s open thousands of new businesses, re-invest in our communities, pay good wages, decrease the need for charity by channeling the market forces of daily commerce for CHANGE and shatter the myth that you have to choose between doing good or making money.” 

Where will you make a change?

For more information on the Social Enterprise Alliance of North Texas visit www.cnmdallas.org/seantc.aspx or http://www.seantc.org/.

Lauren Kearns
SEANTC Intern