My Secrets to Success

Katy Spicer

Want to be successful in the workplace and beyond? Follow these two simple steps:

1. Show Up.
Seriously. If you said you would attend a meeting/event/seminar, then actually attend.

2. Answer E-mails.
Even if it's to say "I received your e-mail and will respond tomorrow."

These two things really do make all the difference.

Katy Spicer
Center for Nonprofit Management
Director of Sales and Marketing

How to Create Editorial Content with Leslie Clay

Leslie Clay, Chief Development Officer
at Hope Cottage

Having to constantly create editorial content for your nonprofit can be hard. See our past post about it here.

To get some new ideas, I sat down with Leslie Clay, Chief Development Officer and communications extraordinaire at Hope Cottage Pregnancy and Adoption Center, to hear her top tips and techniques. 

Leslie’s top tips:

• Don’t be afraid to recycle content. Your bog posts can become a newsletter article. If something’s really good I’ll pull it out and re-post it or link to the original post. I linked to last year’s Mothers Day post to coincide with this year’s Mothers Day.
  
  Our waiting to adopt lists turn over pretty quickly, on average every 9 months. This means I have a new group of readers for our monthly newsletters for families who are waiting to adopt from our agency a couple of times a year.
• Set a regular schedule and stick to it. I blog once a week unless there’s something I need to get out quickly. It helps for people to know when to expect your posts. A regular schedule will also mean that you will regularly publish which is one part of SEO.
• Write a “meet the staff” post each month. If you have 12 staff, then that’s a year’s worth of posts right there. Include information about their educational and employment background, what they like to do in their spare time, what drew them to your agency. I also always include a lesser known fact about them  to keep it interesting – perfect attendance all the way through school, they like to mountain climb on vacation, they once worked on a movie with Elizabeth Taylor.
• Same for “meet the board.” Include details on where they went to school, why they choose your organization, what do they do in their spare time, etc.
• Consider a post entitled “A Day in the life of an intern.” Make your life easy by recruiting your interns to write for you!
• Highlight a supporter. This can be a monetary donor or a volunteer. Have them share why they have a heart for your agency’s mission.
• Share the best of Twitter. I find articles on Twitter that would be of interest to our families (there are a billion of them) and literally just write a lead-in and included the hyper-link.
• Start with the end product in mind and work backwards. See how you can populate your e-newsletter with content that can also be used on blog posts. You may find that you only have very little ‘new’ content to come up with.
• Write about your programs. That is what is going to interest people most. Your audience wants to know the work your agency does. Make sure you get to know your organization’s programming staff. You may drive them crazy at first, but they’re the ones who have the good stories! Assure them that you’ll protect people’s privacy and not be invasive. It’s so important get those client stories out there.
• Set-up Google alerts with phrases and words that pertain to your organization’s mission. I get alerts for adoption agencies in Texas, Foster adoption, teen pregnancy, embryo adoption, etc. I get links to news articles that include those words once daily from Google. Trending topics make for great blog/newsletter ideas.
• Set-up streams in Hootsuite to look for key words. This helps me keep track of what people are talking about and ensures that our content is relevant. (Hootsuite is a free social media dashboard to help you manage and measure your social networks – www.hootsuitecom)
• Follow other social service organizations that do the same work you do. Check out what they’re doing on Facebook, read their blogs, follow them on Twitter and subscribe to their newsletter. Make sure you’re in on the conversation.
• Follow and read up on the other social service organizations in town who serve your same clients. Many agencies have cross-over clients. Knowing what is going on with them can help you collaborate.
• How do you know if something’s interesting? If it’s interesting to you, then it’s probably interesting to others. If something gets a lot of comments, Likes, shares or click-thrus, then it’s probably interesting.
• Try using a paper desktop calendar to track everything for the month. I have tried several different methods to organize and schedule content publication and have found nothing beats a paper calendar. I happen to use the large desk blotter size one.  I can spread three months out at a time on a conference table or tack it to the wall and plan accordingly. I also use this same calendar to schedule any large mailings, special event timelines and fundraising campaigns. Keeps me from scheduling too many things during one day or week.  

Hope Cottage Pregnancy and Adoption Center is the oldest non-profit, non-sectarian adoption center in Dallas. Since 1918, have been building families through education, counseling and adoption services.

Katy Spicer, CNM Director of Sales and Marketing, in conversation with Leslie Clay, Chief Development Officer at Hope Cottage Pregnancy and Adoption Center.

A Conversation with Tori Mannes, CEO of ChildCareGroup

Tori Mannes, CEO of ChildCareGroup

I had the pleasure of recently sitting down with Tori Mannes, the newish CEO of ChildCareGroup (CCG), to chat about her leadership style and the organizational culture she is working to create.

Katy: So Tori, tell me a little bit about your background.

Tori: I come from a corporate background; I used to manage corporate philanthropy at JP Morgan Chase and was Director of Marketing for Thompson & Knight. I’ve always been interested in creating partnerships between businesses and nonprofits, and engaging employees and promoting leadership through service to others. My professional and personal lives have always involved community service in one capacity or another.

Katy: How did you first become involved with CCG?

Tori: I was actually on the CCG board of directors for six years and was board chair in 2000, so I knew the organization well. It was definitely a homecoming for me to return in 2011 as the CEO. ChildCareGroup’s mission (To promote, deliver, and expand the best child care services available outside the home) has always resonated with me deeply because I have always been a working mom myself (my eldest is 22 years old now) and I know what it’s like to balance work and family. I was lucky that I always had access to quality care for my children. Sadly, that’s not the case for so many parents in our community who are living at or below the poverty line. For them, access to safe, affordable, quality child care is a daily struggle.

Katy: Tell me more about the organization.

Tori: Sure – ChildCareGroup‘s work is focused in three key areas: 

1) Early care and school readiness education - we serve 595 children every day through our seven centers throughout Dallas County;

2) Child Care Assistance - We subsidize the cost of care for more than 12,000 children from low-income families every day;

3) Training and Community Outreach - We provide early childhood training and education to over 3,000 child care providers and parents in North Texas annually.
Our staff includes 240 employees here in Dallas and a small team in Beaumont, Texas. CCG celebrated its 110th anniversary last fall and we recognized over 40 staff members who’ve been with the organization for fifteen years or longer. This employee loyalty is a wonderful endorsement of our work and our employees’ sense of mission and purpose.

CCG was started in 1901 by a group of civic leaders to provide a way to care for the children of women who worked in Dallas’ cotton mills. We then began a nutrition program to feed these children, and the organization has evolved since then. I am so proud of our history of service and I feel a profound responsibility to help continue that legacy.

Katy: What was the theme of your recent staff development day?

Tori: The theme for our Staff Development Day this year was “The Power of One.” To illustrate this theme, I told the parable of the starfish:
One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.

Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”

The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out.  If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”

“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and gently threw it back into the surf. 

Then, smiling at the man, he said, “I made a difference for that one.”

Sometimes, our work can be overwhelming because the pipeline of people needing assistance never stops – there are always parents in the workforce and there are babies are being born every day who will need to be cared for while their parents work. 

We place a great emphasis on teamwork, but I used “The Power of One” as our theme to emphasize the fact that each staff person at CCG has an important role to play, whether they’re answering the phone, teaching at one of our child care centers or entering donors in the database. I want every employee to know that they make a difference - sometimes for a moment or a day, and sometimes for a lifetime.

Katy: Tell me about your leadership style.

Tori: I like to think of myself as a servant leader. I work to elevate our mission so that every employee focuses on what we do and why we do it.  By focusing on our common vision, we build consensus and teamwork. I try to promote a culture that encourages shared information and creative input, so that people feel empowered to bring forward their best ideas and effort.

One of my favorite examples was during our recent staff development day. Our training manager had run back to the office wearing her CCG t-shirt to get something when she ran into a woman who had come by to submit her paperwork so that she could sign up her children for childcare. Our training manager explained that the office was closed, but the woman said she had taken the day off work and wouldn’t be able to take the time to come back. Even though it wasn’t her area of responsibility, our training manager felt empowered enough to help this new client with what she needed and therefore kept her from having to return the next day. That was her “Power of One” moment.

Katy: What leadership tips do you have to share?

Tori: There is so much to be learned from just talking to people and hearing their stories! I have been inspired by people I have met throughout my life who demonstrate leadership in so many different ways. One example is my children’s former caregiver, who in addition to raising her own kids, also cared for neglected children in her neighborhood. She demonstrated such leadership and compassion, and has always been an inspiration to me.

I am fortunate to have had many wonderful mentors: bosses, colleagues, friends, community contacts, who have had a great impact on me personally and professionally.  One of my mentors once advised me that everyone should try to build a network of at least ten mentors, both inside and outside their own profession. These are people who will be invested in you and will help you as you progress through your career. I have found that to be great advice, and I would also add that it is important to take the good advice and mentoring you receive and pay it forward! It’s important to help others along, just as you have been helped.

Katy: How do you share stories at CCG?

Tori: We like to use stories in our internal newsletters to help encourage and motivate others. Again, it’s the stories that come from everyone around our organization that I find so inspiring! Every morning our HR manager sends an e-mail blast that includes a featured staff spotlight. That helps us get to know our colleagues and some special things about them. For external stakeholders we like to use Facebook and Twitter to post stories. We even have stories posted on our wall from people whose lives we’ve touched. Those are the definitely the best ones, because they are the personal ‘success stories’ that let us know that we are truly making a difference.

Katy: What do you do in the way of staff and volunteer appreciation?

Tori: There are certain times, like Teacher Appreciation Week, when we try to do special things and give gift cards to buy classroom supplies. On Staff Development Day we did little giveaways like a certificate for a “jeans day”, or half a day of vacation. A donor gave us some massage gift certificates, which of course was very popular!

I think it’s important to remember that staff appreciation doesn’t have to be a “thing.” A compliment will always go a long way, as will being open to new ideas and the willingness to lend a listening ear. It keeps us going if we feel that someone notices and appreciates us.

One of my favorite things to do that connects me to the mission is to visit our child care centers. I love walking into a classroom and seeing the children learning and playing. I always get lots of smiles and leg-hugs, and I leave feeling so grateful that “this is my job”!

Katy: Do you have any reading recommendations to tie in with the “Power of One” theme?

Tori: I highly recommend Jantzen’s Gift by Pam Cope. She lives in the Dallas area and was the keynote speaker for our Staff Development Day. After the death of her son, she and her husband created a foundation called "Touch A Life," which helps rescue trafficked and neglected children in places like Vietnam and Africa. The book is about turning life-changing personal tragedy into something positive, and is a truly wonderful read. I have the greatest admiration for Pam – she really exemplifies the idea of the “Power of One.”

Katy: Thank you, Tori!Katy Spicer, CNM Director of Sales and Marketing, in conversation with Tori Mannes, CEO of ChildCareGroup.

An Update from our Friends at the IRS

I tend to get overwhelmed with the details of IRS changes and how they impact nonprofits.  Don't we all?

But I appreciated this quick recap from the Foundation Group on what's coming up for 2012:

It’s that time of year again.  The IRS just released its Exempt Organizations 2011 Annual Report & 2012 Work Plan.  Under the signature of Lois Lerner, Director of Exempt Organizations, the Report & Work Plan addresses quite a number of issues of importance to 501(c)(3) and other nonprofits.  The following is a summary of a few key topics covered.

2011 Audits
2011 saw a typical number of tax exempt organizations examined by Uncle Sam.  Specifically, 11,699 organizations experienced the pleasure of a “traditional” examination (meaning full audit), while 3,194 nonprofits received a less-intrusive compliance review.  These numbers are roughly in line with numbers we’ve seen over the past several years.

Fast Track Settlement (FTS) Program
The IRS is pilot testing a new program that aims to speed up the process of resolving EO disputes, including getting to them at an early stage.  This program involves using an Appeal Official as a neutral party with the goal of saving both time and money for both the IRS and the filing organization.

Automatic Revocation of Form 990 Nonfilers
Though considerable space was dedicated to this topic, no real changes are expected.  Nonprofits that fail to file Form 990 for three consecutive years will continue to have their tax exempt status revoked.  The IRS will continue to update that list monthly.  That list, available at www.irs.gov, is easily searchable for both revoked nonprofit and those still in good standing.  One interesting statistic in the report is that 5,000 small nonprofits have now filed for reinstatement of tax exemption using the IRS Transitional Relief initiative.

Tax Exempt Hospitals
Rules being implemented under ObamaCare requires review of the community benefit activities of hospital organizations at least once every three years.  According to the IRS, “These reviews are not examinations (audits) and the group does not expect to contact hospitals while conducting the reviews.”

501(c)(4), 501(c)(5) and 501(c)(6) Self Declaration
This is a significant…and somewhat puzzling…rule change.  Essentially, the IRS will begin allowing social welfare, agricultural/labor, and business leagues to “self-declare” that they are tax exempt without filing Form 1024 as has been required in the past.  These self-declarers will still be required to follow all ongoing compliance requirements, including the annual Form 990.  The IRS will review organizations to ensure that they have classified themselves correctly and that they are complying with applicable rules.  Expect this scrutiny to increase given the grace being extended on the front end.

It is important to note that Form 1024 applications will still be accepted for these organizations.  Until we see how the implementation of the so-called review process pans out, it will remain a best-practice recommendation to not risk a self-declaration.  It is difficult for us to see the long-run advantage of this rule change to the organizations themselves.  Nothing can substitute for an actual determination letter.

Political Activity
The IRS will increase its scrutiny of political activity by nonprofits, especially in this election year.

Governance
The new Form 990 has given the IRS a great deal of information about organizational governance practices. In FY 2012, the IRS will be using this data to look at connections between certain governance practices and tax compliance.

Private Foundation Audits
The IRS has announced that it will increase examinations of some of the largest private foundations to ensure compliance with how they treat substantial assets.

This post only addresses a few of the topics in the original report.  What’s clear is that the trend continues to point in the direction of ever-increasing scrutiny of the nonprofit community.  To view the full report, click here.

Katie Edwards
Vice President of Programs & Operations