Improving Nonprofit Operations: Expert Tips

Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Barbara D. Kibbe, of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, outlining the key lessons the foundation has learned in more than 15 years of making grants to improve the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations.

The full text is available on the Web at http://www.geofunders.org.

• Management challenges are normal for nonprofit organizations. As a result of growth, risk taking, or the need to adapt to a rapidly changing environment, even the best-managed group will face problems throughout the course of its life.

• There are no quick fixes. There are no permanent fixes either. Effectiveness requires persistent attention since change is the rule of nonprofit life.

• Ideas are nothing; thinking is everything. There are many paths to competency, many kinds of capacity. We should insist on thoughtfulness and reflection, not adherence to any one philosophy or method.

• Proffer the pole, not the fish. Coach your grantees to select the best consultant to meet their needs. Don't pick the consultant for them. All consultants eventually leave; skills last a lifetime.

• In times of great change, our support can reap great dividends. Bumps along the road often signal opportunities to rethink, reposition, and re-engineer. We shouldn't shy away from crisis.

• Don't redesign the kitchen while the house is on fire. On the other hand, a genuine catastrophe -- earthquake, flood, or the total breakdown of board and staff relations -- does not signal an auspicious moment to begin planning, training, assessment, or evaluation. What's probably needed is a quick infusion of cash or immediate action to end the emergency. Once the flames are quenched, you can all get back to the drawing boards.

• Speak the truth. To establish trust, maintain credibility, and negotiate the ever-present power differential, we must take great pains to be honest from start to finish with our grantees.

• Change demands a champion. Nonprofit life is endlessly busy, relentlessly harried. Without an inside advocate, even the best opportunities for change will be set aside in favor of coping with the demands of daily operations.

• Building a nonprofit organization is a long, hard haul. Almost everybody underestimates the time and effort required to make substantive change. Patience, resilience, and fortitude should be our watchwords.

• We don't know enough yet. (But we're learning.) As grant makers for evaluation and organizational effectiveness, we can build our knowledge base through continued research, reflection, and the sharing of lessons we continue to glean from the field.