Why It’s Important: Libraries Scrap Late Fees

Why It’s Important: Libraries Scrap Late Fees

I love Erin Rubin‘s article in Nonprofit Quarterly: Libraries, in a Move for Equity, Scrap Late Fees.

First, because I have an affinity for libraries and I love watching them evolve with the times.

Second, because it has an important message for every nonprofit:

Are you living your mission?

“At their midwinter meeting in 2019, the American Library Association issued a resolution stating the imposition of monetary library fines creates a barrier to the provision of library and information services,” and recommended that libraries “move towards actively eliminating them.

Late fees are antithetical to the mission of a public library. Late fees are a barrier to providing free and open access for all patrons, especially to low-income individuals.

It’s an interesting innovation for libraries with a profound message for all nonprofits.

When was the last time you looked at your processes and procedures to see if they fit with your mission? What are you doing as ‘business as usual,’ that is actually at odds with the impact you want to have?

You can use this example from libraries across the United States to introduce the idea to your board and staff. What are WE doing out of habit or received wisdom ™ that we should eliminate or change?

If this article has provoked some thought, please let me know. If you bring it up to your staff or board, I’d love to hear how it’s received.

And if another article has caught your eye and made you think, pass it on.

More eyes, more wisdom.

Susan Detwiler

Giving the Audience What They Seek

My colleague, Shoshana Fanizza, posted an interesting analogy in her blog, Specials for What They Buy.  Shoshana specializes in audience development for theatres and performing arts, but her insights are definitely relevant to more than cultural institutions.

Her point is that grocery stores and stores like Target send you coupons for what you are most likely to use, based on past purchases. Why can’t venues use their databases of attendees and subscribers to pinpoint specific audiences for special attention?

It made me think about boards and their audiences. While cultural institutions can mine their databases for ‘likes,’ many nonprofit organizations can’t just go to their records and see who likes what, not to mention those potential clients whom you’ve yet to touch. But that doesn’t mean that the concept of knowing your audience has no validity.

Do you know your audience?

How well do organizations really know who their audiences / clients / targets / constituents are? How well do we know what their interests are, or what will be most useful to them (remember, we started with targeted coupons)?  

In program evaluation, we are thankfully spending more time looking at impact than merely counting participants. Yet we are still often measuring things which matter to third parties, not necessarily what is important to the constituents themselves. We measure that students graduate from college and are employed. But does that person end up with debt? Does that person end up with a job that doesn’t pay as well as one she could have gotten with a 2-year certificate in plumbing? Maybe she’d rather be working with her hands.

Co-creation of programs requires not just offering ideas and getting feedback from constituents. It means bringing them in at the beginning of any effort, and asking, what is it that you want your life to be like? and what will it take for that to actually become reality?  Developing ways to measure your impact means working with constituents to determine meaningful benchmarks.

Then, when you know this, you can offer more like it.

Really knowing your constituents – your “audience” – allows you to effectively tailor your programs and collaborations  to their true interests.

Surely, that’s at least as important as knowing when they need to buy more paper towels.

Right Message. Wrong Words.

Did you read the BBB, Guidestar, Charity Navigator letter about The Overhead Myth ? I did. And even as I cheered the message, it felt wrong.  It was written to the wrong audience. The donors who commented were not convinced.

The same day I read Michael Schrage wrote in Harvard Business Review’s Good Leaders Don’t Use Bad Words, and I saw the problem; the authors were being lazy with their words. Instead of speaking to their audience’s needs, they were speaking to their own.

Nonprofits will certainly be better served if donors don’t focus solely on overhead as a measure of competence. But what’s the upside for the donors? Why should they care? That’s where the authors fail.

Donors should be looking for measures that demonstrate value to society. Are people’s lives being changed? How lasting is the change? How is the nonprofit making sure that it’s effective? What does it need in order to stay on track? These are the measures that donors should be looking at.

Instead of telling donors that overhead is the wrong measurement, we need to help them see the benefit of seeking alternatives.

If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway

If it ain’t broke, find a better way.

Usually, I hear if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  At nonprofits, it’s usually used to defend the status quo – we’ve never had term limits, our mission is still as important as ever, the materials in our literacy classes have always worked, we always read our committee reports out loud, Jimmy’s always handled our books, the 5K is our biggest fundraiser!scuplture of man sewing

The problem is, if we only fixed what’s broken, we’d never have the automobile, the telephone, the radio, the iPod, the space shuttle. Heck, if we only fixed what’s broken, we might never have invented the sewing machine! Each of these improvements weren’t fixing something that was broken, they happened because someone said there had to be a better way.

It’s the same thing with delivering our missions. Our programs have been working just fine, thank you very much. Why should we change? The answer isn’t change for the sake of change. The answer is change to do it better. To have a greater impact. To use our resources more wisely.

That’s why strong, effective nonprofits regularly evaluate their programs and measure their effectiveness. It’s not to fulfill funder requirements, although that is a nice benefit. It’s to see if we can learn from them, and find ways of having a greater impact.  Many nonprofits operate in the same mission space, because there is such a great need. It’s not competition if you can learn from each other, and discover the best practices for making a difference.

We evaluate our personnel all the time (or at least we know we should). Shouldn’t we be evaluating our programs?

Instead of saying, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, shouldn’t we be asking, it ain’t broke, but can we do it better?

One of the 55 standards of The Standards for Excellence: A Code of Ethics and Accountability for nonprofits calls for regular evaluation of programs. If you would like more information about the Standards, or ways to evaluate your programs, let me know. Let’s talk.

Well, did you do it?

Well, did you do it?

Lunching with a great colleague this week, it dawned us that we both respond well to external deadlines. We’re so bent on meeting client needs, that deadlines we set for ourselves sometimes go by the wayside.

We all do this, and nonprofit board members are no different. As we respond to the challenge…or opportunity…of the moment, we let long term goals slide. At board meetings we deal with immediate issues while our strategic plans languish with 10 minutes at the end.

The cycle continues. Each year we make plans, often repeating last years’: recruit new board members, seek best practices in hiring, expand our reach, or whatever we have identified as crucial to our growth. Yet 5 months into the year, it’s still just a plan.

I solved the problem with an accountability partner…someone who regularly asks me what I’ve done that week to further my goals. Then I commit to specific steps toward my goals, so she can ask me again.

sticky note remindersMaybe the board needs an external accountability partner. A coach. A guide. A nudge. Someone to regularly check in with the president and the executive, help them keep board meetings focused on long term and strategic issues, and help them figure out ways to do it better. Someone to guide them through the hazard of rehashing decisions that have already been made.  Perhaps a coach to help them figure out how to make sure that committee and staff work are done by committees and staff, while the board spends its valuable time focusing on mission.

Think about your own life. Making a commitment to someone else has a way of focusing our attention. Maybe we should use the same approach for our boards.

If this is an intriguing idea, contact me. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts, and help you think through whether your organization might benefit from a coach.