A well-designed onboarding plan is more than a perfunctory welcome packet with endless bureaucratic documents and a brief meet and greet from days gone by. It provides your nonprofit hiring team and the respective department manager an opportunity to fully integrate new hires into your organization.

Why Does Employee Onboarding for Nonprofits Matter?

An onboarding plan for new hires gives you a window — designated by your leadership and HR teams — to provide an in-depth cultural and productivity-based primer. It serves as a prolonged orientation that focuses on ensuring new employees have all the tools, they need to successfully complete daily tasks.

It’s equally important that new team members feel welcome and included by their peers and managers. Onboarding plans can help with this since they are generally designed with equity, diversity, and fairness in mind.

This focus aids in fostering a much-needed and desirable team-oriented environment. It helps individuals learn, acclimate, engage, improve, and thrive. A robust onboarding strategy helps ensure that everyone works together to fulfill your organization’s mission according to its values.

The Definition of an Employee Onboarding Process for Nonprofit Organizations

With helpful resources from trusted sources and partners, along with the following tips, you can create a highly effective onboarding program and get the results you want for your nonprofit organization and your valued employees.

Duration — Think Long Term

Onboarding is best when viewed as a long-range strategy. It isn’t a one-off event that takes one day. Instead, think of it as a continuous process that focuses on the employee’s long-term integration within the organization.

Think of timelines such as our 30-60-90-day plan that sets nonprofit employees up for short-term and long-term success that leads to powerful employee retention.

Mapping out a plan for a new hire’s crucial first three months can be instrumental. It provides structure, sets expectations, and ensures that both the organization and employee are aligned in their objectives and expectations.

Create a Nonprofit Employee Onboarding Checklist

Planning and organizing a long-range onboarding process will help ensure you don’t miss anything you want to include. This is true for any business, but for nonprofits, where mission and purpose are at the forefront, it’s vital to create an experience that aligns new employees with the organization’s unique vision and goals from day one.

Here is a sample checklist to ensure that your nonprofit’s onboarding process is comprehensive and effective:

• Job essentials like desk supplies and necessary technology
• Training manuals and sessions
• Welcome package and first agenda sent out via email or text message before or on the first day
• Coworker introduction
• Organizational culture workshop session
• Job description review
• Administrative paperwork

Adaptability and future growth should be at the core, ensuring that the process remains relevant and effective as organizational needs evolve.

Rely on Technology to Streamline the Process

Besides sending out emails and productivity app messages before employees arrive the first day, you can lean on even more technological tools. For example, you can record complex training modules for processes you understand are challenging. This allows new hires to watch your in-depth video as many times as needed to understand a particular job task or operation.

Create an Employee Handbook

A thoughtful and comprehensive handbook communicates rules and policies. It also instills a sense of the organization’s culture, mission, and values. Best of all, it serves as an easily accessible, consistent, and constant companion which is essential for helping new hires navigate their initial days with greater confidence.

Designate a Work Partner or Buddy

Assigning a new hire to an existing employee to act as their work buddy helps to quickly instill and foster a sense of belonging. It’s no secret that starting a new job can be overwhelming in terms of the work itself and relationship-building. This step is your personal touch offering employees a go-to person for information, someone to answer their questions while acclimate to and align them with your mission, and their place in your organization.

Make Personal Introductions for Quick Connections and Long-Term Collaboration

Help new hires get to know as many of their colleagues as possible in the onboarding process. When you take the intentional time and energy to introduce new hires to team members and leadership, it helps to establish immediate connections, encouraging an open and collaborative work environment.

Set Clear Goals

Clear goals provide direction and purpose for your new hires to aspire to. Ensure that goals are aligned with the organizational objectives and tailored to the employee’s role, promoting a sense of accomplishment and belonging.

Establish a Mutual Feedback Loop

Regular constructive feedback reinforces positive behavior and identifies areas for improvement. It’s also a good time to discuss what the employee is doing right and how much you appreciate their efforts. However, feedback should be a two-way conversation, ensuring new hires feel heard and valued. Let them know that their constructive feedback is welcome and helpful to your managers and the organization.

Are You Ready to Launch Your Nonprofit Employee Onboarding Program?

If you are ready to develop, launch, or improve your nonprofit employee onboarding plan, UST stands as a beacon for nonprofit organizations. We offer solutions that simplify your operations so you and your team can focus on your mission.

Contact us here to learn more about our nonprofit onboarding strategies and support.

SOURCES

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2021/06/09/10-keys-for-onboarding-new-nonprofit-team-members/?sh=4cb89e517c3e

The Importance of Mental Health in the Nonprofit Workplace

Mental health is an often overlooked but critically important aspect of workplace wellbeing. Nonprofit organizations are especially susceptible because they are tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. Organizations prioritizing employee mental health can anticipate improved employee engagement, greater satisfaction, and stronger outcomes. A psychologically safe workplace lays the foundation for such achievements. Statistics reveal that one in six individuals experience mental health issues at work, resulting in the loss of twelve billion workdays annually due to depression and anxiety. Additionally, happy employees are shown to be 13% more productive, according to an article by Spill.

The first step to creating a psychologically safe workplace is to understand what it is, and what it is not. A psychologically safe workplace is one where employees feel comfortable, respected, and valued. It is a place where they can express themselves without fear of ridicule, judgment, or discrimination. It is also a workplace where employees can voice their concerns without being punished, and where constructive criticism is encouraged. A psychologically safe workplace is not a place where employees fear retribution for speaking out, where bullying is tolerated, or where mental health concerns are stigmatized.

Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

To create a psychologically safe workplace, within a nonprofit organization, leaders and managers must prioritize their employees’ mental health and wellbeing. Employees of nonprofit organization often work long hours, and care deeply about the impact they are making. This emotional toll on employees can lead to burnout. By means providing access to mental health resources, including counseling and therapy services, promoting work-life balance, and encouraging self-care, you can help mitigate employee stress. It also means creating clear and fair policies regarding performance evaluation, promotion, and disciplinary action. This way, employees can feel assured that they are being evaluated based on their performance and skills, rather than personal biases or factors outside their control.

Training and education are also crucial to creating a psychologically safe workplace. Leaders and managers should educate themselves on mental health wellness strategies and best practices for supporting employees in this area. They should also provide training to their staff on recognizing and responding to mental health concerns, as well as promoting mental health awareness and reducing stigma. If you want to continue your educational journey, UST’s HR and Compliance partner, Mineral, has a variety of educational resources to help get you started. Read Mineral’s blog, How Employers Can Address Mental Health in the Workplace, by clicking here.

Getting a psychologically safe nonprofit workplace requires continuous dedication, effort, and resources. However, the advantages of a safe and positive work environment for both employees and organizations are worthwhile. By prioritizing mental health and wellbeing, implementing clear policies, and offering resources, nonprofit leaders and managers can establish a supportive, respectful, and inclusive workplace culture for all employees.

Find more resources to navigate your nonprofit’s workplace with UST’s blogs.

Source: https://www.spill.chat/mental-health-statistics/workplace-mental-health-statistics

Question: We have two employees who don’t seem to like each other, and it is starting to affect their work. How do we help employees who don’t get along to work well together?

Answer: Getting employees who don’t like each other to work well together can be challenging, but here are several steps you can take to improve the situation:

• Investigate the cause or causes of the conflict. It’s easy to jump to conclusions about what is happening. Speak to the employees involved and try to understand the tension between them. Is it a personality clash, a misunderstanding, or a difference in working style? Once you understand the cause, you can work to address it and find a solution.
• Encourage the employees to communicate openly with each other. You may need to facilitate a conversation to help them understand what open communication is like. If your employees are struggling to communicate openly, they may benefit from training in effective communication, including active listening and conflict resolution.
• Set clear expectations for behavior and performance, and make sure everyone is on the same page. Create a shared vision for the team and encourage everyone to work towards that common goal. Tell your employees that they don’t need to be friends, but they do need to be able to work together and should be professional in the workplace.
• Lead by example. Model open communication and positive conflict resolution with your teams and peers.
• Follow up to ensure that the solution is working and that your expectations are being met.
• If one or more of your employees continues to not meet your behavioral and performance expectations, it would be appropriate to discipline them, up to and including termination.

This Q&A was provided by Mineral, powering the UST HR Workplace. Have HR questions? Sign your nonprofit up for a FREE 60-day trial here. As a UST member, simply log into your Mineral portal to access live HR certified consultants, 300+ on-demand training courses, an extensive compliance library, and more.

An engaging communication strategy is vital for any business, regardless of the size of the organization or whether it is in the private or nonprofit sector. Good communications enable you to share and clarify your organization’s message, boost visibility and awareness, and generate engagement and support. This key element is involved in every charitable campaign, project, or event, so you need to develop a nonprofit communication strategy your organization can count on.

In this blog post, we’ll share some insights about communication strategies for nonprofits and how you can develop one that gets results for your mission.

What is a Nonprofit Communication Strategy?

A communication strategy for nonprofit organizations is an intentional, custom framework that allows for seamless communication with donors, media, beneficiaries, volunteers, stakeholders, and the public. It’s more than a messaging system or a way to distribute the latest information; a strong communications strategy serves as a roadmap for creating, delivering and managing consistent and meaningful messages with impact—supporting the organization’s goals and mission.

Why is an Efficient Nonprofit Communication Strategy an Important Organizational Task?

We touched on some reasons that a communication plan is vital for nonprofits, such as communicating a clear and consistent message, boosting visibility and awareness, and facilitating engagement.

Here are some additional reasons to help you understand why a communication strategy is essential.

• Clarity of Messaging: A well-crafted communication strategy helps nonprofits express their values, mission and goals, clearly and consistently.
• Awareness and Visibility: Nonprofits rely on consistent visibility and public awareness for continuous support. The right messaging ensures the nonprofit’s initiatives, achievements and impact are in the public consciousness to help attract more contributions.
• Build Relationships: With stellar messaging, nonprofit organizations can build strong relationships with donors, the public and stakeholders. Strong messaging helps donors stay connected to a cause, volunteers feel engaged, and beneficiaries have a deeper understanding of how their lives are impacted by the organization’s efforts.

5 Steps to Create an Effective Nonprofit Communications Strategy

A high-performing nonprofit communication plan answers the core questions: What? When? Who? Where? How?

We’ve come up with five steps to create an effective nonprofit communication strategy to gain all the benefits needed to run a successful nonprofit company or fundraising event, using the basic questions to guide your nonprofit toward success.

1. Set Goals and Objectives (What?)

Essentially, what do you want your communication strategy to do? There are many different types of goals you might choose. A perennial favorite set of goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resourced and Time-Bound (SMART), which help point you toward the broad outcomes you want to achieve through your communications — but any set of goals that helps you do that will work.

Consider establishing goals such as seeking fundraising from corporate donors, building branding and awareness, and engaging your local community.

Your objectives should always reflect the ways in which you and your team are working on the goals you want to reach for optimal transparency and trust-building.

2. Establish a Timeline and Frequency (When?)

It’s important to determine the overarching timeline for sending out communications from your nonprofit. It’s just as important to determine how much communication your audience wants — you don’t want to flood someone’s inbox, turning him or her off from your messaging completely.

Further, the frequency is different for diverse types of communication. For example, you might publish one or two blog posts per week, several social media post each week and send out one email daily. If you have a fast-approaching event, you might increase the communication frequency for your most effective channels.

3. Know Your Audience (Who?)

Knowing your audience, speaking to them directly, and providing them meaningful information are essential ways to drive engagement with the right donors and stakeholders. For instance, do you want to gain new donors or update long-term existing donors? If you want to send regular emails or newsletters, either separate the different donors manually or find the right donor data segmentation support to make it easier.

4. Clarify Your Message and Create Content with Integrity and Transparency (Where?)

Clarify your brand and message, ensuring it is simple, consistent, and easily understood. Focus on the high-level point you want to make each time, such as your mission, why you need financial support and the donor’s impact. By sharing these things, you are providing effective storytelling, which frequently resonates with donors. You will build trust, transparency and honesty in your messaging that inspires people to support your organization and keep coming back.

Share your messages through the channels listed above and others, including blog posts, social media posts, print media, television advertising, and radio commercials when applicable.

5. Evaluate Your Strategy (How?)

It’s important to regularly check to see how your nonprofit’s communications strategy is doing. At a minimum, take the time and effort to evaluate your strategy and planning process on a monthly basis. Review your past work to see how effective it was, using key performance indicators (KPIs) and choosing the best metrics to determine whether you are on track to meet your communication goals.

Here are some KPIs to consider in your evaluation process:

• Website page views
• Fundraising ROI
• Donor and donation growth
• Donor retention rate
• Email open and click-through rates
• Gifts secured
• Beneficiary satisfaction rate
• Program efficiency

Summing Up

An effective communications strategy will allow your nonprofit organization to reach your audience and create meaningful engagement that satisfies donors, stakeholders, and beneficiaries. Our UST HR Workplace can help you develop, launch and maintain a powerful communications strategy wherein you foster connection through targeted outreach and helpful, timely information and prompts for action.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you serve your population.

Sources

https://www.networkforgood.com/resource/top-10-reasons-for-creating-a-communications-plan/

https://afpglobal.org/introduction-donor-data-segmentation?gclid=Cj0KCQjwi7GnBhDXARIsAFLvH4lx3Yi9Sgx1Gsu3xA3LhGM3k_Kh1vPC6ERjW8xZcLk6qHugFYiz4lEaAogtEALw_wcB

20 KPIs For Nonprofits to Track Over Time

Running a nonprofit organization requires a tremendous amount of teamwork and collaboration. In today’s digital age, many nonprofits have adapted to remote work models to be more efficient, cost-effective, and flexible. However, when it comes to remote collaboration, challenges such as communication barriers, cultural differences, and time zone disparities can make it difficult to maintain effective collaboration across your workforce.

In this blog, we’ll share effective strategies that can help you enhance remote collaboration throughout your nonprofit organization.

Invest in the Right Collaboration Tools

Your organization needs the right tools to help improve collaboration among remote teams. Some essential tools that can help include cloud-based document sharing platforms like Google Docs and Dropbox, video-conferencing apps like Zoom and Skype, chat and messaging apps like Slack, and project management tools like Trello and Asana.

Establish Clear Guidelines for Effective Communication

Communication is the lifeblood of collaboration. To ensure effective collaboration, it’s important to establish clear communication guidelines and protocols that apply to all members of your organization. These guidelines should include standards for language, tone, response times, and how to handle disagreements.

Foster a Culture of Open Communication

Remote collaboration requires a more inclusive and transparent communication approach. Encourage your team members to be more open and transparent in their communication while ensuring that they are effectively listened to and their opinions noted. This will ensure that every member of your team has an equal chance to share their ideas, which will ultimately lead to more effective collaboration.

Develop Work-Collaboration Schedules

As remote teams can be scattered around the world, it’s essential to have defined collaboration schedules to ensure that all members of the team can contribute. Work-collaboration schedules can cover topics such as project meetings, deadlines, shared work times, etc.

Train your Team in Virtual Collaboration Skills

Provide training and workshops to your team, informing them on best practices in virtual collaboration skills relevant to your workforce. Proper training and education in virtual communication, project management, and teamwork will create well-rounded staff who are more effective in a virtual work environment.

It’s essential to embrace and encourage a healthy culture of remote collaboration. By providing your team with the resources for safe and productive collaboration, you’re helping foster an environment of creativity, connectedness, and efficiency. With the right tools in place, you won’t have to compromise on quality or efficiency as people work from wherever they are most comfortable and productive. A strong foundation made up of communication, trust, transparency, and open-mindedness can help take your nonprofit to another level. Your employees will feel empowered knowing that their work matters and that they are part of an organization with core values that enable greater collaboration across your remote workforce. Don’t hesitate to invest in the tools necessary to support remote collaboration – it could be the keystone for your nonprofit’s success.

Find more resources to help your nonprofit navigate the digital age with UST’s blogs.

Question: What are effective ways to manage remote employees and monitor their work? 

Answer: Managing remote employees can certainly be a challenge. Here are some of the practices we recommend: 

• Set measurable goals around quality of work. Whether employees get their work done to your satisfaction is more important to your bottom line than whether they’re always at their workstation. Make all the resources necessary for employees to do their jobs remotely easily available. These may include phones, computers, extra monitors, video conferencing software, and instant messaging apps. If you need employees to have fast internet speeds, consider subsidizing the necessary costs. 
• Create and communicate a work-from-home policy so everyone knows what’s expected of them.
• Talk regularly with employees about what’s working well and not-so-well. Encourage them to reach out to HR or a manager if remote work is causing any difficulties or challenges.  
• Hold all meetings virtually, even if some people are working in a company office, so everyone is equally able to participate. This means having employees who are in the workplace login from their individual computers and not be in the same room as their other in-office colleagues during the meeting. 
• Promote a good work-life balance by making sure remote employees know when their workday ends. It’s very easy for employees working at home to spend more time working than they would in an office environment.

This Q&A was provided by Mineral, powering the UST HR Workplace. Have HR questions? Sign your nonprofit up for a FREE 60-day trial here. As a UST member, simply log into your Mineral portal to access live HR certified consultants, 300+ on-demand training courses, an extensive compliance library, and more.

Strong management is essential for any organization, and that certainly includes nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit management skills are the foundation of success for leaders who carry the responsibility of supporting and advancing the organization’s mission. Professionals in nonprofit management roles are also responsible for managing teams to accomplish goals while administering resources and ensuring accountability to stakeholders. 

In this blog post, we will look more closely at the importance of strong not-for-profit management skills and how you can ensure your team keeps your nonprofit business running smoothly. 

What Is Nonprofit Management? 

The primary goal of a nonprofit organization is often to raise funds for a cause or provide service to a group or community. There are many moving parts to such an operation—making nonprofit management skills essential—since the role’s primary function is the oversight of processes, strategies, and events that drive an organization toward its short- and long-term objectives. 

Professionals working as part of a nonprofit management team face several tasks to ensure that the organization is operating effectively and efficiently. These tasks include managing personnel, overseeing the financial budget, and ensuring regulatory compliance for any fundraising events, tactics, and strategies on the horizon. 

Why Are Management and Leadership Skills in Nonprofit Organizations Important for Your Organization? 

A prominent aspect of nonprofit management involves finding and developing the ideal qualities needed for nonprofit managers who understand what it takes to lead your nonprofit organization. Your management team should have the skills and passion to motivate volunteers and staff to work together to achieve unified short- and long-term goals.  

Since many nonprofits use a rotating group of individuals to volunteer or serve as employees, it is especially important for nonprofit management to remain adaptable—understanding how to inspire individuals with outside jobs and other responsibilities. 

One of the top leadership skills in nonprofit organizations is the ability to establish order and organization while maintaining authority and providing upbeat motivation—it is a unique and vital position in the nonprofit space. 

Essential Management Skills for Nonprofit Leaders 

Now that you know how important good management is, we’ll explore what essential skills to look for when choosing candidates for your executive team. 

Financial Management 

Proper financial management is a critically important part of running a successful not-for-profit organization. Ensuring your financials are in order ensures that your nonprofit can sustain operations, fulfill its mission, and remain accountable to all stakeholders, including those at the government level. 

Some tasks involved with financial management include the following: 

• Budgeting, providing a roadmap for resource allocation 
• Monitoring cash flow to make sure your organization can always pay salaries and fulfill the organization’s mission 
• Financial reporting and transparency to ensure accountability and trust among stakeholders and the community 
• Handling cost control by evaluating expenses, negotiating vendor contracts and identifying any opportunities to save costs 
• Developing and coordinating fundraising strategies, cultivating good relationships between donors and seeking grant opportunities 
• Overseeing grant management by finding grant opportunities, tracking requirements, composing and submitting proposals, ensuring compliance with grant stipulations and overseeing use of grant funding 
• Establishing financial reserves to provide your nonprofit with a safety net to guard against unforeseen financial issues 
• Implementing and monitoring strong internal controls to prevent mismanagement of funds and fraud by establishing and instituting clear policies and procedures for handling organizational finances or any data related to your nonprofit’s finances 
• Ensuring legal and regulatory compliance for matters including financial reporting and tax laws 

Strategic Planning 

Strategic planning is one of the top nonprofit management skills, as it steers the organization’s direction. It also helps establish priorities and ensures alignment with the organization’s mission and goals. 

Here are some tasks associated with strategic planning for nonprofits: 

• Regularly reaffirm your nonprofit organization’s goals and mission 
• Identify and understand the beneficiaries, volunteers, staff, donors and partners, along with their needs and expectations 
• Conduct regular SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) evaluations to ensure your organization continues to grow and improve 
• Set clear and measurable goals for the organization and its employees and volunteers, using the SWOT analysis results 
• Develop meaningful strategic initiatives with actionable steps to achieve defined goals 
• Allocate resources, including human, technological and financial, to support strategic initiatives 
• Implement strategic plans, setting timelines and milestones while assigning responsibilities to respective staff and volunteers 

Relationship Building and Communication Skills 

Since nonprofit organizations typically attract individuals who enjoy seeking a higher purpose, relationship building, and strong communication skills are fundamental in not-for-profit management. Your management team must establish and nurture relationships with stakeholders, who consist of volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, partners, and the community. All these individuals and groups contribute to the success of your organization and its mission. 

  Here are a few criteria associated with effective relationship building and communication: 

• Understanding stakeholders, including their goals, needs and concerns 
• Establishing open and transparent communication pathways 
• Providing tailored engagement, recognizing that each stakeholder is unique 
• Engaging in active listening when working with various stakeholders, hearing their feedback, suggestions and questions 
• Ensuring personal engagement with stakeholders, remembering their names, ideas and goals  
• Seeking opportunities to join forces with similar or like-minded organizations to expand your network 

Additional skills useful in relationship building and communication include donor stewardship, ethical engagement and continuous engagement. 

Decision-Making 

Quick and effective decision-making skills are vital for nonprofit management leadership. Such skills allow them to tend to the organization’s resources, resource allocation, strategies and overall success. 

Here are some elements for successful decision-making for your not-for-profit managers: 

• Staying clear on the organization’s mission and values 
• Relying on data to make decisions 
• Involving relevant stakeholders 
• Aligning decisions with the organization’s goals and activities, practically and ethically 

Promoting Professional Growth for Employees 

Just as you find individuals who want professional growth in for-profit businesses, you also find them in the nonprofit sector. Ensure your management team recognizes this need for employees to grow and thrive as they help you meet your organization’s goals.

Here are some things you can do:

• Provide training and workshops. 
• Encourage skill-building among employees and volunteers. 
• Support cross-training between individuals and departments. 
• Mentor and coach talented staff and volunteers. 
• Invite staff and volunteers to professional seminars and conferences. 

The success of any nonprofit organization begins with strong management, and it takes a skilled team to optimize resources and manage investments. Leveraging the right strategies and skill sets helps nonprofits create a network of committed supporters and creates an impact in the local community. With UST HR Workplace, you can find solutions to help give your management team the tools they need to drive your nonprofit forward. We understand the unique challenges of nonprofit organizations and have created our system in response to those needs. Visit UST HR Workplace today and let us show you how we can help you succeed!

Sources 

https://nla1.org/nonprofit-management-skills/ 

https://www.cmich.edu/blog/all-things-higher-ed/top-18-essential-nonprofit-management-skills-and-development-tips 

Running productive meetings is a crucial aspect of ensuring a nonprofit organization’s success—especially when the team is working remotely. Virtual meetings have become the norm due to the rise of remote workforces. However, holding meetings remotely also presents unique challenges that can affect their efficiency. In this blog, we will discuss essential tips that nonprofit leaders can leverage to run productive meetings with a remote workforce.

1. Define the meeting’s goals and agenda: Before hosting a virtual meeting, you need to have specific objectives that you want to achieve during the session. Defining the goal and agenda of the meeting beforehand ensures that everyone is on the same page and can prepare accordingly. Having a clear agenda can help keep the meeting focused, minimize distractions, and improve engagement.

2. Choose the right communication tools: Selecting the right communication tools can significantly improve the productivity of your virtual meetings. Consider using a reliable video conferencing platform that allows everyone to participate and share their ideas. Additionally, choose a platform that enhances collaborative features such as instant messaging, screen sharing, virtual breakout rooms, recording capabilities, and many more.

3. Set clear expectations for participants: Ensure that all meeting participants are aware of their roles, expectations, and responsibilities during the session. This includes specifying what participants should prepare beforehand and where they should share any follow-up information or feedback. Clear expectations foster a sense of accountability and enable you to achieve the set meeting objectives.

4. Foster an inclusive environment: Inclusivity is essential, particularly when working with a remote workforce. Ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate and contribute during the meeting. Encourage open and respectful communication among staff members by creating a relaxed and conducive environment. Additionally, respect your team’s time by starting and ending the meeting promptly.

5. Follow up after the meeting:  After the meeting, be sure to provide a summary of the discussion, conclusions, and any necessary action items. Share the information with all concerned parties and ensure that everyone understands next steps, and clear action plans are in place. Following up after the meeting is essential to ensure that the meeting’s objectives are achieved and that progress towards achieving the set goals is monitored.

Following the tips above can help remote teams stay connected, engaged, and productive during virtual meetings. By using the right communication tools, setting clear expectations, fostering inclusivity, and following up after the meeting, you can effectively run productive meetings with remote teams. As a nonprofit organization, you must use every tool and resource available to ensure the success of your meetings and ultimately achieve your mission.

Question: What are some typical examples of employee discipline? Are there any you recommend?

Answer: Discipline should reflect the severity of the behavior, attempt to correct it, and be applied consistently. You’ll want to consider how you addressed certain behaviors in the past and the precedent you want to set for the future. For instance, if you jump straight to a final warning when a certain employee is an hour late to work, but let another employee come in late regularly without so much as a written warning, you’re setting yourself up for trouble.

We generally recommend progressive discipline. This means you start small and work your way up to termination. Progressive discipline often includes these steps:

• Oral counseling/warning(s)
• Written warning(s)
• Final written warning
• Unpaid suspension—we generally don’t recommend this, as it’s likely to make the employee more disgruntled than they were before, and ultimately be more harmful than helpful, but you may find that it’s appropriate in some circumstances; be sure to keep reporting time pay in mind for non-exempt employees, depending on state law
• Termination

At each step, make your expectations clear, notify the employee of the consequences should they fail to improve (that they’ll be one step closer to termination), and document what actions you took. The warnings you give to the employee should stick to the facts, i.e., what infraction was observed, when it occurred, and what policy or policies was violated. Opinions about the infraction should be left out, as these are easily disputed. For example, “Yesterday, you arrived 20 minutes late in violation of our attendance policy” simply states the facts, whereas “You’re always tardy and can’t be trusted to arrive on time” is likely to get pushback.

This Q&A was provided by Mineral, powering the UST HR Workplace. Have HR questions? Sign your nonprofit up for a FREE 60-day trial here. As a UST member, simply log into your Mineral portal to access live HR certified consultants, 300+ on-demand training courses, an extensive compliance library, and more.

A strategic plan provides a clear process of determining, documenting, and establishing the direction of a nonprofit organization.

Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations like yours is crucial, allowing you to assess where your nonprofit is at now and where you want it to go. It allows your nonprofit decision-makers to see the big picture and make the desired impact on your community.

Let’s find out more about this important process and what it can do for your nonprofit.

What Is a Strategic Plan for Nonprofits?

A strategic plan for nonprofits is a full process that allows leadership to identify key elements on a well-defined map that helps organizations define their goals for their organization and their community. It asks your nonprofit leaders to create or define goals and objectives and empowers them to make the necessary decisions to achieve them.

The Top 5 Steps for Implementing a Strategic Plan

Like all nonprofit leadership, your goal is to serve your community. It is more challenging to do so without a solid, strategic plan to guide you and your devoted team. There are some steps you can take to develop and implement a strategic plan that helps everyone in your organization stay on track to successfully support your mission.

Let’s look at the following five steps that you can use to implement a strategic plan.

1. Complete a SWOT analysis and set goals

The first step in developing and implementing a strategic plan is setting clear goals and defining the variables that help you achieve them. A SWOT is a basic technique used by all types of businesses, including nonprofit organizations, to identify processes in an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, risks and threats to your organization. Many nonprofits rely on it to help with personnel evaluations and marketing campaign planning, in addition to standard organization-wide strategic planning.

2. Set SMART objectives

SMART objectives can be powerful tools in helping support your mission, providing landmarks to help you achieve your larger goals.

Here is what SMART objectives are and what they allow you to do:

• Specific — Target a specific area for analysis and improvement
• Measurable — Quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress
• Assignable — Specify who will do it and delegate
• Realistic — State what results can realistically be achieved given available resources
• Time-based — Specify the timeline for achieving results

For example, SMART goals are essential in helping nonprofits manage fundraising events and seasons, letting everyone know where your nonprofit is in terms of financial goals.

3. Establish specific tactics to support each objective

The tactics you and your team use provide help to achieve the smaller, more specific tasks that your team members achieve your nonprofit’s overarching goals, focusing on the mission, budget and SMART initiatives.

4. Reevaluate information

Strategic planning isn’t necessarily static — factors will change over time. It’s important to adjust your goals and objectives as you move through the process.

5. Keep the plan dynamic to scale with your organization

As mentioned above, circumstances change. That makes it important to keep your plan dynamic and scalable. For example, you might achieve some goals sooner than others, allowing you to redirect to hit new benchmarks on an adjusted timeline.

6. UST is here to offer support along the way.

We offer a variety of resources and tools to help your nonprofit organization on it’s journey to building a strategic plan that supports your ever-growing and evolving leadership team.

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SOURCES

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0612/the-importance-of-strategic-planning.aspx

https://nonprofithub.org/why-most-swot-analyses-stink-2/

Nonprofit Strategic Planning: Ultimate Guide + 7 Examples