HR Workforce Solutions
By Nonprofits, For Nonprofits
In the latest rendition of UST Live, we were joined by guest moderator, Jenny Berg of the Leadership Council for Nonprofits, where we welcomed thought leaders from across the U.S. with expertise in DEI best practices. In this session, the panel discussed innovative strategies for identifying (and prioritizing) board diversity and inclusion practices—that in turn can help advance your mission in such a way that is both equitable and more appealing to donors, potential job candidates and the communities you serve.
Watch now to discover:
Upcoming UST Live Webinars: This webinar series was designed to equip nonprofits with the strategies and resources they need to survive (and thrive) in a constantly evolving environment. Be on the lookout for our next UST Live sessions—scheduled for June, September, and December—where we’ll discuss strategies surrounding nonprofit sustainability, HR and compliance and leadership development.
While the nonprofit sector is dedicated to serving those in need, without encompassing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into their governance and operations, they risk becoming irrelevant. It has been proven that organizations with more diverse workforces perform better financially. Before strategizing a DEI plan, nonprofits must first understand where their organization is and where it wants to go. You can then track your nonprofit’s proficiency in diversity using both quantitative and qualitative metrics, diagnose risks and find opportunities for improvement. Nonprofits will also need to examine internal biases and adopt practices that promote DEI in their work and employment practices as well as on their boards, and in their communications.
Achieving diversity and inclusiveness in your workplace is a process of creating change through education, collaboration, and vigilance. When we apply equity and inclusion to all aspects of organizational structure, we take action towards ensuring that historically excluded groups are recognized, included, and heard. A diverse workplace encourages people to be more vocal, creative, and involved. Commitment to DEI can be demonstrated through governance policies, leadership, and recruitment.
Often when organizations begin diversity work, it can feel daunting trying to figure out where to start. While the process will be different for every organization, below are some things to consider when starting diversity work in your nonprofit.
When we consider our own diversity, check our assumptions, ask questions, and apply our insights to our work, we can create change. Embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion as organizational values is a great way to intentionally make space for positive outcomes and will ultimately help nonprofits better serve their communities and attract a more diverse staff.
With the rise of smartphones, social media and other digital channels, nonprofits now have more tools available to them for engaging donors than ever before. The issue that comes with having so many ways to donate, is that it can be difficult to pinpoint which engagement techniques are most effective for engaging donors. Most nonprofits know that the main form of donor engagement is making a donation, however, there are quite a few ways to engage with those individuals any time they support or directly interact with the organization. Any opportunity to interact with a donor is a chance to strengthen your relationship with them, which could naturally result in more donations.
To show appreciation for your donors, it’s crucial to develop nonprofit donor engagement strategies that strengthen the relationship between you and your supporters. If you’re looking for best practices to boost your donor engagement, here are four key techniques that can help your nonprofit raise more money and improve your donor retention rate:
1) Create Personal and Genuine Messaging: Engaging your donors requires a personal and authentic approach. Take the time to learn about your donor’s interests as individuals and be transparent when you have interactions with them. Establishing trust with your donors will often result in their willingness to support your mission and reaching your donors on a more personal level, can allow for more opportunities to create personalized engagement strategies down the line.
2) Utilize the Benefits of Software: It’s a challenging task to keep up with hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of donors. Successful communication with your donors requires individualized approaches and the information necessary to make it possible to make those individualized approaches come to life. This is where having a donor database can be a great resource—a nonprofit CRM—a tool built to help nonprofits track all aspects of their donor relationships.
3) Offer and Implement a Membership Program: A membership involves the donor giving fees or dues to a nonprofit in exchange for member status and the rights, perks or benefits that are included in the membership. The frequency and type of engagement opportunities you offer members will depend on your organization, but the possibilities can be endless. For example: host member only events, special volunteer opportunities or a member ONLY newsletter.
4) Create a Text Communication Option: Seeing as texting is such a prevalent communication method, organizations need to take advantage of this huge engagement opportunity. There are many services that enable nonprofits to establish a text marketing list, allowing your organization the ability to send a mass text message to all donors who subscribed to this list.
Looking for opportunities to engage with your donors authentically and honestly will go a long way in ensuring donors donate time and time again. Take the time to deeply understand why the donor supports you and deliver on their expectations. Start seeing a donation as a part of a relationship, not a one-off business transaction. This way you begin to deepen relationships with people that support what you do, rather than just treating them as just donors. Show gratitude to your donors, invite them to engage in other ways than donating, share with them why they matter, and get to know them on a more personal level.
As states begin to loosen their social distancing restrictions, nonprofit employers are beginning to strategize a return-to-work plan while staying compliant with state, local and federal guidelines. To equip nonprofit leaders with the resources they need to safely re-enter the workplace, we compiled the Workforce Re-Entry Toolkit .
While the decision to reopen will vary from employer to employer, having a thoughtful strategy in place will help minimize employee concern and solidify any new policies well in advance of re-entry. This free toolkit includes essential checklists, letter templates, sample policies and response plans:
Would you like access to more HR-specific articles, templates and checklists? Sign up for a free 60-day Trial of UST HR Workplace today! You’ll also gain access to live, certified HR consultants, 300+ on-demand training courses, and extensive compliance library and more.
Nonprofits across the country were forced to pause, pivot and make remarkable changes to their in-person events last year due to the unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19. As organizations continue thinking about their in-person vs. virtual strategies, the hybrid future of events is taking form—changing the events landscape for years to come.
Virtual events offer the best combination of brand exposure and the digital engagement people crave. Whether your event is large or small, one day or one week, we’ve compiled some of the top Virtual Event Best Practice Tips to help you navigate the many considerations involved in planning (and executing) a successful virtual event.
Want access to more nonprofit-specific tips, toolkits and webinars? Sign up for our nonprofit eNewsletter today!
People-related risks within an organization can range from bad hires and misconduct to harassment and lack of diversity in the workplace. To help nonprofit employers strengthen their employee risk management practices—and mitigate the risks that can ultimately affect your bottom line—we created the 2021 People Risk Management Toolkit.
This free toolkit includes a performance improvement plan, a risk audit questionnaire, risk management best practice tips and more:
Want access to more HR-specific articles, templates and checklists? Sign up for a FREE 60-Day Trial of UST HR Workplace today! You’ll also gain access to live HR certified consultants, 300+ on-demand training courses and an extensive compliance library.
When looking at the current work environment, we can see that it requires flexibility, being open to new skills and navigating new ways of working. And depending on where your nonprofit organization is in the digital transformation, there may be a lot to do in preparing your employees for the future of work. More and more organizations have been forced to transition from the manual, hands-on legacy systems to using the cloud—moving employees toward a data-driven culture, embracing machine learning and a number of other technologies.
Here are five tips to help guide your nonprofit organization towards a greater digital transformation in an ever-evolving work and business environment:
1) Recruit for the future: At least a portion of your current workforce will have moved on to other employment in the next 5 to 10 years, so think about succession planning now. Knowing the realities of modern business—it pays to think about how you’ll fill certain positions moving forward—you’ll likely want to focus on recruiting employees who have the skill sets that you need for future roles.
2) Offer upskill, re-skilling and transfer skill opportunities: When employees demonstrate strong aptitude and interest in certain technology, it would be smart to encourage and develop that skill set. Along with offering training for all employees, it’s important to consider the employees that have been loyal to your company may need some re-skilling. Also, don’t forget that employees who will be retiring can offer valuable skills to pass on the next generation. While we live in a world where technology is increasingly required for every aspect of work, soft skills like communication, time management and professionalism will always be needed in the workforce.
3) Become more flexible: Technology isn’t just there to draw you closer to your customer, although that’s a big part of why we’ve embraced it. Being open to other ways that technology can allow for a more flexible work environment, including a new concept of the “workplace” itself, can be very beneficial for your workforce. Let your employees know that these benefits are coming due to the latest technology your organization is adopting.
4) Set guidelines: As we develop larger online footprints, creating content and being active on social channels, it’s important to consider and define where your company stands on personal expression and social media. The line between your employee’s online activity and physical world is continuing to blur. A comment left on Twitter could easily get back to your employer and it may not be received well or taken lightly, based on the context. Take time to think about how you encourage personal expression in the digital world and how it could potentially impact your organization’s brand.
5) Prepare a path for employees to follow: Guide your employees, be a leader. Employees may already have reservations or concerns about how new technology could impact their place in the organization. Your employees need your empathy and support—talk to them about changes to come and listen to their concerns.
While it’s impossible to know every aspect of what the future of work will look like at your organization, the above tips can be helpful in offering guidance on how to prepare your employees for staying skilled and to maintain a productive work environment. Business leaders can take the time to plan for the future in which training and learning will be the focus however, no one knows exactly what the future of the workforce will hold.
Question: An employee has reported that another employee made a racially insensitive comment in the break room in front of several people. What course of action should we take?
Answer:It is your duty as an employer to immediately stop any behavior that could constitute unlawful harassment, bullying, or workplace violence. Begin by investigating the incident and collect statements where applicable. Acting in good faith, and documenting these efforts, may provide the company with protection against complaints from involved employees. Document all conversations that are part of the investigation. If an investigation finds that comments were made that are against company policy, you should discipline that employee in a manner consistent with how you have disciplined other employees for infractions of a similar severity. Often, a written warning is appropriate in a circumstance such as this.
Q&A provided by ThinkHR, powering the UST HR Workplace for nonprofit HR teams. Have HR questions? Sign your nonprofit up for a free 60-day trial here.
Welcome to the inaugural issue of UST’s Quarterly Nonprofit Digest, a bite-sized overview of the employer strategies, sector statistics, and resources that UST shared throughout the most recent months.
This quick 4-step reference guide—highlighting key findings from Q1—will provide you with the innovative employee engagement strategies you (and your staff) need to succeed. In this rendition of the quarterly digest, discover strategies for:
You’ll also gain access to helpful checklists, survey templates and best practice tips for developing both new and existing employees.
Sign up for UST’s eNewsletter to get nonprofit-exclusive content, webinar invitations, and sector insights delivered straight to your inbox.
According to the 2021 Benchmarks Report, the average nonprofit donor contributed an average of $167 in 2020—this per-donor metric was slightly lower than 2019. The increase that did occur was largely driven by more people giving rather than people giving more. While the global pandemic forced nonprofits to take their in-person events such as, conferences and fundraisers online overnight and propelled most into digital transformation at a pace we thought would take years, not all was lost—there were many positive outcomes.
A year later, it’s safe to say that virtual events and online giving are here to stay. Nonprofit professionals have embraced online fundraising since 1999 when the first “Donate Now” button was released by a project of the Tides Foundation—shaping best practices with 20+ year of innovation and experimentation. It’s more important than ever to understand your donors; what they care about, why they give, their communication preferences, and which social media channels they prefer. Equally important is that you use sustainable fundraising practices that drive predictable fundraising growth.
Below are some key strategies and best practice tips to help your nonprofit build its digital fundraising with low effort and high return.
The most important thing you can learn about online fundraising is that it should be sustainable and predictable. Outside of COVID-19, online fundraising has been driven by the release of new technology and social networking websites over the years, so ask yourself if you have the right tools in place to create a fundraising strategy that is both successful and sustainable.
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This Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use for our site is subject to change.
UST maintains a secure site. This means that information we obtain from you in the process of enrolling is protected and cannot be viewed by others. Information about your agency is provided to our various service providers once you enroll in UST for the purpose of providing you with the best possible service. Your information will never be sold or rented to other entities that are not affiliated with UST. Agencies that are actively enrolled in UST are listed for review by other agencies, UST’s sponsors and potential participants, but no information specific to your agency can be reviewed by anyone not affiliated with UST and not otherwise engaged in providing services to you except as required by law or valid legal process.
Your use of this site and the provision of basic information constitute your consent for UST to use the information supplied.
UST may collect generic information about overall website traffic, and use other analytical information and tools to help us improve our website and provide the best possible information and service. As you browse UST’s website, cookies may also be placed on your computer so that we can better understand what information our visitors are most interested in, and to help direct you to other relevant information. These cookies do not collect personal information such as your name, email, postal address or phone number. To opt out of some of these cookies, click here. If you are a Twitter user, and prefer not to have Twitter ad content tailored to you, learn more here.
Further, our website may contain links to other sites. Anytime you connect to another website, their respective privacy policy will apply and UST is not responsible for the privacy practices of others.
This Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use for our site is subject to change.
