Nonprofit AF

The Sustainability Question, Why it is So Annoying

Posted on September 3, 2013March 23, 2015 by Vu

This morning, I woke up early and realized I was face-to-face with my son, Viet, who has been sleeping in the same bed with his mom and me. Looking at our sweet little baby, who was still sleeping peacefully, one tiny hand under his soft and rosy cheek, I was filled with warm fatherly thoughts. Namely: “When is this kid going to get a job and help pay for his keep?” I was tempted to wake him up and say, “You do realize that childcare for you each month is literally more than our mortgage, right? You better enjoy this while you can, little dude, because when you turn 18, you’re on your own.”

And that makes me think about the issue of sustainability of nonprofit programs. In every grant application, there is the “Sustainability Question,” which is basically, “How will you sustain this program or project when funding from the So-and-So Foundation runs out?” This seems absolutely reasonable at first glance, but honestly, it’s one of the most annoying questions we face. Most of us nonprofit professionals absolutely hate this question, and each time we see it, we have to leave our desk, go on a walk, maybe do some yoga or watch “The Daily Show,” then come back to our desk, take a deep breath, and write something like:

“We will continue to develop our staff and board’s ability to fundraise and diversify our revenues, including building relationship with other funders, as well as cultivating support from corporate sponsors and individual donors. Our special events continue to increase in revenues, and the board is leading the effort to explore earned income through program fees and the door-to-door sales of inspiring macaroni artwork made by the children in our extended-learning program.”

All of that is basically a euphemism for “We will leave you alone and bother other people.”

“Just once,” said my ED friend, Director Maureen, “here’s what I’d like to put in response to that question:”

Program staff and the board will triple the amount of time they spend praying for money
Program participants will be asked to pray for money to provide for their services as well
10% of general operating funds will be utilized to purchase Power Ball lottery tickets
Fund development staff will regularly consult a reputable psychic to help track which direction foundations are trending to support

Why is this question so aggravating? Why does every time I answer it, I feel like crap? I sent out an email to my ED friends in the field, asking for their thoughts, and the responses were passionate and insightful. While the issue is complex and requires a lot more time to explore, I’ll try my best to summarize my colleagues’ thoughts. Overall, the Sustainability Question is annoying and frustrating because:

Sustainability is in large part determined by funders, not nonprofits. As much as we love individual donors, many of us still rely on grants, and grants are usually small and one-year in duration. We get a bunch of one-year grants that are Frankensteined together to support programs, each one with their own set of demands and restrictions, (which I explored here in “Nonprofit Funding: Ordering a Cake and Restricting it Too.”). As one ED puts it, “Why is fidelity to the mission so highly valued and expected of nonprofit leaders and staff but funders expect to ‘sleep around?‘ One year and you’re out. [They] don’t even come back and ask.” This lumbering, unwieldy, tenuous system is the antithesis of sustainability, so to ask how we nonprofits will maintain and grow our programs within it is kind of like setting a fire and asking how we will be putting it out.

Sustainability depends on the whole organization being strong, yet funders do not like providing general operating funds. Really great programs do not magically appear out of thin air. It takes real people, people who need, like, an office to work at and healthcare for their stress and carpal tunnel and stuff. These things are critical, and yet we have to constantly fight for them. “We will cultivate relationships with individual donors and corporate sponsors, etc.” sounds great, but that requires development staff, which is fundraising, and no one likes to fund “fundraising” and “admin” expenses, because those things are so frivolous and useless.

The nonprofit model is unique in that success at carrying out our missions leads to increasing costs, not revenues. The more successful programs are, the more clients they will serve, the more staff and other expenses will increase, without a proportionate increase in support. An example is VFA’s Saturday English School (SES) program, which provides English and Math support to recent-arrival immigrant and refugee students every Saturday for three hours. Five years ago, we had 30 students show up each session. Because of how awesome the program is, we now have over 150 students each session. This is a five-fold increase in number of students served. The expenses tripled, since more students means more snacks, more teaching staff, more curriculum material, etc. But funders are not going to triple the amount they provide; if we’re lucky, they’ll renew at the same level, and we’ll have to go search for other, newer funders to provide support. This is the Program Growth Paradox, where the more a program is successful and expands, the less sustainable it is.

Other reasons cited by my ED colleagues include “we know very, very well that not every program that literally changes people’s lives for the better can become self-sustaining” (but should be funded anyway, see “Nonprofit’s Ultimate Outcome: Bringing Unicorns Back to Our World“), “I have no clue where my future funds will come from so everything I say sounds like BS” and “after five or more friggin pages of explaining just HOW MUCH you need the bucks, you are now invited to totally reverse yourself” and “I will think about this and get back to you after I have several drinks to calm down.”

The most serious challenge with the Sustainability Question, however, is that it symptomatic of a divisive and patronizing system that perpetuates the unhealthy dichotomy of nonprofits as supplicants continually begging for spare change, and funders as benefactors. “How will YOU sustain this program? How will YOU sustain it after OUR funding that WE (might) give YOU runs out?” We now feel like the underemployed college-grad living in our parents’ basement, freeloading off of their good will, until they call us in for a serious talk about our future and demand to know what our plans are to find a job and inform us that it’s for our own good that in six months they will kick us out. We feel like Oliver Twist, who has to beg for another bowl of gruel from the…uh…that one guy, who serves…gruel…

OK, I haven’t read Oliver Twist.

The Sustainability Question is aggravating because the responsibility is overtly placed on nonprofits’ shoulders to fix problems in the world that we didn’t cause in the first place. Once the question is asked, “It immediately becomes somebody else’s problem,” writes one of my ED friends. It feels like funders are at the end of their ropes trying to “help” us nonprofits and if we fail to sustain our work, it is all our fault. This is not working for our field.

Every once in a while I meet a program officer who used to be a nonprofit staff. “Ah,” they sometimes reminisce, “I miss being on that side of the table.” And I would say, “Tell me what it’s like on your side of the table?” And we would talk, and I would learn that being on the other side of the table has its challenges, and that it’s not all completely awesome, with ergonomic chairs and dental AND vision insurance and with each person getting access to the company unicorn to ride to important meetings.

But that makes me think, Why the heck are we on opposite sides of the table in the first place? Aren’t we all trying to solve the same problems? Why is the relationship between funders and nonprofits so adversarial? It is ineffective. We should be on the same team, where the quarterback supports the…uh, linebacker so that he can make a, um, rim shot at the…fourth inning…

All right, I don’t know anything about sports. Point is, nonprofits and funders must be equal partners, with different but symbiotic roles, and sustainability of the work must be shouldered by both parties. We nonprofits think all the time about sustainability, even without being prompted, and we will continue to build strong programs and diversify our funding. Funders, as equal partners, should provide multi-year funds, general operating funds, capacity building assistance, and help connect us to other funders and partners. And come visit the programs once a while! We must work together to figure out how to sustain and advance the work. We have to, because the needs of and challenges facing our communities are only going to increase.

***

More on funder-fundee relationships: The Wall of Philanthropy, Wildlings, and White Walkers

7 self-care tips for nonprofit professionals

Posted on August 26, 2013January 7, 2018 by Vu

Today, I was at the grocery store trying to decide whether it was worth it to buy twelve organic blueberries for five dollars, when I noticed chanterelle mushrooms. Chanterelle mushrooms! Already?! There is nothing in the world that I love more than chanterelle mushrooms, and yes, that includes my wife and new baby. With their bright orange color, sweet apricot aroma, and meaty texture, eating chanterelles is like being punched in the mouth by happiness. I eagerly anticipate them every fall, one of the few consolations for the melancholy end of summer. Delirious, I bought half a pound for seven dollars and came home, inspired to make a risotto.

Risotto can be a difficult dish to make. It involves a lot of stirring, followed by more stirring, then more stirring, and then you run to the bathroom for two minutes and come back and your risotto is burned and you’re all bitter…as bitter as your risotto.

While cooking, I thought, Dude, risotto is a delicious culinary metaphor for our work! Specifically, our pace of work. We are constantly adding broth and stirring! We talk about self-care all the time, but most of us suck at it. My staff, for example, work ridiculous hours, often late into the evening and on weekends. Last week I caught one of them sneaking into the office. He was supposed to be on vacation, and I specifically forbid him from coming to the office. “Go home,” I yelled, looking around to find some stones to throw at him, “get out of here! You’re not wanted!”

We all suck at self-care, and we burn out, and that is not good for us, our clients, our families, our organizations, or the field. Which is why, while making the risotto, I thought up these tips so we can all take better care of ourselves:

Assess what is on your plate and taking up all your time, and also what is draining your energy. Are you attending like way too many useless meetings? Are you on too many committees that meet in the evenings? Do you have annoying coworkers that you hang out with but you don’t really want to hang out with them too much, mainly because it’s fantasy football season and that’s all they can talk about? Listing these things out will be helpful, because then you can prioritize.

Make a not-to-do list: Every once a while, I make a to-do list, which I get through half-way, then other stuff get in the way, and I abandon it. Then I started making not-to-do lists, and that was much easier. You should try it. It can be a list of stuff you are currently doing that you might want to consider no longer doing, for example, do you really need to have a staff meeting every week or is biweekly ok? It can also be a list of stuff that you are currently not doing, but it’ll make you feel better to write them down and check them off. For example, on my list I have “Not sucking up to this one corporate sponsor; not attending this one management training; not attending this fundraising breakfast held by a partner organization.” Check, check, and check. I feel more productive already.

Determine what brings you energy. Make a list of stuff that makes you happy or that you enjoy. Hiking? Chocolate? Pictures of bunnies? Taking naps? Whittling small animals out of soap? Contra dancing? Self-care is about what recharges your battery. This list varies from person to person, and that’s OK. Sometimes self-care tips prescribe things that you should do, like exercise for 30 minutes each day. If those are helpful, great, but if not, they might make you feel bad because you can’t or won’t do those things. For some people, early morning yoga before downing a kale-flavored smoothie energizes them, and that’s great for them. For me, I’d rather juggle Ziploc bags full of live scorpions than do “yoga,” or drink “green smoothies,” or “shower at least once a week.” Find what works for you.

Do the crap that makes you happy: Every day, take time, even ten minutes, to do something on the list you made of things you enjoy. If you enjoy them, it shouldn’t be a chore for you to do them. Still, it may be hard at first, because habits can be difficult to develop, especially the good ones. At work, find stuff you can do while working. For example, taking a break to look at pictures of cute animals (which actually is proven to increase productivity); listening to your favorite 90’s hip-hop songs while writing that grant; or making sock puppets during meetings.

Recruit your coworkers: It’s often more fun to do things with other people. Chances are, everyone in your office is as stressed as you are. At the next staff meeting, share and brainstorm ideas for self-care. Select a couple of them to implement. Don’t be overly ambitious, or you’ll feel like crap if you are not successful. Explore a new restaurant together for lunch once a month. Go on a walk as a team once a week. Have an office talent show to display your awesome sock puppets. Of course, if your coworkers actually drain your energy, then maybe just avoid them until fantasy football season is over.

Learn to say no: Self-care is also a lot about self-protection, specifically from excessive demands. I find that the only reward for competency is more work. The more competent you are, the more people will ask you do to stuff. But, luckily most people usually understand when you say, “I’d love to help, but I can’t take on any more responsibilities at this time.” You can also preemptively buffer yourself from being approached in the first place by feigning incompetence, which I have been successfully doing for years.

Stop feeling bad about self-care: It’s amazing how many people stress out about self-care—“Eeek, I’m not doing enough self-care!” or “Eeek, I’m not doing self-care right!”—which I find to be very ironic. Dude, self-care is about feeling good, so if thinking about how to make yourself feel good is making yourself feel bad, then knock it off for now, maybe come back to it later. Also, don’t let others make you feel bad about what brings you energy. I happen to watch probably way too much TV. At the end of each work day, I’m exhausted from hours of thinking and making decisions. What brings me energy is NOT having to think or plan or decide or be creative, and TV is awesome for that.

Hell, if work brings you energy and hasn’t been negatively impacting other areas of your life, like your romantic relationship, then don’t feel bad about working too much either. I love my work, and for a long while it energized me with the feeling that the efforts may in some ways contribute to making the world better. The hours flew by. Work WAS my self-care. Now I have a baby, and priorities changed, and a lot of my energy comes from being a good father. But still, this work, with all its craziness and frustrations, is fun and important, and a huge part of taking care of myself is doing a good job at my work, including working evenings and weekends on occasion.

I hope those tips are helpful. Our work never ends. There is always more stuff to do, more grants to write, more donors to cultivate, more research to study, more management concepts to learn, more relationships to build, more program elements to improve, more meetings to attend. And since this work is so critical, with real people being affected, finding down-time can be challenging, sometimes even guilt-inducing. If we stop stirring, we feel like the risotto may burn. But if we don’t stop stirring to take care of ourselves, we will all burn out. And then who the hell is going to make the delicious wild mushroom risotto of equity and justice for our community?

What do you do for self-care? Please add your tips in the comment section. See you later. I’m going to go enjoy my slightly-burned chanterelle risotto while watching “Under the Dome,” an enjoyably awful TV show.

PS: @AllAmericaCity on Twitter pointed out something obvious that I missed: Laughter. Duh! This was one of the reasons why this blog was started in the first place. We must be able to laugh at ourselves, and we should find other things that make us laugh. Poorly-organized panels? That’s funny. Applying to a grant and being called in thinking you are advancing to the next stage only to get kicked in the groin, that’s hilarious!

Thinking of Bill Henningsgaard and his family

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Vu

It has been hard to write anything humorous this week after learning about the plane crash in Connecticut that took the lives of Bill Henningsgaard, his son Max, and the two kids who were in the house. I had known Bill only briefly, but those few moments were enough to see what an amazing person he was, and what a caring and loving family surrounded him.

I knew Bill through his wife, Susan, who drops by once a while to the ED Happy Hours I coordinate, a time once a month for us EDs to get together and drink and complain about stuff. I was on a panel about education that Susan organized, and Bill was in the audience. He came up to me afterward and thanked me for the stuff I said about social justice and equity in the education system.

“Vu, I heard from Susan about EDHH,” he said, “can you add me to the mailing list?”

“Sure, Director Bill,” I said, informing him of the new trend I was starting on how we EDs should be addressed, “we should also get coffee sometime. I’d love to learn more about your work with Eastside Pathways.”

“Absolutely,” he said, “send me an email.”

Life got in the way, mainly my impending fatherhood, and I never sent him an email to get coffee. Bill received the monthly invitations to ED Happy Hour, though, and he would send back apologies for not being able to make them. “As a committed Hobbit head,” he wrote to me in an email, “I’m taking my family to the first-day showing,” which conflicted with the EDHH that month.

“Director Vu,” he wrote me months later when I invited him to my organization’s annual fundraising dinner, “Can’t join you on this, as it’s my (and Susan’s) son’s 17^th birthday. As almost empty-nesters, we have to make the most of the few remaining chances for birthday cake and candles (as we don’t tend to go in for that sort of thing for ourselves). Sorry I can’t join you.”

Once, though, he and Susan showed up for an ED Happy Hour, bringing beer and guacamole. We had a great time, the seven or eight EDs who were there. Somehow the conversation turned to PeaceTrees Vietnam’s work detonating unexploded landmines, and Bill had this brilliant idea of using a rock band that would detonate the mines using really loud music. Later, I mentioned I was anxious about the baby, and Susan and Bill tried to cheer me up, imparting advice as veteran parents. They left early for a family event, and I thought of how nice and down-to-earth Bill was, how great it was that Bill and Susan prioritized family so highly, and how I really should follow up with him to get coffee. Anyone who admits to being a “Hobbit head” is cool to me, I thought.

My son was born, and everything was crazy, and I still never followed up with Bill.

Today, I was holding my 4-month-old son, Viet, and I thought of the unimaginable depths of grief and despair that the families must be going through, especially the two mothers, my friend Susan and the mother of Sade Brantley and Madisyn Mitchell, who have watched their kids grow up, sung them to sleep, seen their first smile, heard their first words. A parent’s heart breaks with every scratch, every fever. I know this now. To lose anyone, but especially your child, so suddenly, with no time for goodbyes, it is a pain that most of us can only imagine and hope to never have to endure.

Though I barely knew Bill, I knew he was a brilliant and compassionate person who has given much to the community, who will continue to inspire even though he’s gone. I never met Max, and I can only read about the other two kids, Sade and Madisyn, who were killed in this tragedy, but I know they had families and a community that loved them and whose hearts ache for them. Today, holding my little son, who is already growing up so fast, I was reminded of Bill’s words. “We have to make the most of the few remaining chances for birthday cake and candles,” he wrote, words that we should all live by, since we rarely know what joys and what profound sorrows life will bring us.

—

A memorial service for Bill and Max Henningsgaard will be held on Friday, August 16th at 1:00 PM. The service will be held at First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue at 1717 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, WA 98004

Community Engagement 101: Why Most Summits Suck

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Vu

Hi everyone. I just came back from Port Orchard for a friend’s wedding. A day-trip with 3-month-old infant is grueling. It was like writing a grant. A cute, drooly, moody grant who spit up all over my suit. I’m exhausted. That is to say, I don’t know how this post is going to turn out. This may not be my finest post, but I am committed to getting a new post published every Monday. Like I’ve been telling the baby, “Consistent adequacy is always better than inconsistent excellence.” And also: “Please don’t throw up on Daddy.”

***

A few months ago, I received a request from a staff at the City of Seattle’s Department of Critical Services (DCS)*. “Vu,” said the staff, “can you gather a whole bunch of Vietnamese people so that the Director of the Department of Critical Services can come and listen to their concerns? We’ve already pulled together mini-summits with three other ethnic groups: Spanish, Somalis, and Canadians.” (Kidding about the Canadians).

Sigh. Despite my best efforts, this seems to happen a lot in Seattle: “Let’s get a bunch of ethnic people together and listen to them. I bet they’re just standing around; they’ll love to come to a meeting and be listened to, especially if we have hummus and baby carrots.” It is very well-intentioned, and usually ineffective in the long-run. Sometimes it is just insulting, especially when the hummus is all chunky and grainy and not smooth, like high-quality hummus should be.

Summits, conferences, and other gatherings, when used right, can be powerful tools for community engagement. Kind of like a blender. You get a blender and make some awesome margaritas, and people are like “this is the best party ever.” (This may be the worst analogy ever). These gatherings can connect people around a common cause, equip them with skills and resources, and energize everyone to take action. They also look cool: “Ooh, look, 500 people attended! Snap a picture for our annual report! (Make sure you capture the diversity).”

But lately summits have become the default shortcut for everything:

We need to demonstrate to funders that we are doing stuff. Let’s have a summit!
We need to kick-off our collective impact initiative. Let’s have a summit!
Our strategic plan needs input from communities of color. Let’s have a bunch of mini summits!
We need a cool picture for our new brochures. Let’s have a summit!
We need to spread awareness of a critical issue. Let’s have a giant summit and get a national speaker to keynote!

I and a bunch of other people in the field are sick of summit-like meetings, especially as tools for engaging communities of color. It’s like taking a blender and trying to make an entire meal with it, blending the salad, blending the entrees, blending the dessert (I’m not giving up on this blender analogy).

Here’s why most summits suck as a tool for engagement:

They give a false sense of stuff actually getting done. Sweet, we placed sticky notes and stickers on easel papers and drew visions of an ideal community. Yay! We did stuff! (Hey, we got people to vote using sticky dots on easel paper and write their ideas on sticky notes! Yay! We did stuff!)
They give a false sense of hope and then usually lead to nothing, especially the community input gathering sessions. Time and time again, we ethnic nonprofit staff rally our communities to various listening sessions. Time and time again, little if any of our community members’ suggestions are ever implemented.
There is usually very little follow-through with relationship building. Summits are enticing because you can kill 50 to 500 or more birds with one stone. After that, though, 90% of the generated energy tapers off because there are usually no funds allocated for staff with the language and cultural skills to continue to develop the relationships.
Funds to organize summits are inequitably distributed: I’ve seen so many summits that pay consultants and event coordinators, and allocate nothing to ethnic organizations to do outreach work. So what happens? The paid consultants and/or event coordinators start calling us up to ask us to do outreach for free. It’s very annoying. We got stuff to do, like, you know, running programs and stuff.
The worst part of many summits, though, is that they supplant actual effective community engagement practices. They make people think “Yay, we engaged the communities of color, since they came to our gathering!” Then they might not bother with the one-on-one meetings. One-on-one relationships are the basic building blocks of community organizing and engagement. Absolutely nothing can replace it, and it is totally time-consuming.

Anyway, I told the staff at the Department of Critical Services bluntly that I didn’t have time to rally a bunch of VFA clients for his boss to listen to, and that I didn’t think these types of meetings would be effective anyway, consider how annoyed our community members are with the lack of follow-through from previous gatherings. What would be effective, he asked. Well:

Meet with community leaders one-on-one, on their own turf. Go yourself, don’t send your assistant. It’s a respectful thing to do, and the relationship building will pay dividends. Stop it with this “I’ll come down from the mountain once a while so that the people may rejoice in my presence” business. That’s not what you mean, but that’s what it feels like when the only time the community sees you is when you’re pushing some project.
When you meet with people, ask them to refer you to other people, and meet with those people one-on-one. It’s time-consuming, meeting with individuals, getting coffee, listening to them tell their life stories, finding out about their hopes and dreams and their worries about their kids, etc., but you cannot engage anyone until they feel like you know and understand them and vice-versa.
Be where people are. There are tons of places people are already gathered: Senior programs, churches, temples, youth groups, etc. Go down there, meet the coordinators, go multiple times, build the relationships. Attend organizations’ events.
Budget for outreach staff who can do on-the-ground relationship building year-long, and not just during summit time, along with funding for translations, interpretations, childcare, food, and transportation for community members when you have events.
Budget for funding for ethnic nonprofits to collaborate with you to do your work. If you value the outreach work these CBOs do, build it into the budget.
Do your research to ensure you’re not repeating something that another organization has done and published a report on. It’s frustrating to have to answer the same questions over and over again.
If you are going to have a summit, do all the above, and also commit your team ahead of time to actually accept and follow-through on whatever action steps are decided at the summit, if that’s the will of the community, even if you may not like them. So often the only things that get implemented are whatever aligns with the summit organizers’ preconceived agenda. Well, that’s just stupid and tokenizing and a waste of people’s time. If you’re going to get community members’ input, trust and act on their recommendations.
Funders: Fund on-going, on-the-ground relationship-building work, and fund communities-of-color-led nonprofits to do it.

Gatherings are enticing, since you can reach more people in a shorter amount of time. When it works, it can be awesome, like a Vitamix blender, which can make delicious hummus and can puree a digital camera. Lately, it’s been sucking, a lazy and superficial way of engaging communities of color. So many of the community members I interact with are so skeptical of any more “coffee chat with so-and-so important person” or “summit to discuss our concerns about the education system” that they’d just laugh in my face if I ask them to come to one more thing. I don’t want them to laugh in my face. I get plenty of that from my family for being in this line of work.

(*This is a pseudonym. There is no Department of Critical Services at the City of Seattle)

For more on community engagement, check out “Being a Nonprofit with Balls” parts 1, 2, and 3, which launched this blog and gave it its title.

10 Steps for a Kick-Ass Emergency Succession Plan

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Vu

Most people who know me know that I have only one pair of shoes and one belt. They are both made of vegan fake leather and look crappy. That’s because I got married and thus no longer have any incentives to look attractive. Plus, we Executive Directors of small nonprofits must project the aura of scrappiness and frugality.

One morning, though, I had an important meeting and could not find my belt. I spent thirty minutes looking for it, getting more and more frantic. With no time to run out and buy a new belt, I went about my day with a dress shirt tucked into my beltless pants like an animal. An animal!

What’s the point of this story? The ED or CEO of a nonprofit is kind of like a beat-up leathery old belt that holds up the pants of the organization. And like in my wardrobe, there is only one. Life is unpredictable, oftentimes cruel, and yet filled with unimaginable beauty. But usually it’s just cruel. Who the heck knows what could happen? (Which is why I wrote this letter to my newborn son in case I died early, with important life lessons like “be nice to people” and “recycle”). In the terrible worst-case scenario, the ED could get into a tragic accident and die or otherwise become incapacitated. In the best scenario, he could be offered his dream job of starring in a vegan culinary travel show where he eats and drinks his way around the globe. In either of these scenarios, or a variety of other stuff that could happen, the organization is now left without a leader.

That is why it is so important for all organizations to have ESP (Emergency Succession Plan). Now, there are all sorts of ways to go about developing this plan. For the ESP, though, it is more important to have a decent plan right away than a perfect plan that could take a while to create. Which is why I jot down these helpful tips. Follow them and in no time your organization will have a workable plan, just in case the Food Network calls your ED:

Step 1: Emergency succession planning is really the board’s responsibility, so add this to your next board meeting agenda. Seriously, if you don’t have an ESP in place, put this on your agenda. Assign the task to a board member to lead, preferably someone who has HR experience and understanding of the staffing structure.

Step 2. With the assigned board member in the lead, form a committee. Like with other committees, no one is going to want to join. You can attract them by calling it the Emergency Succession Plan Task Force (ESPTF) and coming up with a cool code name for the work at hand using Greek letters and mythological figures, like “Operation Alpha Omega Morpheus”

Step 3: The ED may be the one to push for an ESP and may join the task force, which is great, but if not, someone from the ESPTF should sit down with her and explain the need for the plan and get her perspective on the important things about her work that the task force should take into consideration, along with her thoughts on who may be potential candidates to serve as acting ED in case something happens to her. If she starts freaking out and crying, wondering if she did something wrong, refer her to this blog post.

Step 4: The ESPTF should define the skills and experience needed in an acting ED to help the organization remain functional during the transition. While every nonprofit is unique, there are certain skills that all EDs have in common: Breaking up fist-fights among staff, going to meetings, making inspiring speeches, herding cats, and begging for money.

Step 5: Define a sequence of actions that the board should take in the case Operation Morpheus must be activated. Depending on whether the situation is temporary or permanent, these actions may include calling an emergency meeting, choosing an acting ED, forming a hiring team, changing signing authorization for checks, panicking, etc.

Step 6: Determine a chain of succession, kind of like we do for our government. If something happens to the President, then the Vice President is in charge, and next is the Speaker of the House, etc. You may have a Deputy Director who may take over temporarily, followed by the Director of Operations. Most nonprofits, though, don’t have clear-cut positions like that. At VFA, for example, our succession chain may look like “Program Director/Office Manager, followed by Development Director/Janitor.”

Step 7: Identify important people you need to notify. These include program officers, major donors, contract monitors, partner organizations, clients, etc., Figure out who would be in charge of talking to whom. People might start freaking out, especially if they learn about things second-hand, so it is good to have clear and prompt and personal communication.

Step 8: Work with the ED and other staff to compile copies of important stuff that the acting ED needs to do his work, for example IRS determination letter, bylaws, board meeting minutes, EIN, past 990s, audited financial statements, business license, charitable solicitation license, office lease, bank info and contact, insurance policy number and contact, office security info and contact, office safe combo, computer passwords, water cooler delivery schedule, etc. We EDs tend to hold all this information in our heads, so it’s good to write it down.

Step 9: Finalize the plan and get to the board to approve. Do not make the plan public, or you might freak out people further; keep it among the board and key staff. Designate a board member (usually the chair) to hold a copy of the plan in a secure location away from the office. Another copy should be held at the office in a secure location where no one would look; at the VFA office, that location would be the fresh vegetable compartment of the fridge.

Step 10: Schedule a time once a year to update and revise the plan. Also, update it when there’s significant change in the organization’s structure or staff.

I hope that’s helpful. Let me know what your organization does and if there are steps I left out. Of course, the ESP is just for that, emergencies, and hopefully you never have to activate Operation Morpheus. All organizations should also be working on long-term succession planning, ensuring staff are developing skills and experience to move up the ladder, that there are opportunities for cross-position training, etc. Only by being thoughtful and diligent can we all keep our pants up.