Recovering Executive Director

I lead two nonprofit workshops this week; one on the use of technology and one on how to communicate your impact.  I always begin my workshops with a similar theme: understand your organization and take a serious look at your values, vision, and mission.  Once that is clear, you can more clearly identify the goals and actions to take your organization where it needs to go.  Seems simple but in most cases, these are extremely hard conversations to have and even harder to reach consensus. As I was leaving my Forefront workshop in Galesburg, Illinois, I drove past a construction crew working on a house and had to capture the image.  The signs read  "Every action of creation is first of all an act of destruction " by Pablo Picasso .  Genius and true! If you want to build strong buildings and organizations, you first have to tear them apart, see what you're dealing with, come up with a plan for improvement and then build it. This also reminds of nonprofit...

This summer, I am putting myself back in the classroom but not as a teacher, as a student.  It's been a few years since I've been on that side of the podium.  I have always wanted to have a better understanding of American higher education to improve my own teaching and connectedness to today's college students. Luckily for me, my first course is a special topics class called "Race and Ethnicity in the Formation of American Higher Education" being taught by Dr. Rodney Cohen. He is a visiting associate professor and President of the Association for Black Culture Centers (ABCC).  NIU became the national headquarters of ABCC in November 2015.  We are reading the book " The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 ". The course begins with a discussion of how African Americans were educated in the south.  I have never studied this before so I am soaking up all of this rich heritage but also questioning our current climate in higher education. Ear...

I want to connect with my own kids and my students, and I truly enjoy learning and using technology.  I also think that we need to manage our online brand as much as we spend our face to face identity. We pay attention to what we wear or how we speak, depending on the context.  We need to take the same care to develop and nurture our online brand, which is possibly the only brand we may be known for. So how do you do this?  At a basic level, Google yourself (really - right now!).  See what comes up. This is what people will do when you are applying for a job, joining a committee, volunteering in an organization etc.  What comes up when you Google yourself?  Is the content correct?  This is hard if you have a more common name because you will undoubtedly come up with information about people other than yourself.  But what content comes up that is actually about you and where does that information "live" online?  The media? Your employer's we...

This past week or two, I have been listening to several interviews with Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook Chief Operating Officer and author of the bestselling " Lean In " book. She has cowritten a new book called " Option B " following the death of her husband, just released this week.  I have the book and I can't wait to read it!  But beyond the book, she is calling for a movement, for all of us to build resilience and help others build theirs.  She and her co-author have created a nonprofit organization called OptionB.org to provide tools to build resilience.  Visitors can share their own personal stories, join online support groups and find information from experts. Of course we can all use some support if we faced with difficult circumstances or choices, sometimes because of something we have pursued but other times simply because life happens. Life is beautiful in all of its complexities and riches, and sorrow and disappointment as well. They are all learni...

The past week, I have been thinking a lot about my own background and why I do the work I do; teaching about nonprofits and helping nonprofits get stronger to fulfill their mission.  I love everything I have the privilege of doing. Today, I read about an interesting partnership which brought three aspects of my own life together: faith, education, and service.  The University of Ottawa is partnering with the Ottawa Mission , a homeless shelter, St. Paul University , and First Baptist Church to offer "Discovery University".  This experience is a true partnership where non-credit courses are taught by university professors and all textbooks and course materials are provided at no cost to the students. From the press release , "the courses are real gifts of hope that will enlighten the life of many individuals".  This is faith in action.  This is social justice in action. This is service in action.  I am a proud alum of the University of Ottawa and ev...

Don't be scared! This Wednesday, I will be giving a workshop called "Executive Director 101 ".  What I wanted to call it was "Everything I wish I would have known but didn't when I started my first Executive Director job" but that's a little too long. I half jokingly say I was hired to be an Executive Director for the first time because I had three important qualities (in no priority order):  I didn't need medical insurance, I was willing to do it for the meager salary, and I was willing to learn on the job.  I had some skills and education but none of that really prepared me to lead a small nonprofit organization, more or less by the seat of my pants. I thought what the organization needed was my stellar marketing and communication skills, which I felt confidently about.  What I realized is that marketing and communications are only effective when you have your story straight, that the organization is on solid ground financially, and you hav...

Last week I chatted about my recent interview on a new podcast featuring thought leaders in the government and nonprofit sectors.  The podcast was developed by a former student and graduate of our MPA program, Jacob Lawrence.  You can listen to the full hour interview here:  http://www.iamjakelawrence.com/podcast/2017/3/18/episode-3-alicia-schatteman . It was a lot of fun!  It was also interesting to think about my career and the many twists and turns which are common for those who decide to dedicate their lives to a life of service.  I started out thinking what I wanted to do was work in government and then found myself in the nonprofit space.  It seemed a better fit for me.  Our MPA students often cross back and forth between these sectors, learning, growing, changing.  Sometimes they see it as two steps forward, one step back but I do not. Whatever our experiences are, they have brought us to this day, exactly where we are supposed to be. ...

I was recently interviewed for a podcast created by a former MPA student, Jake Lawrence. When the podcast is ready, I will make sure to send out the link to everyone.  Jake asked some very good and insightful questions that really got me thinking, how did I get here? Seldom do we take the time to really reflect on "how did I get here?" so if you have never done that, it's a useful exercise.  For those of us who see our teens and twenties in the rear-view mirror, I don't think we could have predicted exactly where we would be in life today.  I am also grateful we did not have a crystal ball because we would have missed out on some valuable lessons and experiences. For myself, I grew up in a single-mother household when my parents divorced as I turned 5.  Although supported by a close-knit extended family, my living circumstances was fraught with emotional turmoil, poverty, upheaval, and just day to day stress.  There are many people and organizations tha...

I attended the DeKalb Leadership Symposium on Saturday, March 4, an event organized by the community to strengthen leadership in the community.  There were people from all sectors, of all ages and backgrounds.  There were many takeaways from the day and I will try to share the highlights here. The keynote speaker to kick off the day was Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, one of the first women to train and serve alongside men in the US Army. She did a TEDx talk called "Fake it till you make it" which you can check out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuoQE3-BTMw.   Great leaders need three things: confidence, compassion, and competence.  Confidence includes being humble in what you know and what you don't know, being confident enough to ask for help and sharing success with your team. Leadership is not about one person.  Compassion is actually caring about your team and the people you serve which also includes being inspiring to others and serving others hon...

In this week's Chronicle of Philanthropy, which is always an excellent read by the way, there is a discussion about whether philanthropy is a profession.  The article is written by Dr. Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Dr. Gardner is a pioneer in the way we learn and how we assess intelligence (spoiler:  there isn't one way).  I believe he is one of the great thinkers of our time. His essay sparked a reaction from me because he suggests that philanthropy is not a profession, in a way that other professions exist with an established career path, participants, and gatekeepers that decide who can participate and who gets rewarded. Philanthropy, by definition, is simply the love of humans.  In this way, all of us have the potential to be philanthropists, acting out of love to help others with our time or financial resources.  Some of us are or will become major donors to support our largest institutio...

This week I was preparing a presentation about how nonprofits can engage with the public better. The trick is there is no trick.  There isn't a magic formula to improve public engagement but I do know what doesn't work.  It doesn't work to yell louder or even more frequently about how your organization and its programs are the best that ever was. Public engagement is committing to a two-way relationship where each party gets something out of it, not a one-sided relationship where the nonprofit seeks public support, volunteers, donations, or even clients.  Do you really know what your community needs and wants from you? So before you start talking, start listening.  And even better, commit to building a culture in your nonprofit organization that is open to outsiders at all times.  Think about how you share what you do, why you do it, what impact you are having, and how you manage your finances.  It's actually pretty simple to say but very hard to do. ...

Before and after the most recent federal election, nonprofit organizations across the country started to hear more about the importance of getting their stakeholders engaged.  Some nonprofit organizations do advocacy very well and others are scared of making mistakes so don't engage at all.  How do we shift the function of advocacy to a core function of every nonprofit in calm as well as turbulent times? Why do nonprofits need to do advocacy anyway? The first answer is because they can!  They can, and should, engage in many activities that are not only legal within the confines of your nonprofit designation but often necessary to truly address your mission and goals for your organization. I found myself browsing a university library shelf, which I admit I do pretty regularly, and came across a book called "Woman's Part in Government", written by William Allen of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research in 1911.  This was nine years before the US ratified the 19t...

I am reading "Weapons of Math Destruction:  How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy" at the same time as I am reading the newspaper headlines of what to do about youth joblessness in Chicago. There is no shortage of data today; every agency collects more and more data, even applies complicated algorithms to predict behavior and financial outcomes, and are we really using all of that data effectively?  Are we data smart? When I teach students or conduct workshops, I actually prefer to use the term information instead of data, seems less intimidating.  Nonprofit organizations are so busy doing delivering programs and services, that they rarely have time to look up.  However, if nonprofits are going to be truly successful, both efficient and effective, they need to look at all of the information in their organization and how they are using it. Likely they will find that information (data collection) is happening across the organization from the f...

Why does the business sector think they have a new cure for the ills of society, nicely repackaged and repurchased under the new and trendy title of "social entrepreneurship"?  The nonprofit sector is entirely mission focused, entirely driven by doing good will for others.  The business sector, for necessity, is driven by a profit motive even though of course they could do good with their money or their company's money. I certainly commend this! Nonprofit management programs teach the basic management functions of human resource management, marketing, communications, accounting etc.  The unique thing is that we do all of this within the context of how the nonprofit sector is regulated and structured in the U.S. and around the world. A nonprofit is a business type, organized under the IRS tax code, which does make it unique and separate from the for-profit sector.  Business schools don't "own" good management.  Good management is good management.  Busine...