Johns Hopkins researchers estimate $166 billion in infrastructure projects delayed nationwide.

Like state and local governments and private businesses, America’s 1.4 million nonprofit organizations have many major “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects on hold because of the credit crisis, according to a new survey by the Johns Hopkins University Nonprofit Listening Post Project. For a country eager to promote employment, these projects offer an inviting target.

Nonprofits always struggle to generate investment capital due to their nonprofit status and their inability to access the equity markets, but the survey results show that the recession has compounded their woes: The 1,837 organizations surveyed identified 1,065 shovel-ready projects stalled by the inability to secure financing. A state-by-state listing of these projects is at http://www.jhu.edu/listeningpost/news.


Source: John Hopkins University

There are many paths that can lead to a senior staff position in the nonprofit sector. We have found that for bridgers—people moving from the for-profit to the nonprofit sector for the first time—one effective route is through volunteerism.

Volunteer jobs typically will not lead directly to a senior leadership position in the same nonprofit organization, but a relevant nonprofit board or volunteer experience can, nonetheless, be invaluable for someone bridging from the private sector to a nonprofit. Volunteering can give bridgers insight into whether the nonprofit sector is the right career path for them and guidance on what sort of work they want to do in the sector. Working as a nonprofit volunteer also can serve as a good introduction to the myriad cultural differences between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Furthermore, the experience will help bridgers begin to build a network of nonprofit peers and colleagues, will introduce them to nonprofit sector vocabulary, and will boost their credibility with potential nonprofit employers by demonstrating their commitment to nonprofit work.

What follows are the stories of three senior nonprofit executives who got their starts in the sector as volunteers. Each one said their volunteer experiences led them—either directly or indirectly—to their current nonprofit roles. While their motivations and experiences are uniquely their own, there are lessons to be learned from each.

Board membership develops into senior management role In late 2005, Keith Weaver took an early retirement package from Manulife Financial, a leading Canadian-based insurance services company. He and his wife moved back to their native Canada from Asia, where he had been senior vice president and chief financial officer for Manulife. Financially secure and barred from working for a competing firm for two years by his separation agreement, Weaver planned to devote his time to volunteering. Through a series of contacts, he lined up several nonprofit board roles, including one at Micro Insurance Agency Holdings LLC (MIA), a Christian organization that provides impoverished people in Africa and Asia with affordable life, credit, health, and crop insurance products.

When Weaver joined the MIA board in early 2007, the organization was small and struggling financially. But it had just gotten word that it was being considered for a major grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Because of his multinational insurance experience, Weaver became a key participant in special board sessions held to review the Gates proposal and to develop MIA’s growth strategy. As time passed and the Gates grant became a certainty, Weaver said he felt “called” to play a more direct, formal role in MIA’s future. “I felt like a consultant who helps a client with a project, but then isn’t asked to see it through or asked to follow up,” he said. “I kept thinking, ‘I could help more here.’”

Weaver said that prior to joining the MIA board, he had never considered working full-time for a nonprofit, but he was captivated by MIA, its Christian mission, and the growth challenges it faced. “MIA was on the cusp of a major ramp-up with a pretty slim management team,” Weaver said. “It was really starting from scratch. They were going to need significant management experience to make it work. I felt quite aligned with the objectives of MIA, and I wanted it to succeed.”

Weaver said he and the organization’s leaders came to the realization that he would be a valuable addition to the senior staff at virtually the same time. He became MIA’s chief financial and administrative officer in September 2007, just two months before the organization was formally awarded a $24.2 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “No question, this was the right thing for me to do,” Weaver said. “To see the effect this work has is very gratifying.”

Weekly volunteer work opens the door to senior leadership position Throughout his 20-year career in the high-tech sector, Paul Heggarty often had volunteered at soup kitchens and other direct-service providers, performing hands-on tasks as his schedule permitted. When he was laid off by his for-profit employer, Viant, after it was acquired by another company in 2003, Heggarty began investigating careers in the nonprofit sector. Heggarty said his experience working in start-up environments was a positive for many potential nonprofit employers, but his lack of a history within one nonprofit domain was often a stumbling block. “I wasn’t aligned to any one nonprofit field,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”

After several months of searching without success, Heggarty took a position at Watchfire, another for-profit, high-tech firm. But he resolved to make volunteering a regular part of his life. He contacted the Essex County Community Foundation to find a list of nonprofits that could use a one-day-a-week volunteer with his finance and business planning skills. As it turned out, the foundation’s grants committee needed someone to help review grant requests. “It was a great introduction for me into the world of philanthropy,” Heggarty said. “It helped educate me about the nonprofit sector.”

As he worked with the grants committee and performed other business analysis work for the foundation, Heggarty met many people for whom philanthropy was a major part of their lives. He began thinking about how his skills could translate into a nonprofit job that would offer not only a paycheck but also a social purpose.

When he heard in 2007 through Bridgestar that the nonprofit Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) was looking for a vice president of finance and administration to oversee the infrastructure and systems needed to support its rapid growth, Heggarty knew he had finally found the right fit. The timing was also perfect. Watchfire had recently been acquired by IBM and, following a transition period, Heggarty would be available to join CEP.

Heggarty said that while his volunteer work did not lead directly to his getting the CEP job in October 2007, it helped him to demonstrate his commitment to the nonprofit sector. “The volunteer experience does help,” he said. “It gives you credibility. It shows you’re doing your homework and that this is not just a fleeting desire for a job. It shows you’re making a thoughtful transition.”

Heggarty continues to volunteer at the Essex County Community Foundation and also for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services as a community representative for foster care reviews. He advised anyone considering bridging into the nonprofit sector to begin by volunteering—and to be patient. “It takes time, and you need to do some thinking about what you really want,” he said.

Longtime commitment to girls and families enables sector switch During her for-profit career, Ruth Bramson oversaw the human resources and diversity issues that arose from large corporate mergers and acquisitions. She served as executive vice president of human resources for National Grid US and as chief human resources officer and chief diversity officer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

But throughout her 25-year career, she also volunteered extensively at numerous nonprofit organizations that worked to improve the lives of girls, women, and families. Bramson developed her passion for the mission through her personal experiences as a single mother. “I realized how difficult it was for me and my three girls, and how much harder it would be for someone with fewer resources,” she said.

Bramson has donated her time to many groups over the years, including the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, the Massachusetts Coalition for Equal Pay, One Family, United Way, and Junior Achievement. Most of her appointments to nonprofit boards and commissions came as a result of paid positions she held or through people she knew who were already on the boards. She said one of her most rewarding volunteer projects was her founding in 1997 of Suited for Success, a nonprofit that prepared women leaving welfare to move into the business world. As founder, Bramson lined up funding, oversaw the largely volunteer workforce, and set up the terms of governance from scratch.

In February 2008, Bramson became the first chief executive officer of the nonprofit Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. Her volunteer experiences—particularly at Suited for Success—were a perfect training ground for her nonprofit staff role. “Working on boards, doing the fundraising, events, and development of the curriculum for each week’s program, getting guest presenters and trainers…all were very helpful and transferable skills for my new role,” Bramson said. “I did all of that while working full-time at my paid job, so I also learned to juggle lots of projects.”

Her volunteer efforts also demonstrated her commitment to a mission and showed potential nonprofit employers that she was willing to devote herself to the community, knew how to work with nonprofit boards and volunteers, and understood the constraints under which nonprofits operate.

Bramson, who still volunteers at a number of nonprofits in addition to her paid job with Girl Scouts, said that working full-time in the sector is “harder work, more time, more commitment, and more fun than any for-profit job I have ever had.” She advised bridgers to do their homework on the sector and on the individual nonprofits in which they are interested. “As with any job search, the best resources are your network and letting folks know you are transitioning,” she said.

Source: Bridgestar

Interviewing and hiring the best “talent” for your organization is probably your most important task. And yet, time after time, there’s that sinking feeling after just one day—bad choice.

Want to avoid that? Avoid these three deadly interviewing sins. Fortunately, it’s not that hard.

Deadly Sin #1—Failure to Prepare

Before you start recruiting you need to do two things: Clarify what you are looking for, and decide how you will determine whether a candidate has it.

“I want to start interviewing yesterday!”

Managers are always in a hurry to fill their empty spots, so there’s always pressure to instantly start posting, advertising, and interviewing.

Not so fast. That’s a recipe for disaster. As the old saw goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

Similarly, if you jump into the hiring process without defining what you are looking for:

Good people won’t be attracted to apply—they’ll sense that if the announcement is only vaguely defined then the job’s responsibilities might also be.

Unqualified people won’t self-select out, so you’ll have to deal with hordes of them.

Most important, you’ll have no meaningful basis on which to judge the candidates.

Before launching a hiring campaign, take some time to determine exactly what you need. What abilities, skills, credentials, and knowledge are required? Talk to incumbents, talk to the people who work with the position, review the job description.

When you’re clear on that, craft a concise statement of qualifications for posting and advertising, and to give it to agencies and other sources of candidates.

How Will You Know a Candidate Is Qualified?

Next, you need to figure out how you’ll know if candidates have what you are looking for. What interview questions will help you find out?

If you start to interview before taking this step, you will:

Spend your interview time thinking up questions instead of listening to what the candidate is saying

Leave out critical questions (like salary expectations, willingness to relocate, possession of a required degree or certificate)

Fall into the conversation trap of discussing sports and the weather, or worse—family issues and other topics that could spell legal trouble

Lose consistency. When you go to compare candidates, you’ll have nothing to go on because they’ll have answered different questions. If you focused on technical issues with one, and management issues with the other, how will you compare the two?

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Deadly Sin #2—Falling Prey to Stealth Discrimination

The second thing that happens without a plan is that you can easily end up discriminating, even when you didn’t intend to. For example:

Playing favorites (”I hire people I like.”). With no good selection strategy, you tend to end up with someone you “feel good about”— probably someone who is just like you. This has the obvious effect of keeping out people who aren’t like you—in other words, discriminating.

Stereotyping (”X’s can’t X.”). When you don’t have a good system for measuring candidates, it’s easy to fall back on stereotypes. For example:

“Women aren’t strong enough.”
“Men aren’t compassionate enough.”
“X’s aren’t good at X.”

Patronizing/paternalizing/maternalizing (”X’s shouldn’t X.”). This is a special form of stereotyping that seems well-intentioned, but is, in general, discriminatory. For example:

“Terry is a city person, and won’t want to relocate.”
“Parents with young children shouldn’t travel.”
“Women shouldn’t travel alone.”
“Pregnant women can’t be subjected to pressure.”

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De facto (”Gee, I just never seem to hire X’s”). One of the more subtle forms of discrimination is called “de facto.” In these situations, there is never an intention to not hire or promote certain types of people—it just never seems to happen.

For example, a hiring manager says he’s eager to hire women in a certain job, but, although many qualified women have applied, of the last 50 hires, all 50 were men.

In the next issue of the Advisor, we’ll cover the third deadly interviewing sin, talk about how to become a drillmaster interviewer, and deliver a tip about a powerful new tool for the small HR department.


Source: HR Daily Advisor

We visited our first nonprofit organization over forty years ago and immediately “fell in love” with the people who worked there. They were capable and truly dedicated to the mission of the organization, but they knew little about financial record keeping because they were essentially educators and not business-oriented people. One of the things that made the organization successful was that they listened to us when we preached about the need to run the organization like a business so we were able to teach them the importance of good record keeping and how essential quality financial information is to the management process.

We think being the CEO or Executive Director of a nonprofit organization is absolutely the most challenging management job there is. After having worked with thousands of nonprofit organizations, from the smallest to the largest, we are still in love with those organizations and the people who work for them. The difficulties and challenges faced by the person “keeping the books” of a nonprofit organization are a close second to the challenges faced by the CEO. Whether the title is head bookkeeper, director of finance, controller, or CFO, the top financial person’s knowledge, ability, and job performance are very closely tied to the long-term success or failure of the organization. Poor management will close your doors forever, and a big piece of managing a nonprofit relates to keeping not just adequate financial records but excellent financial records. And in these turbulent economic times, excellent financial records are a must because nonprofits are under enormous scrutiny from all aspects of our society. In many instances, funding sources require regular financial reports regarding monies they have granted or contributed to you. If you keep sloppy or inadequate records, newspapers love to write that investigative report about your activities, both operational and financial.

The following list is a mantra that we have been repeating in different venues for more than forty years. Your nonprofit organization must implement the following standards to have financial records which are “bullet proof” and designed to withstand scrutiny from all comers—the Senate finance committee if you’re a large nonprofit such as a university or hospital or the local newspaper if you are a small, local charity.

Financial Standards for Success
1. Implement written Policies and Procedures
2. Widely distribute those Policies and Procedures to staff, volunteers and board
3. Find the right Accountant /CPA to work with the organization
4. Find and train the right person to keep your financial records
5. Ensure that the finance person is in the information loop
6. Create and monitor proper Internal Controls designed to protect your money
7. Create and use accurate, realistic, and documented budgets
8. Create and use accurate, realistic, and documented Cash Flow Forecasts
9. Produce and use Monthly Financial Reports and analysis by location, program, grant, and organization on a timely basis
10. Acquire proper Insurance Coverage
11. Arrange for Annual Audited Financial Statements that are complete and prepared on time
12. Arrange for Annual Tax Filings that are accurate and prepared on time

When we began working with the nonprofit sector, there was very little actual formal guidance for accountants or nonprofit organizations to follow. Few books on finance for nonprofits had been published to help accountants or nonprofit organizations to create the financial records they actually needed. When we went to a library in 1965 to do some initial research on the area, we found little literature. Whatever literature that did exist was frequently not relevant to the nonprofit world of 1965 and was focused on large institutions. When we subsequently started doing training sessions for clients, we found we had to create special materials to help attendees understand the topics and their relevance to the organization. Please remember the twelve items above and make sure they are part of the financial management “culture” at your organization.

Murray Dropkin is president of CMS Systems, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in improving the financial operations of nonprofit and for-profit organizations. He is the coauthor of The Budget-Building Book for Nonprofits, 2nd Edition (Jossey-Bass), Bookkeeping for Nonprofits (Jossey-Bass) and The Cash Flow Management Book for Nonprofits (Jossey-Bass).

Jim Halpin has written articles for technical publications and has developed accounting software and other applications for clients in a wide variety of industries. He is the coauthor of The Budget-Building Book for Nonprofits, 2nd Edition (Jossey-Bass), Bookkeeping for Nonprofits (Jossey-Bass), and the coauthor, with Dropkin, of the newsletter Nonprofit Report.

The most recent “Workplace Insights” survey from Adecco USA, a recruitment and workforce solutions provider, comes during a historic time for our nation. As Friday’s jobs report indicated the greatest jobs losses since 1974, it’s expected that appreciation for staying employed may be on the rise, but how about that loving feeling?

This Valentine’s Day the vast majority of American workers (78 percent) love what they do just as much or more than they did before we entered a recession. Further, an even greater number (86 percent) don’t think that loving what you do is less important even in the midst of the current economic turmoil. Despite these feelings of love and affection, if they could do it all over again, just over half of American workers (54 percent) would have chosen a different career path knowing what they know today.

Additional survey findings include:

Appreciation outweighs Sunday dread: Only a small percent of American workers (9 percent) dread starting a new work week, as feelings of appreciation (41 percent) dominate Monday morning emotions, outperforming those who felt indifferent (26 percent) and those excited to get going (21 percent).

Boomers/Generation X Most Worried, Less Willing To Adapt: Three out of ten boomers and Generation X workers are feeling nervous about the stability of their job, compared to a smaller 20 percent of Generation Y workers. However, more Generation Y workers are willing to work harder or longer hours due to the current economic situation than either boomers or Generation X workers.

Confidence in executives not improving: The vast majority of workers (90 percent) have the same amount or less confidence in their company’s executive team as a result of the declining economic situation.

Women more appreciative, men indifferent: Almost half of women (46 percent) are appreciative to start the work week compared with a smaller 38 percent of men who feel the same. In contrast, almost a third of working men (31 percent) feel indifferent on Monday mornings, compared to a significantly smaller 21 percent of working women


Source: Talent Management

Dr. Joanne Fritz, author of About.com’s Guide to Nonprofits, has named Opportunity Knocks as the favorite site to find a nonprofit job.

Click here to read the full article.

Diane Baillargeon, Seedco President and CEO, was appointed by President Barack Obama to the newly formed Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Baillargeon will advise the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships on matters related to the work of nonprofit and community organizations as they continue their efforts to assist some of the most disadvantaged individuals, families and small businesses.

Seedco is a national, secular intermediary that helps faith-based and community organizations implement high-impact initiatives that assist low-income people and communities in moving toward economic stability. We have partnered successfully with both secular and faith organizations such as Citizen’s Advice Bureau in New York City and Centenary Ministries in Memphis to help low-income workers connect to employment opportunities and income-enhancing public benefits, and with the Episcopal Diocese Community Development, Inc. of Newark in New Jersey and Birmingham Center for Affordable Housing in Alabama to counsel homeowners avoiding foreclosure.


Source: Seedco