Nonprofitist.org

Very often, when a nonprofit is being established, many of the people who get involved and try to get things running will either already have a job/career of their own, or perhaps some other major activity they’re focusing on in their life (e.g. involvement in another nonprofit, perhaps). The resulting effects from this situation vary from lack of new people willing to contribute to your cause, to demotivation of people who already contributed and think they’ve done their share in the start up phase, thus going back to their original occupation: your start up project loses capacity to attract and retain human resources, or simply starts with a very low one. This is understandable: starting a new organization is a risky business and nobody wants to give up the golden goose, abandon or limit involvement in activities they feel more than comfortable with, and turn instead to a project that, especially in our case, doesn’t provide any financial security (at least on the short run), or a guarantee of success.

Your battle, as founding member of a nonprofit organization, is to have as many good people as possible cross that thin line that separates them from seeing the new project as “just another hobby” to seeing it instead as a new serious commitment in their lives. The goal should be bringing the number of skilled and passionate people willing to contribute to your cause to a high enough critical mass, that will allow the organization to thrust its way through the initial development and open the doors for the consolidation of your nonprofit in your organization’s environment. You want to make those barriers for involvement low and you want to make sure that, once new people get involved, their involve-o-meter goes one way only: up.

Communication and its role

Now, there’s a lot to the subject of involving new members other than communication: leadership, management and teamwork/team dynamics are the most relevant topics in dealing with this issue and they all cross lines with each other, and with communication as well. However, I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity to explore other elements in the future, so let’s focus on communication for today. Communication is a powerful tool all throughout a nonprofit’s life, but, as with other tools, increases its importance in the startup phase. What will be one day your ability to attract 10 new people and add them to an already committed workforce, which doesn’t need additional explanations on why they’re doing what they’re doing, today is instead your capacity to attract 1 new fundamental contributor to your cause and add him/her to a team that hasn’t figured out yet even what their role in this project is. What will one day determine whether your organization grows from 150 to 160 members or not, today will determine the very existence of your nonprofit.

Communicating properly with potential future members, new members and the other co-founders will allow them to understand the organization you have in mind, project their involvement through time and therefore empower them to play a crucial role in the startup’s development, despite the fact that (a) the idea and the real concept of your nonprofit organization has not been defined yet, (b) their involvement is a path as uncertain as the idea of the organization itself and (c) perhaps the ways for them to contribute right now to your cause are unclear as well. It’s almost as if you were selling a product that hasn’t entered the market yet and you couldn’t even tell your customer how to buy it!

Nevertheless, your challenge is to turn those undefined elements as opportunities for the potential, new or existing members to express their own passion on the subject and, quite uniquely, to shape in collaboration with everybody else involved what those opportunities will become in the near future. However, an excess of communication is rarely a solution of its own. Abundance of opportunities, choices and, most of all, of things that need to be done, easily scare off many newcomers to a startup nonprofit organization. The hectic behavior of an over-communicator usually acts as a turnoff for people who’re simply looking for an easy way in your organization. Again, this is very understandable: when reaching a critical mass of committed people is one of the fundamental early objectives of a nonprofit start up, founders might put some extra pressure on the new members, since they need them so much to survive and develop.

What we can learn from all this is that tact and timing are of the essence. Every person that comes into the orbit of your project is a potential full-time active member of your organization, to be handled with extreme care due to his/her high value with regard to the small size of your startup group. The key to their successful involvement is in gradually increasing the frequency and intensity of your communication, up to the point you feel they’ll have reached their ideal position within your vision (but we’ll talk about that later). In the next sections, I’ll reveal a typical 5-step sequence for the use of communication for the involvement of new members in your organization.

Due to my experience and the resulting focus of this blog, this approach is mostly suited for international nonprofit startups, whose members or potential members don’t have (or rarely have) the chance to meet in person, at least for long periods of time. But I’m sure many steps adapt very well in other forms of organization as well.

Step 1 - The initial approach

According to the circumstance, you’ll be either approaching a person who expressed their interest in your project, or somebody you think might be interested in it but hasn’t had the chance to hear about it yet. In any case, after the initial contact (via email, in person or else), send him/her an email soon after (the same day or the following one, if possible), introducing yourself, giving an overview of your project and making him/her understand that yours is an open group of people who always welcomes new ideas (or something similar to that); try to do that without necessarily asking him/her to become a member and therefore putting him/her in the awkward position to decide about his/her involvement in your very first conversation (avoid yes/no questions in your first interaction).

This will allow the potential new member to feel like there’s an open door for him/her, without necessarily needing to decide whether to go through that door yet or not. In this first step, you’ll want to focus on awareness of your cause and your activities. Try to be clear, to picture your project as something original and interesting, but at the same time try to use a “light” language, in order to avoid daunting your interlocutor with unnecessary details and secondary information. Your guy/gal should look at your nonprofit in the same way you’d look at a new restaurant opening in town that offers a special promotion for lunch: something nice, worth checking out again.

Step 2 - The follow-up

If he/she doesn’t reply, even for a few days, do not despair; give him/her a week or even two in some cases (depending on how busy is this person) and then send another email; beware not to put him/her in a corner by asking something to the extent of “so, have you made your decision?” or “can you tell me if you can help us or not?”; putting pressure on the new guy/gal won’t speed up his/her involvement (or at least, it never did in my experience); try instead to find a way to ask him/her about something you discussed about in your first meeting/correspondence (e.g. something about himself/herself, some of his/her work, etc.) without getting too personal, but still being polite and attentive. Or perhaps find a useful news article or the information about an event that he/she might be interested in. Sometimes even a simple “how are you doing?” might be enough, if you feel comfortable enough with it. Undoubtedly, your informal conversation will remind this person of the previously mentioned opportunities for involvement and, if the idea is still positive in his/her mind, he’ll write back not only about the thing you’ve been discussing about, but possibly with a couple of questions on your organization and how to get involved.

This second phase takes the relation with this person one step further: it consolidates awareness, but at the same time tries to build a personal connection to the person. Going back to the new restaurant analogy, it’s as if you met the new owner at the grocery store and you were simply chatting while waiting in the cashier’s line. You wouldn’t want him/her to invite you to come to his new restaurant, would you? That would create an awkward situation…

Step 3 - Integration in the team

If the previous steps are successful, you’re either looking to a nice relationship with somebody who shares some of your interests (but still, for various reasons, doesn’t want to get involved in your nonprofit), that might still come in handy in other situations, or, if you’re lucky, you’re looking to a new member in your team. In that case, congratulations! Whereas earlier on, during your initial approach, you would risk scarying off the newcomer by flooding him with information, now instead it’s the right time to start exposing him/her to the internal communication flow of your organization (i.e. mailing lists, forums, discussion groups, etc.). Remember to do that step by step and keep that personal connection you established in Step 2 and don’t leave him/her at the group’s mercy. Only gradually you’ll be able to let go of your initial mentoring role, which could perhaps be the responsibility of another member of your team (your future HR manager, perhaps?).

Again, if you had your new friend as one of your first customers in your restaurant, you wouldn’t let them get stuffed with everything you cook, right? This is possibly the most crucial phase of the approach: the starting pace of your communication will most likely be the default intensity from now on, so don’t let him/her stay too much time without communicating with you, but at the same time make sure not to overflow the communication channel. This pace will also determine the expectations of the newcomer with regard to his/her involvement in the team: if the pace is too high, you can either make it or break it, you can either have him/her jump into your high-frequency and high-intensity workload (in that case, consider yourself lucky) or he/she can leave right away because the hill is too steep to climb for him/her right from the start; instead, a more soft pace, which increases its intensity with time, will make sure that you slowly allow him/her to build speed and manage to climb that hill you want him/her to climb.

Step 4 - Increasing responsibilities

Once your new member is involved in some basic activities, accomplishing tasks and reporting successes, it’s perhaps time to increase his/her level of responsibility within the organization. Communication-wise, a useful strategy is to include him/her in correspondences directed to a limited number of people. Whereas he/she was part of a bigger group, now he/she will feel that you’re directly addressing him/her (amongst few others) as a sign of an increased trust/attention. That will most likely result in a realization that you are gradually raising the ante on him/her and preparing to assign him/her new responsibilities, a new role and an increased importance within the team.

During this period, you might also think of increasing the frequency of your communication and/or switching to a different communication protocol/procedure. For example, whereas during his/her period of membership you might have contacted him/her once a week, via email, now it’s time to contact him/her twice a week, plus perhaps call him/her once every 10 days as well.

Step 5 - You’ve found somebody to fill in your shoes!

When you get to a core group of people you moved up to Step 4, most likely your successor as leader/manager of the organization will be among them. Now, different organizations have different methods for deciding upon who’s in charge next and I’m not going to deal with this for today, but once the person or group of people who are most likely to be those next ones in charge are defined, then you find yourself in step 5 of your communication with members of your organization.

Almost daily communication is pretty standard in this case, calls are frequent too (at least once a week) and this time flooding the other people with information is not only ok, but it’s actually a good thing to do: the ones who’ll end up managing/coordinating/leading the nonprofit will have to deal with amounts of data and info higher than what you could possibly tell them about. Communication overflow, even in random frequency or protocols/procedures, will train the person to deal with this and more.

My questions to you

Communication is your way to ensure a steady involvement of new members in your nonprofit. But this comes from my experience only, so now it’s time for some questions to you:

• How do/did you communicate with your team and with new potential members of your start up nonprofit?
• What issues are most common in such communication?
• How do you develop and maintain commitment through communication?
• Did anything of what I wrote makes sense to you? Can you relate with your personal experience?

I’d be really glad if you could all share your stories!