Pro Bono Board Development Resource

By Aaron Hurst on October 28, 2009 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After eight years, we finally had a successful board recruitment process last year. We had recruited great board members before, but the process was often confusing and painful.

A significant part of last year's recruitment success was due to the leadership of the chair of the committee, but the success was also the result of applying basic HR recruitment practices to the process.

The result was dramatic. We went from having a 2:1 ratio of candidates to elected members to having a 20:1 ratio and a more diverse pool of experience and background than ever before. We went from a process where existing members were afraid to make nominations given the lack of clear process and communication to a process where board members were pulling out the stops to nominate candidates. Finally, we developed a process where new members felt like it was a real honor to be selected to the board.

We were so inspired by this success that we decided to add a Board Recruitment Service Grant to our Leadership Development and Strategic HR Service Grant Practice launching this fall across our six cities.

We believe that nonprofits will greatly increase their recruitment effectiveness by having teams of seasoned HR professionals help them design robust and intentional processes.

Building and managing a board is one of the hardest parts of being the leader of a nonprofit. We hope this new Service Grant will help make it a little easier. I know it did for the Taproot Foundation.

If you are a nonprofit leader or board member interested in this new program, be sure to check out the Board Recruitment Service Grant for more details.

Nurture Shock

By Aaron Hurst on October 21, 2009 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Po Bronson's new book, which he penned with Ashley Merryman, is shockingly insightful. NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children walks through the latest research on parenting and education.

It reveals everything from how our fear of discussing race with kids makes race issues worse to how new pedagogies for pre-k and kindergarten have breakthrough results.

Taken on the whole and through a public policy lens, the book clearly lays out some major changes we could make to our education system that would have a tremendous impact. These suggestions, coupled with the learning from programs like KIPP that were described in Gladwell's Outliers, really start to create a clear picture of what our educational system should look like going forward.

It is incredibly encouraging to imagine the potential of our education system, but one worries that despite this knowledge, politics will prevent progress.

For example, NurtureShock points out that starting high school an hour later has a significant positive impact. This was reported at least ten years ago, yet many school districts haven't made the change. The reasons for this range from additional busing costs to teachers wanting to drive to work before rush hour.

As a father, the idea of my kids going to schools where the teachers and principal don't act on this knowledge is beyond frustrating. It feels like they are hurting my kids for no good reason.

The challenge is partially political and partly just a product of the change management process. We can't change all the schools as soon as a new study comes out.

Reason is no longer the basis for policy decisions. Since when is teaching science considered liberal?

Obama spoke to addressing this but it is not clear to what degree he will. Clinton once talked about how the solution to every social problem has been solved somewhere, we just need to find it and bring it to scale. Newt Gingrich even created a site to capture these ideas.

There needs to be a new media model that is a hybrid between the New York Times and Wikipedia. It would catalog 'what we know' about every issue that is related to public policy. It would be comprehensive and ever-green like Wikipedia but have the editorial oversight of a world class newspaper.

This new media model could serve as a database to help voters make informed decisions.  It would leave room for differences of opinion but not of facts.

This new media would need to be bi-partisan and able to report facts that are not popular. It would also have to be heavily marketed to have any power.

Bonded Pro Bono

By Aaron Hurst on October 14, 2009 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night I had a dream that I was serving on a panel at a big conference in Dallas. One of my fellow panelists announced that they had found the key to scaling pro bono- bonds.

The crowd loved the idea.

Waking up, I had no idea why they loved the idea or what it was for that matter. Bonds?

There are three types of bonds that I know of- the kind used to raise money (i.e. bond measure for schools), Barry Bonds (i.e. steroids and home runs), and social bonds (i.e. what keeps us connected).

None of these made any sense. What was my co-panelist proposing?

Then another option occurred to me. When you hire professional services for the home (e.g. cleaning, construction, etc.) you have the option of hiring 'bonded' services.

Could this be what the imagined fellow panelist meant?

This makes a little more sense. You hire a bonded service to mitigate risk. I'm not sure what risk it covers. Theft? Damage? Disappearing mid-job?

To save money I tend to go the non-bonded route so it isn't clear to me how it works. Is it having proven identification of employees (third-party verified), insurance in case of a problem, escrow funds to cover potential damages, or something else connected to bail bonds?

If only Robert Langdon were here to help break the code.

The general idea of bonded pro bono is interesting. Imagine a company says they will donate the services to build a web site that would cost you $100k to hire a firm to do for you otherwise. You're psyched, but you really need the site and are worried that they will flake and you will be left holding the bag.  Now assume that they will bond the project. They set aside $100k grant and say that if they don't get the site done to your satisfaction by a certain deadline, you get the money to buy the services. The level of trust goes way up. They are willing to back up their commitment. To bond it.

This would radically change the effectiveness of pro bono as it would increase nonprofit trust and require a deep commitment from the provider.

It would create a series of other issues, of course. Not least of which is that it would dry up the supply of pro bono.

The literal example here obviously doesn't work. The spirit it of it, however, is interesting. How do you make both parties feel like the project is bonded?

We do it in our Service Grants by guaranteeing completion assuming the client lives up to certain responsibilities. If the project blows up, we own cleaning it up and getting it back on track. This gives the pro bono consultants and clients the peace of mind needed to trust the process.

How can we replicate this trust outside our programs?

Water Envy

By Aaron Hurst on October 7, 2009 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Someone recently said that Charity:Water has the best marketing in the business (meaning nonprofit community). He may very well be right.

Their marketing works on so many levels. It is interactive. It is focused and presents a clear value proposition. It is energizing and makes you feel like you are part of a movement. Marketing is core to the design of everything they do and not a second thought as it is for most organizations.

At Charity: Water, the mission is super simple. Take US charitable dollars and leverage them in the developing world where the donor is astonished by the impact. It only takes a few dollars to change a life.

The value proposition is really shocking.  In a society where you have a $50 co-pay to visit a doctor about an acne flare up, the idea of saving ten lives for that same amount seems so exciting. In a society where it costs over a billion dollars to build a ballpark, it is exhilarating to pay $5000 to build a library for an entire village. It also makes a $5000 donor feel like a billionaire.

Nonprofits have been using this equation for generations. Before Charity: Water there was Room to Read, and before that there were all those Christian infomercials about adopting kids in Africa. Growing up, there were UNICEF boxes that showed how the $2.53 you raised would give a kid access to medicine. Donations to these charities demonstrate the compassion of our society but also show some kind of rejection of inflation in our lives where cost and value don't feel aligned.

Charity: Water gets this formula. Their innovation is not their product. It is marketing that they do better than anyone else. It may be the easiest value proposition to market, but they hit it out of the park.