Chapter 5

Your Team

1. Recruit Volunteers, Staff, and Everyone in Between

Having the right people is the most important part of any initiative. In social enterprise and nonprofit there is no difference; in fact, it is often even more important based on the slim budgets and the vital work that needs to be done.

To do this well, it is critical to find great people and keep them!

The advantage when finding and keeping these great people is that a nonprofit or social enterprise is doing dynamic work which is attractive to many people. The disadvantage is that typically the roles you are offering are voluntary and there are many nonprofits and social enterprises looking for the same people who are willing to give their time.

Most nonprofits and social enterprises have a variety of different roles. This is in part due to the fact that there is so much work to get done, but also with the understanding that a variety of roles opens up how many people can be a part of it.

If all of the roles required full-time, dedicated volunteers, the number of eligible people would dramatically decline. By offering variety you allow volunteers to be minimally to fully involved.

Here are some examples of roles that a nonprofit or social enterprise might need:

• Management and support

• Board of directors

• Patrons

• Volunteer boards of advisors

• Committees

• Ambassadors and community teams

• Peers

• Mentors (general and specific) and coaches (general and specific)

• Paid advisors

To lay the foundations of a growing organization, there needs to be people to support the infrastructure. Delegation is the key.

2. Define Roles, Recruit, Train, Retain, and Recognize!

Finding and keeping great people is the difference between a good and great organization. Understanding this and putting the pieces in place is an important step.

The key pieces to think about include:

• Define: What will the roles and their responsibilities be? Develop position descriptions.

• Recruit: How will you go about the process of attracting candidates and selecting the right ones?

• Train: Orient the resources and support team members to realize their optimal potential.

• Retain: Do the work to keep your employees and volunteers.

• Recognize: Develop ways in which you highlight and provide benefits for your team’s great work.

Managing human resources can be more complicated with the blend of both employees and volunteers. Not only do they behave and expect different things out of the relationship, but there is also a complicated interaction between employees and volunteers.

For example, one interesting dynamic is between the Board of Directors of a nonprofit and the Executive Director. The Executive Director is often the founder of the nonprofit and is heavily invested in the cause and future of the organization. He or she is deeply integrated in the daily operations and sometimes the sole employee of the organization. But it is the Board of Directors where approvals of larger expenses and future directions are made. This diffusion of the accountability from the responsibility can be frustrating for both parties.

To establish the team which is the core resource needed to execute the idea, there are steps to take, but you need to know how to take them, and resources to support these activities. This is all a lot of work! When first setting up your team, you should make a plan of who you need to spend the effort to recruit.

3. Who Is Your Team?

Based on your needs you can build this team over a period of time and may not require all members at once. Imagine trying to find and train all of these people at the same time. Recognize that for scalability and growth, it makes sense to be strategic and patient in building this foundation. Not to mention that financially it isn’t feasible to scale all at once! Never forget that your most important resource is and always will be your people.

So who do you need? Who should you be considering and in what order?

3.1 Management and support team

The initial employee is the president (in a social enterprise) or an executive director (within a nonprofit). These are the people with the initial passion and drive to get the idea off the ground. They might have come up with the idea or had a personal experience with the issue they are addressing.

A core team member is one who is interested in social good and wants to participate with a group to define and solve a problem with a solution that will achieve measureable results for the parties impacted. The igniter is the person who starts the activity by talking to others who may have an interest and passion about participating in a group session. The members could meet on an informal basis to define the first steps.

Usually the first hire after the leader is a virtual assistant or a volunteer coordinator. Depending on finances this might start off as a few hours a week or a contract role.

After the start-up phase the core team of employees and volunteers will have been recruited to grow the organization to the next level or to maintain the existing operations in a sustainable way. As there is stability, there is often a need to grow the staffing infrastructure of the team. Additional key future contract team members might be:

• Marketing: A communications, marketing, sales, and media director responsible for building the brand name, revenue streams, and media messaging. The larger the organization, the more that this department and function will grow. The more funding that is raised by a nonprofit or social enterprise, the more positive impact will be created. Large hospital foundations typically have a majority of their staff working in this functional area.

• Human resources: A human resources and volunteer management director who will be responsible for employees, contractors, and volunteers and their recruitment, training, retention, and recognition. Having someone dedicated to the most important resource of the organization just makes sense. The number of people in this function could increase.

• Strategy and partnerships: A research and development role or partnership role will be responsible for product and project management, and partnership and supplier collaboration. This group would help support the executive director in future planning and helping to bring together the pieces that make this possible.

There are many other functional areas that would also evolve, similarly to a for-profit or other organization including finance, operations, and program teams.

3.2 Board of directors

The board will start as an operations board and over time transition to a governance board responsible for policy, governance, fiduciary matters, supervision of the management team, approving the strategic plan, approving major initiatives or expenditures, and opening doors to new relationships within the network. With this in mind, you are looking for multitalented individuals who can handle this responsibility while being flexible enough to work with.

Finding a board of directors that understands the new economy and social enterprise as a strategy to leverage in the nonprofit space is important.

Based on the importance of tapping into the board’s network, it is good to have members of the board who are connected in almost any sector including corporate, government, academic, and others in the social sector (nonprofit, charities, social enterprise, foundations, etc.).

The board of directors for a charity or nonprofit should be volunteers. Liability insurance should be investigated and a plan purchased to ensure protection of the directors.

In the beginning a board of directors acts as an operations board. An operations board means that the team would aid in day-to-day tasks. They work closely with the executive director in helping to get the initiative off the ground. They most likely have a personal relationship with the founder of the organization and would have similar passion in the initiative. They would help with recruitment and fundraising, as well as meeting regularly to discuss future direction and the status updates of the growth. The meetings would be rather ad hoc at this stage and the full complement of board members may not yet be recruited.

Eventually the board would transition into a governance board which is no longer involved in the daily operations. This change will take some time as the responsibilities change to more oversight, strategic planning, policy, and decision-making.

At this point the board should be more structured and include the following roles:

• Chair: The board’s leader who runs the meetings and might even have a tie-break voting power.

• Vice Chair: Support of the leader and a back-up for when the Chair is not available.

• Secretary/Treasurer: Records the notes of the meetings and ensures that the format is followed as well as documented.

• Others: There are often two to four other directors with various backgrounds to balance out the board.

Meetings would be organized on a regular time schedule of either monthly or quarterly, with an agenda and supporting material. Typically the meetings would be to review the progress of the organization but also to help the management in making strategic decisions on problems and opportunities.

3.3 Patrons

These are individuals who support the vision, mission, and objectives of the organization by lending their name, title, and organization. In some situations, you may ask for a letter or a testimonial comment or a video.

When launching the social initiative, just like with any start-up, it is important to build credibility. “Fake it ’til you make it” works for social organizations just as it does with a for-profit start-up. For-profits need to act like they are a bigger and more established business for larger potential customers to consider them. They might create fancy titles, use references from previous employers rather than just past customers, and try other tactics. For a social initiative, patrons want to be associated with winners and this image needs to be portrayed prior to all of the results being realized.

To have some of your first patrons it is important to start with existing relationships that you or your board of directors have. Provide any information about any successes that you have had to date. Based on the size of your organization, small success is something to celebrate. For example:

• Have you had an event that has drawn a large audience?

• Do you have stories of the clients that have received the social benefit? What did they say about the work that you are doing? Has it been on social media?

• Do you have other patrons or could your board provide support for why a new patron should be interested in formally supporting?

Individuals who wish to be a patron for the cause may not want to be active but support the cause by way of a video or text testimonial.

Growing this group is important to expand your network. Although the patrons are important in themselves, their network holds even more potential.

Quickly it becomes important to have a communication strategy with the patrons. This could be via either or both a newsletter or a semi-annual update of progress and achievements.

3.4 Volunteer board of advisors

Boards of advisors are a way to engage critical people into the strategic decisions without involving them in fiduciary duty. As they are not a formal board of directors they don’t have the liability of making the decisions, but they are given the responsibility to be part of the process. See Sample 11 for how you might separate the expertise.

Sample 11: Advisory Boards Detail

This is a great way to extend the voice to a larger audience to gain sales leads and referrals and get free advice on problems and opportunities.

Boards of advisors will give the organization a unique perspective. In the beginning stages the time to set this up and run these meetings may outweigh the benefits that are realized. When to set these up will be based on this delicate balance.

As the organization grows, having boards of advisors becomes more important as the management becomes further removed from the grassroots and more disconnected from the landscape.

Some types of advisory boards include:

• Customers: Having a group of customers that discusses their concerns and feedback directly to the organization helps it to be more responsive to the customers’ needs.

• Partners: How do your partners like working with you? What could be improved? Also, with the partners meeting with each other through this forum there could be even more connections made. Simply being on the board of advisors could be a benefit of working with you.

• Volunteers: How are the volunteers feeling? Are they being appreciated? Are there ideas percolating at the grassroots that could be implemented?

• Business: Specialists in areas such as marketing, finance, technology, and program development can add value from a different lens.

Each board of advisors should be composed of at least five individuals to ensure that there is diversity in the perspectives. Also, when the entire group agrees, this is something that is validated and should be considered immediately. The format is that a staff from the organization should listen and take notes. The advisors are encouraged to speak openly by providing input and suggestions to the organization.

Short and frequent meetings are recommended. One structure could be monthly meetings for only 25 minutes. To ensure that there is quality in the information from the advisors, it is recommended to only have one agenda item each month. These meetings don’t always have to be face-to-face, and considering web conferencing or other technology solutions such as Skype or FaceTime is a good idea. There could be additional emails, but it is important to limit this and help keep down the time commitment of these volunteers. For example, a maximum of two emails and two phone calls per month.

3.5 Committees

Committees can be set up based on the people that can be recruited. Usually the first committee is marketing, to help grow the fundraising and recruitment of future volunteers. The executive director and staff typically would handle the other committee functions until the size permits otherwise. (See Sample 12.)

Sample 12: Committees Details

As the initiative grows in momentum and size, the number of committees will also increase. The names and objectives of committees will vary. Each should have a Chair and a Vice Chair as this not only ensures that there is responsibility, but this is seen as a benefit for some of the volunteers that could leverage these roles on their résumés. Often the committee is a combination of more regular volunteers and more ad hoc volunteers.

The following are committee suggestions and include some key responsibilities. Each would require development of policies, processes, forms, and procedures to include in an operations guide to help inform existing and new team members:

• Marketing: Communication is needed to grow the initiative. Communication is with existing and future customers, partners, volunteers, donors, employees, or patrons. This committee focuses on the messaging and all of the tactical ways to get the message out there. With online options expanding, this committee becomes more important and there is more work that needs to be done in this area.

• Finance: This committee focuses on financial support to ensure the financial viability of the organization. This would include financial planning, monitoring, and sourcing.

• Human resources: As recognized in this chapter, human resources have a lot of infrastructure work that is necessary to ensure that there are sufficient staff and volunteers to make the necessary difference.

• Administration: This committee supports the day-to-day administration, operations, technology and legal aspects of the enterprise. These are the critical pieces that allow everyone to make the difference. Part of their mandate is to ensure effective processes at the least possible cost.

• Research and development: This committee should actively search for alliances as well as investigate future opportunities in products, services, programs, and events. There may also be research done in support of the cause and for future communication. Often in the nonprofit space these publications would be shared with similar or related organizations.

3.6 Ambassadors and community teams

Having people passionate about the cause is the most important thing. Sometimes society doesn’t openly recognize that the cause exists or it doesn’t understand the full negative impact that is currently in existence. Having people actively promoting the cause is hugely beneficial to growing an organization’s momentum.

Ambassadors are those individuals who are passionate about the cause and encourage others to be part of the movement. Community teams are clusters of these ambassadors working together.

Ambassadors are like patrons, but they are typically more motivated and involved as individuals in the work of the organization. Often, they have been impacted firsthand, have a loved one impacted, or have seen the impact and have been affected. So they are more than willing to promote the organization through presentations, word of mouth, social media, emails or letters, videos, and their personal stories, participation at events, interviews, or writing blogs or articles.

Having these individuals become part of your movement by providing an action for them or by communicating with them will help to build the network and awareness. The organization most likely wants to email or mail these people information directly and collect information on them and how to better support them. They have the responsibility in a geographic service area for communicating messages, recruiting volunteers, and identifying other supporters.

A single ambassador is worth more than a volunteer, as they’ll probably bring in more volunteers. Treat them well and have a strategy to communicate with them.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter.com is a platform that allows organizations to be supported by the community. Sometimes an organization presells their products through the platform. Sometimes there are bonus gifts for giving to the organization early. An author might pledge to name a character in the book after someone who donates more than $1,000 to the initiative. Social initiatives that use this platform could provide special thank-yous for early support.

The community that invests in the social initiatives on Kickstarter get very engaged, and should be a way to recruit and connect with some of the first ambassadors.

As the number of ambassadors increases, there is an opportunity to connect them with each other. This is the emergence of Community teams.

Community teams are stronger than ambassadors as they work together and support each other in their work. Having a strategy to tie these individuals together is the next step.

Earth Rangers

Earth Rangers is a nonprofit organization that raises funds to support endangered animals and habitats. They work with schools to do animal shows and information sessions. At these sessions, students that are passionate about the environment are easily identified and encouraged to join the online community of Earth Rangers. The online platform encourages the youth to communicate the importance of the Earth Rangers campaign with their networks and raise funds. These youth are given additional information and online access to each other, creating a powerful network of ambassadors.

3.7 Peers

The peers within the sector have a lot to offer. Unlike other sectors, the social sector is extremely collaborative and open to sharing learnings with each other.

Learning from others who have already traveled your path can be extremely enlightening. Finding a networking group that gathers or simply attending sector events is helpful in learning and making these connections.

Ideally, a group of five or more organizations’ leadership could meet monthly for about 30 minutes to share information, ideas, problems, and opportunities in a free-flowing discussion format.

3.8 Mentors and/or coaches

Having a mentor or coach during the start-up phase is helpful in keeping the executive director on track and being accountable to short-term goals that are created. The first few months can be quite emotional with great wins but a lot of setbacks. Having someone that the executive director can speak to about both emotional and organizational concerns can be extremely helpful.

As the organization grows, it is beneficial to have a leadership coach to help the executive director and management in growing their skill sets and managing the growing staff and volunteers.

3.9 Paid advisors

Being frugal and lean during the start-up stage is important, although there are some paid advisors that might be needed. For example, setting up the organization and incorporating it often benefits from a professional lawyer, accountant, insurance agent, technology person (website and social media), and banker.

As the organization grows, so will the need for specialized advice, such as the following:

• Auditing: In the first few years, the financials don’t necessarily have to be audited but that changes as the operating budget increases and there are more stakeholders to report to.

• Legal support: Having a law firm that intimately understands your organization is helpful. If a problem arises, you want to minimize how long it takes to ramp up your legal advisor on the basics of the organization. As the organization grows, so will legal concerns. It becomes more financially beneficial to have a lawyer on retainer once a critical mass has been met.

• Bookkeeping: Keeping up-to-date records, especially with the number of transactions, quickly becomes something that could be outsourced.

• Technology and security: Technology in a growing organization quickly becomes more complicated and time consuming for the team. Luckily with technological advances there are affordable solutions for service providers.

Insurance and banking specialists are also beneficial to have on your side. Although these services are not in addition to the banking fees and insurance premiums, building a relationship with these individuals is helpful in the long run.

The key is that the number of people in the organization needs to be balanced with the financial sustainability of the organization. If there are a growing number of volunteers, there needs to be the management to support this in training and communications.

Define who you need to develop the social innovation and develop brief position descriptions of your core team.

Once you have a plan of who is needed, the recruitment of these people is next.

4. Recruitment

Now that the organization realizes who it needs to have on board to be successful, it must find these people.

4.1 The job description

In the social sector, the job description is much more than just a job description. It is a marketing tool.

It can’t be assumed that everyone wants to work for your organization. Although the cause is great and there are good opportunities, the first thing to do is create a job posting that makes this apparent. In recruitment, you need to market the position just as much as the candidates need to market themselves. In fact, for volunteer roles, your ability to market the position is even more important.

How do you create this messaging? Think like the participants. Why would they wish to volunteer or work with your organization? It is often because they are able to realize benefits that are more than just the monetary benefits. For employees, the average position in nonprofit is paid less than the average position in for-profit, so there needs to be other reasons why people elect to work in the sector. For volunteers, this is even more apparent.

Participants must be provided with a clear list of measurable benefits. The job description should include:

• Cause information: What is the cause all about? What is the negative impact that is happening? How many people are being impacted? The importance of the cause needs to be illustrated clearly.

• Organizational information: How is the organization addressing the problem? Is there something that is unique about the organization and what are the positive impacts that have already been created?

• Time commitment: How much time is needed? Is this a contract, full-time, part-time, or volunteer position?

• Benefits: Include the list of benefits (beyond monetary).

4.2 Recruiting the core group

How do you reach people that might want to work or volunteer for your organization?

You need to start with a core group of supporters. This will get the momentum started. Informally ask family, friends, and associates if they would like to meet to discuss a social innovation idea and use an informal agenda to discuss a problem and parties impacted, and some areas of possible solutions. This could include the use of a mind-mapping exercise and a problem-solving approach.

Action: Talk informally about a problem, and who is impacted, with family, friends, and associates and ask if they would like to meet to discuss.

The social innovation starts with an individual or small team with an idea to solve a problem that has been identified. This leads to the formation of a core group who want to explore the viability of the solution or solutions ideas through research and feasibility analysis, including validation that the solutions meet the needs of the impacted parties, and that someone is willing to pay, subsidize, sponsor, or fund.

Action: Core team begins to define the structure of the enterprise and recruit others to develop mini position descriptions and determine places to post for recruitment. Training, retention, and recognition must be planned.

Assuming a positive outcome, the next step will be the building of an infrastructure to further develop and plan the organization. In some circumstances this may require the recruitment and hiring, on a part-time basis, of a virtual assistant and a volunteer management coordinator. In most cases you will be seeking volunteers who have skills, knowledge, experience, or want to develop competencies to support their jobs/careers or desire to learn and apply.

4.3 External recruitment

Who else do you need? With the core group in place you are now able to do a broader recruitment strategy. With the job descriptions ready to be posted, it is time to research several sources where you can post volunteer and contract jobs. Part of this research is to read and understand the terms and conditions, and the fees if required.

Some places to research include:

• Volunteer centers

• Corporate CSR and in-kind

• Academic institutions

• Small-business centers

• Start-up weekends (immersing yourself in it for a weekend)

• Social innovation challenges

• MakerSpace which is a space where people can build things with the tools that are there (spaces.makerspace.com)

• Boards of Trade/Chambers of Commerce, business improvement associations

• Other business associations

• Charities and not-for-profits

Action: Research individuals and organizations who can assist with recruitment of the team.

As recruitment is a part of marketing, consider using unique ways to attract volunteers or employees. One example is a postcard or eflier.

Remember to keep a database of contacts that you have used for recruitment including connected individuals, academic institutions, incubators/accelerators, business groups and clubs/organizations, volunteer centers, and patrons. This will help you in the future as you continue to recruit and grow.

As revenue grows, additional part-time resources may be defined, recruited, and trained to meet growth needs.

5. Training

Training involves orientation training for those who are onboard, and then ongoing training to advance the knowledge and skills of team members. Both are critical.

5.1 Orientation training

Orientation training ensures that new volunteers and employees are productive as quickly as possible. It has also been demonstrated that good orientation improves the chance that people will be retained as they have a positive first impression. Depending on the different roles, the orientation training could be quick and on the job, or it could involve intense off-site work and job shadowing.

All contract employees and volunteers must be provided with orientation training. Sample 13 includes excerpts from the whole operations guide which includes policies, processes, procedures, and forms, such as:

• Soft skills includes leadership, communication, and working with others in a team. It is all of the interpersonal skills that are needed for success in a social initiative.

• Technical skills is all of the specific expertise needed for functional areas, specific technologies, or other specific skills.

• Cross-committee sessions is to have an understanding of projects, programs, and events that require members from one or more committees or input.

Sample 13: Orientation Training

5.2 Ongoing training

Ongoing training is important not only for continuous development of the staff and volunteers, but it also helps them with their own professional development goals. By providing a budget for this, the organization can benefit from the improved skill set of the individual, but it also helps with retention as the individual is treated well and will appreciate this perk.

Ongoing training should be specific, based on both the needs of the organization as well as the needs of the individual. There often are annual discussions between the manager and the individual to craft the professional development goals for the year and the budget can be allocated for this.

5.3 Training methods

With technology and new training mechanisms available, there are more opportunities for good training to be made available to the organization at a reasonable cost:

• In-person training: Face-to-face training is critical when the subject is intensive and requires hands-on learning and interaction.

• One-on-one coaching: Ongoing support through coaching is beneficial for more complex, interpersonal skill development.

• Online training and webinars: This allows for access to experts around the world, training based on the individual’s ability, and often is available at a lower price point. Webinars are often smaller chunks of content that can be available from a wide variety of speakers. The topics can be very niche and also involve participant interaction.

• Conferences: Conferences can have a variety of topics that can be selected based on the individual’s interest. The added benefits are the networking opportunities and the quality of the speakers (often quite high). Participants can bring information back to the organization and provide in-person and written summaries of learnings that could be applied.

6. Retention

Retention involves strategies to communicate to motivate people to continue to be part of the team.

Management, the board, advisors, and committees must develop and apply a variety of techniques to retain employees and volunteers to ensure organizational sustainability. Some tactics include:

• Reinforcing the benefits.

• Regular communication that provides updates and stories of success.

• Regular involvement in decision making and making sure voices are being heard.

• Interaction with each other.

• Ongoing training and skills updates.

• Cross-committee sessions includes the ongoing communication of different parties to ensure that all voices are heard.

• Increasing responsibility or remuneration.

• Recognition! This is one of the most understated of them all.

Any way to build community and connection between people involved in the cause will help with retention. We are going to spend a bit more time on recognition, based on its importance.

7. Recognition

Recognition is all about showing people that they make a difference not only as team members, but to those impacted by the contributions they make.

All employees and volunteers must be recognized for their contributions to the organization in several different ways. This can be in person or in written form, or by way of a small gift or an award, or a thank-you. Some specific examples include:

• Letter from the chair of the board or executive director.

• Certificate of achievement or time committed.

• Pin, ribbon, medal, or other physical thank you.

• Mug, hat, T-shirt, or other promotional products

• Recognition at events through award ceremony or the name on the program

• Website and social media recognition of the person’s work. One way is not enough. Recognition uses a variety of tools and techniques to support the contributions of the people involved. The more forms and methods used the better it will be for the team.