My name is Julie Macalik and I am the new Service Excellence Specialist at Greenlights! I am responsible for ensuring that all Greenlights members, and others in the nonprofit community, consistently experience a high level of customer service in all of their interactions with us.  Additionally, I manage the membership program and oversee registration and logistics for all of our events. Working for Greenlights is a dream come true for me! It allows me to work with so many fantastic organizations and do what I am passionate about – plan, analyze, coordinate, improve processes and meet new people!

I absolutely love to make lists and doing my best to get ready for the future. So, I was fully prepared for my interviews, I handled my employment transition with ease, but on my first day of work I found myself asking, what now? As the newest member of the team I knew I had to think fast and come up with an action plan. After my first week I was able to:

1. Inform my current network. I updated my facebook and LinkedIn profile with my new employment information and of course tweeted the good news to my friends and family.
2. Add to my reading list. One of my colleagues recommended that I read, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels and Ann Starr added Good to Great to my reading list.  Haila, our new Marketing and Outreach Manager, set up a Listening Dashboard for Greenlights’ staff so we can keep up-to-date on Greenlights and nonprofit-related chatter in our community.
3. Expand my network. I put together a list of great organizations in Austin to get involved with and am looking forward to attending future events:  Austin Young Chamber of Commerce, Austin Jaycees (Austin Junior Chamber), Young Women’s Alliance, The Junior League of Austin , Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Austin, and the Leadership Austin Emerge Program.
4. Expect the unexpected. Within my first two weeks I managed to jam our printer, crash my computer, learn a new CRM system, and post my first professional blog entry.
5. Say thank you. I sent my previous co-workers and my references thank you notes for all of their encouragement and assistance during this process. I also thanked my new team for welcoming me with open arms and for all of their support!

Do you have any book or blog recommendations, general advice, or tips and resources for me?  I would love to hear about your entrance into the nonprofit sector in Austin and your first few weeks at a new job.

Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Julie

We’ve been in something of a hiring frenzy here at Greenlights over the past few months.  When the dust settles, and the printer cartridge gets replaced, we’ll have reviewed almost 300 application packages to bring 3 new, fantastic hires on board.

Having reviewed almost all of those nearly 300 candidate info packets (and I’ve got the eye strain to prove it), I’ve seen a tremendous number of “who is this again?” and quite a few “what were you thinking?!?” applications in the mix.

Perhaps effectively applying for a job in the nonprofit sector is a lost art?  I don’t know, but I was struck by how many folks neglected to do the basics, like:

1. Use your cover letter to sell your self
2. Connect your skills, experiences and passion back to the job description
3. Structure your resumé so it clearly shows off how your work and volunteer experiences match what the organization is looking for

Turns out I’m not the only one bothered and bewildered by the lack of effective candidate presentation in the job applicant pool these days. 

After a recent hiring process, my colleague Amy Price, Grants Manager at Bat Conservation International, decided that rather than quietly kvetch with her co-workers, she’d actually offer those candidates some feedback, in the hopes they’d find more success in the future.

She shared her letter to candidates with me, and I found it so powerful I’m excerpting her seven main observations in full:

1. “When I send a grant application (you want a job, I want funding…so there is a lot to learn here) I try to address any obvious challenges/obstacles in my cover letter.  If I’m sending a request for funds for a project called “Bats of Mexico” to a nonprofit in Missouri—I suspect their first thought is, “Not our area—move along.”  My opening line will address this—because I know there’s a gap. 

 Dear Foundation Director,

I know that an application called “Bats of Mexico” will, at a glance, seem like a reach for your trustees to consider—as the bulk of your funding is spent on projects that improve the lives of residents of Missouri—but the bats of Missouri (critical to pest management for regional farmers and nurserymen and a vital part of many of Missouri’s diverse ecosystems) winter in Mexico.  Without urgently needed conservation efforts on the other end of YOUR BATS’ migratory corridor—there may come a day when many bats fail to return to Missouri to provide their unique services.  The pest management that bats offer reduces the use of toxic chemicals on the landscape, chemicals that seep down into the water systems enjoyed for recreation, consumption and tourism dollars.”

See what I’ve done?  I’ve anticipated the question, “Why?” and answered it as fast as possible.  When I read some of the cover letters and resumes that came to me it caused me to ask “Why?” quite often.  If someone has decided to leave teaching (based on a resume with a lot of fantastic teaching credentials) I wondered why?  If someone has put the time and investment into securing a Ph.D. level education in a field—and they applied to work in my seemingly non-related office, I wondered why?  What link do they see that I don’t?  Telling me (or any reader) the answer to the obvious contradiction can make a WORLD of difference.

2.  Typos.  I make them.  We all do.  Still, do you want them in a cover letter and (worse) in a resume you send to a lot of readers?  Emails are always a risk because I may not have spell check in place.  This being said, many of the typos were GLARING and made me wonder, careless or poor speller?  I set aside a larger stack of “possible interviews” to share with my colleagues for input—and more than one person marked typos.  As simple as this seems—it can really cost an applicant in a job market like this one where there are so many candidates.

 3.  Layout.  I know we don’t all have the best computers (I work in a nonprofit office—my computer is older than some of you!) and the different places we send materials will open them on their computers—so you should print out your materials and see how they look.  I had resumes that didn’t print properly—the margins were so wide that everything was thrown off and I had to really struggle to find things.  Same with unique fonts.  If I don’t have that font, my computer goes with something basic that may not look so nice.  With more than 80 sets of material to review, I found myself spending the most time and attention on those that looked the neatest.  This has nothing to do with the cost of what you sent—I printed everything on plain white paper.  Still, the tidiest materials were my favorites.

4.  Using a cover letter or resume template.  Hmmmnnn.  Well, I suppose it can be a great way to start getting accustomed to sending materials, but at some point you might want to trust yourself to send something from the heart.  I hope “objectives” are clear in your letter, so telling me you want to bring your skills to my workplace seems like canned language.  Take a chance and tell me what you really want. 

 5.  Previous employment.  2 of my top 5 had virtually none.  There’s value in education, employment and any combination of these.  BUT IF YOU ARE GOING TO TELL ME YOU WORKED SOMEWHERE, GIVE ME A START AND END month and year.  I don’t need dates—but if you just put 2008 I wonder if you were there for such a short time you don’t want to put it in writing.  A short stay can always be overcome with an explanation in an interview, but you may not get an interview if it looks like you are trying to blur lines on a resume.  We are all human and have interesting paths that bring us places, and I think the absence of a few dates is more of a negative than a positive.

6.  Email addresses.  This was something new for me to consider—people who used an email address that was a little “personal” for a business letter.  You have every right to use what suits you—but think about what total strangers (and possible employers) might think about an application from someone who uses an email like lovetheboys@aol or kissyface@aol or yummybooty@aol–think about it.  Workplaces have to be careful to maintain professional and appropriate behaviors to avoid anyone’s discomfort—or a lawsuit.  I have to wonder just how much “workplace etiquette training” will be needed for someone who asked me to contact them at an email address that looks like it belongs to a preteen or a porn star.  I think anyone can register for a free, professional email account at yahoo or other service provider.

 7.  The extra mile.  The job posting only asked for a cover letter and resume—but there were a handful of applicants who sent a letter of reference as well.  Two even sent a second letter, with more personal information, during the gap when I was out of office.  This created some internal conflict for me—I was impressed in spite of myself but didn’t want to do anything that might not give full credit to those applicants that followed the exact instructions.  After thinking for 24 hours, I decided that the candidates that did something EXTRA that I liked (the transcripts did seem a bit much…) were people who REALLY wanted to catch my attention and that’s what I want in a colleague.  So this is something to know—if everyone posting jobs is getting as many great candidates as I did—this might be the time to go the extra mile and send something more.  Two of my five interviews had done so.  It might not have mattered for one of them, but for the second it was so earnest that it got someone from the big stack to the short stack and in the door.”

What do you think of Amy’s 7 observations?  Do you have any other tips, words of wisdom, or horror stories from the land of hiring, or job searching?

Guest post by David Davenport, Executive Director at Capital Area Food Bank

This week, I had the opportunity to sit with our Capital Area Food Bank finance committee to discuss our 2009/2010 operating budget. It wasn’t the most enjoyable conversation. Now, don’t get me wrong, our board members were highly engaged and very supportive during the budget process and the discussion at our recent meeting. But a conversation that should be about building resources and funding long-term goals of the organization became an exercise in high-level problem solving. It’s going to be a tough year.

As the conversation progressed, the areas of investment were scrutinized to ensure organizational and community return on investment. The annual conversation about our organization’s commitment (and my personal commitment) to the growth and development of staff was a difficult one, to say the least.

But I was ready for the question: In tough times, how can an organization like CAFB (or any other organization) invest so heavily in training, conferences and overall staff development. I was so ready. I had spent hours the night before preparing my answer. Want to hear it?

How can we afford not to?

What are the benefits to having a career in the social sector? Some of the obvious are a sense of fulfillment, personal growth through service, and the opportunity to meet and engage both the best people a community has to offer and those most in need. Mixed in among the reasons social sector work is valuable is the training, the networking, the collaboration and the chance to participate in growth opportunities not available in the private or public sectors. If staff leaders of our local social sector organizations remove or seriously reduce their training and conference budgets for the sake of balancing this year’s budget, they should understand they will only be adding future costs. Those costs include replacing employees who feel their development is not an organizational priority, losing the productivity of better-trained employees, and the costs of not embracing trends or being aware of trends in technology, communication, fund development and more. I will paraphrase the old muffler commercial by saying you pay for training today or you pay for problems later. Invest smartly. Send your team and future leaders to this year’s Crossroads Conference. We’ll see you there.

Guest post by Laura Bosworth-Bucher

It has only been a short 6 months since I ventured into the world of retirement.  So many people have said to me “you are too young to retire.”  Of course the right answer to that is “thank you.”

But seriously, I spent 20 years in the corporate world and am grateful for the amazing opportunities I was given to work across many groups and to learn so much about business.  However, I felt it was the right time in my life to give back to my community and make a positive impact for those less fortunate than me.

My semi-retirement has been a whirlwind of learning as I have become deeply involved in various non-profit groups. There are so many differences in how the corporate world works compared to a non-profit organization, and yet there are some deep similarities. Let’s focus on one really crucial thing in common: loyalty. Loyalty is the heartbeat of most corporations – keeping customers coming back year after year.  Gee, that sounds just like the goal for fundraising – to create loyal donors that come back year after year. So are there things that non-profits can learn from the corporate approach to loyalty? Absolutely.

It seems that many companies (and non-profits) focus a great deal on the idea of what makes customers (or donors) loyal. For example, the donor may be passionate about a health improvement mission due to a personal experience. However, there is research that indicates over half of first time givers will not give again. Yikes. Why is this happening? Clearly there was something appealing about your cause that attracted a person to give the first time. You already jumped over the biggest hurdle. It is well known that the first time buyer is far more expensive as it relates to marketing than repeat buyers, and research into non-profit organizations indicates the same trends. Well, we often see that these same organizations frequently ignore the small things that are the primary reasons customers quit buying, donors quit giving, and volunteers quit helping. So does your organization understand what might be happening to drive donors and volunteers away? What if there were a few inexpensive changes you could make that would dramatically increase the loyalty of all your individual donors, big and small alike? Wouldn’t you want to know?

Greenlights has given me a wonderful chance to share my corporate management and strategy experience with more non-profit organizations than I could possibly do own my own. How? We have teamed up to bring a fun new workshop to you titled Using Customer Experience Concepts to Improve your Fundraising and Volunteer Effectiveness. The workshop takes place next Wednesday, so register now!

Want to know what’s going on in the world of nonprofits? Here’s a snapshot:

• Survey Finds Majority of U.S. Companies Increased Giving in 2008

• Finding Leaders for America’s Nonprofits

• Are Charity Leaders Ignoring a Spike in Nonprofit Fraud?

• Change the World in Your Pajamas

• Harvard Business School Grads Promise to “Serve the Greater Good”

• Poor Americans Are Country’s Most Charitable Demographic

• How Microlending Helps Communities

• Nonprofit Groups Might Find 6,300 is a Crowd (based on a study by Greenlights’ current Executive Director, Matt Kouri and Deborah Edward, our founding ED)

Read more nonprofit news here.

What’s happening in the nonprofit world this month:

• Philanthropists hold secret meeting to discuss strategies for giving

• Pledging dollars per pound: Patricia Wilson’s fundraising (and weight loss) campaign

• 20 of the Top Nonprofits to Follow on Twitter

• Robin Hood Foundation Raises $72 Million at Scaled-Down Benefit

• Kids are doing their part:
  • The 5-year-old humanitarian
  • Florida boy walks to D.C. for homeless kids

• Charity Tuesday Takes Off On Twitter

And more…

Thanks to this nifty resource discovered by our own Kimberly Caldwell, here are some links to recent nonprofit-related goings on around the country. Enjoy!

• President Obama signed the Serve America Act on Tuesday

• Are Facebook Causes effective? The Washington Post says no. The Chronicle of Philanthropy and social media guru Beth Kanter disagree.

• Volunteer Time Was Worth More Than $20 an Hour Last Year

• USA Today (with the help of good2gether) launches Sharing section dedicated to the latest stories about people helping others through charities, non profits, and philanthropies

• Survey Finds Half of US Nonprofts Expect the Recession to Have Long-Term or Permanent Negative Effects on their Organizations

• Mystery donor(s) gives over $45M to 9 universities

• Ashton Kutcher Pledges To Fight Malaria; Wins Twitter Battle Royale

By Andrew Moultrie, Greenlights Consulting Intern

Two things I’ve experienced while interning at Greenlights are the importance of having your mission in mind during all of your decisions and always thinking of your “next steps.” Whether they know it or not, the staff at Greenlights lives off their mission and their plan to put it into action.

In life, it’s always good to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Just take time to think about what your motivation is behind your actions and ensure that this is where you want to be. Half-way into my sophomore year, after getting queasy at the sight of someone’s wound, it hit me that I really didn’t want to be a doctor. Sure, I had spent hours on Organic Chemistry and Cellular Biology since I had been at UT, but I realized where I was headed really wasn’t what I wanted to become. After that semester, I dropped Pre-Med and focused on Business Management; I have been MUCH happier ever since.

Once you figure out your mission, it’s vital that you write down your “next steps” to get there. At Greenlights, I hear this term seemingly everyday. “What are your next steps on the Diagnostic?” “Let’s meet and talk about our next steps for the IED interviews.” Soon, I began thinking in this same pattern and after work everyday I write down my “next steps” for the following day, as well as go over my long-term “next steps” for my internship.

If nothing else, keeping our mission in mind and knowing my “next steps” in whatever project I’m working on keep me driven to perform.  With every action I accomplish, I not only see how I am contributing to Greenlights, but how I can truly be a catalyst for extraordinary nonprofit performance. And that is our mission, after all.

Calling all Central Texas nonprofits! Don’t miss the opportunity to recruit new board members at our spring Board Summit.

Just a few benefits of participating:

• A booth in the NonProfit Gallery, providing the opportunity to meet over 100 individuals the business community who are interested in board service
• Greenlights Nominations Toolkit and sample board profile worksheet to help you identify the types of people you need on your board and to make networking with prospective board members more strategic
• The opportunity to participate in a free, one hour Board Summit Strategy Session hosted by Matt Kouri, Greenlights Executive Director, in the week preceding the event (date and location TBD)

Download the application and submit it to Mary Alice Carnes by 5:00 pm today. Visit our website to learn more.