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5 Questions to Ask in the Nonprofit Interview Process

November 4, 2024 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post from Stephanie Sparks of Employ

Talent acquisition strategies rely heavily on the interview process because they’re the best way to understand each candidate’s qualifications, skills, and personality in their own words. In fact, interviews have only become more important to nonprofit recruitment teams, with most jobs requiring two to four interviews for each role.

To make an informed hiring decision, you must make interviews as productive as possible to ensure you have everything you need—and the questions you ask can make or break the process. Let’s review top questions that gauge candidates’ capabilities and commitment to your mission, as well as how to curate questions that are best for your hiring needs.

Questions to Ask in the Nonprofit Interview Process

1. Why are you interested in our organization and work?

Nonprofits account for only one in 10 jobs in the overall workforce, so there’s usually a specific reason applicants seek out these opportunities. Understanding candidates’ motives for working with nonprofits provides insight into their personalities, passions, and career goals.

Here are some common motivations for working with nonprofits:

  • An enthusiasm for a specific organization’s mission
  • A general desire to make a difference
  • Opportunities to develop new skills
  • Ability to make community connections

Pay close attention to how candidates answer this question—it can tell you how serious they are about nonprofit work and whether they’d be a good addition to your team.

2. What do you know about our mission?

This question is fundamental for building relationships with donors and spreading awareness of your programs, giving you insight into their natural inclinations or affinities with your work. That’s why it’s also a great question to ask in the recruitment process, as it helps you understand who will stick with your organization for its mission.

Candidates who have a personal connection to your mission are more likely to stay with your nonprofit long-term and be engaged with their work.

3. What new skills are you hoping to develop through this role?

If you’re hiring for a specific role, you should have written a job description that includes daily responsibilities, required qualifications, and more. However, some organizations hire people generally before placing them in an open role, and that’s where this question comes into play.

For an effective recruiting cadence, confirm that candidates aren’t just a good match for your nonprofit—they should also be excited about their specific roles. Asking this question empowers the candidate to communicate their expectations for you as an employer, which ensures that you’re a good fit for each other and that the candidate doesn’t pursue an opportunity that doesn’t align with their goals.

4. How do you perform under challenging circumstances?

Nonprofits exist to support communities facing social challenges. This work can be demanding and stressful. Moreover, nonprofits are highly impacted by external factors, such as legislation and economics—meaning that an economic downturn or adverse policy decision could greatly harm their work.

This is why you must gauge how a candidate handles adversity. Remaining positive and resilient through turbulent circumstances is what keeps your organization afloat. Ask candidates about how they’ve persisted and remained effective throughout a crisis, whether in their personal lives or professional careers.

5. How do you practice self-care?

As previously mentioned, nonprofit work can be stressful, contributing to a sector-wide issue with burnout—95% of nonprofit leaders think burnout is a concern and threatens their recruitment results. While your organization can (and should) provide mental health resources, your employees need to have other outlets outside of work to practice wellness. Some common ways of practicing self-care include:

  • Physical: exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and cooking healthy meals
  • Emotional: participating in hobbies or other activities that “fill their cup,” having a support network to rely on, and committing to other mindfulness practices (like journaling and meditation)
  • Professional: adhering to work-life balance and seeking out fulfilling projects

While every candidate deals with stress differently, knowing that they have ways to relieve stress mitigates concerns about turnover, allowing your team to save on recruitment costs and retain talent in the long term.

How to Curate Ideal Nonprofit Interview Questions

Though the questions above are well-rounded and provide relevant information, they might not align closely with your nonprofit’s needs. You can create a list of ideal questions for your recruitment process by focusing on:

  • The role’s unique requirements and challenges
  • The candidate’s understanding of and connection to your nonprofit’s mission and vision
  • The candidate’s career goals
  • Workplace culture fit

Also, Lever recommends using information from your recruiting tools to shape your questions. Analyzing data and trends illuminates gaps in your strategy and provides a starting point for improvements. Some metrics to look out for include:

  • Time to hire: how long it takes from a candidate initially applying to accepting their offer
  • Offer acceptance rate: how many candidates accept their offer
  • Time to fill: the amount of time it takes from opening a job role to it being filled

These data points will give you key insights you can use to adjust your recruiting strategy.

Interviews can feel stressful for both your team and candidates, but don’t let that get in the way of a productive conversation. After all, discussing your nonprofit with a new connection is a daily activity for your fundraising and outreach efforts, so just rely on the strategies you use for those situations. And above all, be friendly, attentive, and professional to make a great first impression.


Stephanie Sparks head shotStephanie Sparks, Director of Content Marketing at Employ

As Director of Content Marketing & Social at Employ, Stephanie leverages 17 years of marketing and communications experience, and her master’s degree in marketing, communication studies, and advertising, to craft compelling content across the JazzHR, Lever, Jobvite, and NXTThing RPO brands. She is a thought leader for the HR technology and talent acquisition space.

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3 Tailored Engagement Strategies to Welcome New Members

October 28, 2024 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

In 2023, 50% of individual membership organizations (IMOs) saw an increase in their membership base. This indicates stability in the membership space, which was shaken by the pandemic and economic shifts. But is your organization doing everything it can to go beyond stability and foster growth?

Whether you run an association that holds 501(c)(3) status or operate a nonprofit with a membership program, attracting new members is a key part of growing your organization. However, the work doesn’t stop when these new members enroll. In this guide, we’ll cover what you need to do to welcome them and start building deep relationships—let’s begin.

Why Personalization Is Key

Personalization is now ubiquitous in the marketing industry, and for good reason. This strategy ensures each message your potential and current members receive from your organization relates to their interests, affinities, geographic location, and more.

Fonteva’s guide to member engagement highlights the importance of tailored communications, recommending that membership organizations structure personalization around these phases in the membership lifecycle:

membership life cycle

  • New members: These members fall into the recruitment and early engagement stages of the membership lifecycle. Consider using a welcome email series, onboarding webinar, and mentorship program to engage them. We’ll discuss more ways to welcome them later.
  • Current members: These are your current members who have passed the initial onboarding stage, and they are best engaged with options like advanced learning courses or leadership opportunities.
  • Members at risk of lapsing: These members are nearing their renewal period. Engage them and promote renewals by providing customized value propositions, exclusive discounts, or member benefits.

By tailoring your communications to each of these different audiences, your organization can build more personal relationships, show that it values members as individuals, and effectively engage and retain more members.

Welcome & Engage New Members

As you work to engage new members, make sure you have a powerful association management system (AMS) by your side—ideally a CRM-based AMS. A CRM will help you leverage and understand your member data so you can better personalize these efforts. After all, even though all of these members are new to your organization, they are still individuals with unique interests, preferences, and goals.

Here are some top strategies you can use to kick off deep relationships with your new members:

Promptly share welcome materials.

Welcome your new members to your organization with materials that introduce them to your leadership team, core mission and values, and the work you do. In these welcome materials, include:

  • A personalized welcome letter that expresses gratitude and outlines member benefits
  • A membership handbook containing basic information about your organization, its mission, and opportunities available to members
  • An upcoming events calendar
  • A list of member resources with links (if applicable)
  • Details on how to access the membership portal and any gated resources
  • A list of frequently asked questions
  • A discount or voucher for branded merchandise

 

Additionally, remember to include or link to relevant educational resources and provide a staff member’s contact information in case they have questions.

Share these materials using communication features included in your membership management system. This way, you can get them to members quickly or even automate the process so that the messages are triggered to send when a new member joins.

Organize a guided onboarding experience.

Onboarding new members involves many moving parts that can quickly become overwhelming. Offering a streamlined, guided experience will give members a more positive experience and help them absorb all the information they need to know about your organization.

A few ways to make your onboarding experience more organized and streamlined include:

  • Building custom, guided digital experiences. Depending on the technology you use, your organization may be able to build custom digital experiences without the need for extensive coding. For example, Fíonta highlights the power of Salesforce Omnistudio, which offers drag-and-drop configuration capabilities that help quickly create guided experiences.
  • Pairing new members with a guide. Assign a mentor or staff member to each new member to give them a personal touchpoint to help guide them through onboarding. Have these guides reach out often to check in and answer any questions they have along the way.
  • Offering interactive sessions. Remote onboarding can feel isolating. To engage new members, consider offering live webinars or meetings to cover the basics and troubleshoot technical issues, like struggling to access the member portal, in real time. This will also give them a chance to interact with staff, leadership, and peers.

Recommend ways to engage.

To keep these members engaged beyond onboarding, you’ll need to nudge them toward other ways to get involved. Based on what you’ve learned about them, make tailored recommendations for other ways they can engage with your organization. This may include:

  • Events: Promote events that are relevant to members’ interests, take place near their geographic locations, or are designed for newer members. For example, you might invite members from the southeastern U.S. to a conference in Nashville. Or, you might make them aware of your monthly virtual coffee hours used for networking.
  • Learning courses: Recommend learning opportunities based on members’ career paths, interests, level of experience, and affinities. Perhaps those who are interested in environmental activism would be interested in a course or session about boosting sustainability in the workplace.
  • Fundraisers and volunteer opportunities: Whether you run a nonprofit membership program or a professional association, you likely engage in fundraisers and volunteer opportunities. Give members the chance to give back by sharing about campaigns and causes they are likely to support.

Additionally, promote any involvement opportunities or benefits that make your association stand out to boost members’ perception of the value of their membership.

Making a strong first impression is key. When you learn about your new recruits, appeal to their interests, and refer them to the programs and opportunities they’re most interested in, you’ll significantly increase the chance that they renew in the future. This is why data is so important when you are welcoming new members—after all, your membership base isn’t a monolith but a set of individuals with unique preferences.


Erin Lemons, VP of Marketing at Fonteva Erin Lemons head shot

Erin Lemons joins Togetherwork Association Solutions with over 15 years serving as a marketing director, event producer, and project manager creating robust marketing campaigns and initiatives that focus on the growing and ever-changing technology needs of the association industry.

She leads the marketing teams and strategy at Fonteva and Protech.

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Fundraising Tuesday: 3 Online Fundraising Ideas to Engage Remote Supporters

October 8, 2024 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post by Steve Lausch of OneCause

Looking for new ways to inspire donors to support your cause? We’ve got you covered!

Your organization’s audience consists of diverse individuals with different preferences and characteristics, so the key to capturing everyone’s interests is to host a variety of fundraising campaigns.

As you plan your annual fundraising strategy, remember to include opportunities for those outside your local community. You want to ensure that remote supporters feel seen and appreciated just as much as if they were located near you.

There are many ways to involve remote supporters. Let’s look at three top online fundraising ideas you can incorporate to leverage the generosity of supporters near and far.

1. Online Donation Page

Engage your remote supporters by accepting online donations. This is the first step to successful fundraising! An online donation page allows you to receive a reliable stream of revenue from your nonprofit’s website.

Keep in mind the following tips when setting up your donation page:

  • Design: Build awareness by having your organization’s colors and logos throughout your site.
  • Donation options: Retain donors by providing the option of one-time or recurring donations to support your cause.
  • Payment options: Enhance the giving experience by accepting Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo, and other forms of digital wallet.
  • Accessibility: Consider adding text under images for any remote supporters using screen readers, and otherwise follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  • Impact statements: Emphasize the power of donations with images, videos, examples, or a brief explanation of how they help your cause.

The best software will allow you to effortlessly personalize and create impactful donation pages to maximize your giving. Once you’ve created your donation page, make sure to embed it in your nonprofit’s website for supporters to find easily. If you don’t have a website, consider working with a web design company to start the process.

2. Online Auction

Auctions are a popular fundraising event for nonprofits, so why not take yours beyond the ballroom? Enable bidding from your remote supporters with an online auction! Hosting such an event provides various benefits for nonprofits, including:

  • Cost savings: Invest in flexible software so there’s no need to book a venue, catering services, or entertainment.
  • Increased participation: Have a link to your auction to make it simple for supporters to share your cause with their social network.
  • Improved accessibility: Move to an online auction to allow anyone to participate from anywhere without traveling for your event.
  • Better use of resources: You won’t have to worry about costs associated with in-person events, such as renting a venue, booking a caterer, or purchasing decorations.

Usually, online auctions take one of two forms:

  • Live auction: An auctioneer facilitates bidding on your auction items through a live stream. This event can be held either entirely virtually or in a hybrid format, where you invite major donors to the in-person auction and provide other supporters with the live stream link.
  • Silent auction: Supporters place bids on auction items they want through an online auction site without an auctioneer present. This type of auction relies on well-written descriptions that clearly communicate what the item is to entice the viewer to make a bid.

Regardless of which type of online auction you host, bidding usually takes place through mobile devices. Be sure to purchase auction software that streamlines online bidding and makes the process smooth and convenient for remote supporters.

3. Online Peer-to-Peer Campaign

Tap into the power of peer-to-peer fundraising with your loyal supporters. You can recruit your most committed champions to fundraise on your behalf. These individuals will create their peer-to-peer fundraising site and then use their social networks to spread the word.

There are many types of peer-to-peer campaigns, including:

  • Runs, walks, rides: Engage participants with physical activity, friendly competition, and social giving.
  • DIY supporter-driven: Empower supporters to create their own unique campaigns on behalf of your cause.
  • Giving and Awareness Days: Capitalize on dedicated giving and awareness days to boost the visibility of your campaigns and secure more donations.
  • Tributes and memorials: Offer supporters the opportunity to honor loved ones with personalized fundraising pages.

Peer-to-peer fundraising is an easy way to strengthen your existing relationship with remote supporters while expanding the possibilities of new supporters not local to your organization. Once you’ve recruited supporters to act as your peer-to-peer fundraisers, prepare them for their role with training sessions, templates for marketing materials, and more. Then, stay in contact with them throughout the process to provide them with any support they need.

 


Steve Lausch head shotSteve Lausch

Steve Lausch brings over 20 years of marketing experience to his role as the Director of Product Marketing at OneCause. He leverages his expertise in product evangelism, marketing communication, and strategic product planning to deliver innovative solutions that empower nonprofits. A storyteller at heart, Steve is energized by the opportunity to tell compelling stories that move people to action. He is dedicated to supporting nonprofits in their journey to make a positive impact on the world.

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