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How to Get Your Great Staff and Volunteers to Stay

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Engaged at work

How can you keep staff and volunteers excited to come to work?

A guest post by Sybil F. Stershic, Quality Service Marketing

True or False?

1. Mission matters in a nonprofit organization.
2. The people behind the mission – a nonprofit’s employees and volunteers – also matter.
3. Employees’ and volunteers’ passion for the mission ensure their commitment to a nonprofit organization.

The first two statements are true. While the third statement may be true in an ideal world, the reality is, while passion is critical, it’s not enough. Here’s why.

Every nonprofit will attract employees and volunteers who share a special affinity for its mission. People typically don’t work for a nonprofit for the money or glory. But a noble mission doesn’t guarantee a great workplace. If employees’ and volunteers’ work is not respected, and if they’re not given the tools needed to do their work, they’re not going to stay.

Bottom line: once engaged doesn’t mean always engaged.

The good news is, keeping staff and volunteers (including board members) engaged doesn’t involve anything complicated. It does require an intentional and ongoing application of internal marketing – a strategic blend of marketing, human resources, and management to ensure people have the resources and reinforcement they need to do their work. (Don’t be concerned with the “marketing” term as you don’t need to be a marketer to apply this approach.)

How to engage employees and volunteers with internal marketing

Internal marketing basically connects employees and volunteers on three fundamental levels:

• To the overall organization – to ensure everyone who works in the nonprofit understands its mission and goals, where they fit within the organization, and what’s expected of them in helping it achieve its goals.

• To the people the organization serves and those it works with in the process (such as donors, community influencers, advocates, etc.) – so staff and volunteers know who is important to the nonprofit and how to serve them.

• To fellow volunteers and employees – so they understand their individual and collective impact on the mission, along with how best to work together.

You can build these connections through a range of organizational activities that include but aren’t limited to: new staff and volunteer orientation; training; team building; and group meetings to share important information on new programs, policies, strategic plans, funding and organizational updates.

Nothing truly extraordinary – just whatever it takes to provide the necessary tools, attention, and reinforcement that enable the people behind the mission to do their best and know that their work is valued.

Even though I advocate “internal marketing” as a framework for engagement, it doesn’t matter what you call your approach to engage the people who work in your organization, as long as you are intentional and proactive in your efforts.

Remember, an inspiring mission may attract talented employees and volunteers to work with your nonprofit, but it takes much more to get them to stay. People need to feel they matter as much as their work.
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Sybil F. Stershic, author of the award-winning Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits, is a respected thought leader, speaker, and facilitator who specializes in engaging employees with internal marketing. Active as a volunteer leader in many organizations, Sybil is a former chairman of the American Marketing Association. For more information, please visit her website and blog at Quality Service Marketing.

Six Ways Nonprofits Succeed on Social Media

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It’s easy for a business to know whether or not they’re succeeding on social media.  After a reasonable amount of time on social media, the business makes more money.  For a business, that’s the meaning of success.  End of story.

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For nonprofits, it’s not so simple.  Nonprofits are mission-based organizations.  They need money to do their work, but the purpose of their work is not to make money.  When your “business” is arts, health, the environment, rights, or justice, what counts as success on social media?  Here are six signs of success.

  1. Mobilizing.  If your mission involves changing policy or institutions, you need people power to achieve it.  From calling Congress to getting out in the streets, getting people to take action is a measure of success for your social media efforts.
  2. Organizing. There’s power in numbers, and people taking direct action can succeed in changing things directly.  Boycotts can change the behavior of companies. Sit-down strikes can prevent foreclosures.  On the constructive side, people can get together to build houses, or to assist survivors of natural disasters.  Social media  have been indispensable in situations as varied as Occupy Wall Street and Superstorm Sandy.
  3. Changing the culture.  Some nonprofits work to change the way we think and behave.  In an earlier era, social marketing turned smoking from a widely accepted habit into a public health threat.  Today, social media are full of ongoing discussions aimed at changing our ideas about rape culture and body image.
  4. Sharing.  More people are seeing works of art online than in museums.  More get their news online than from newspapers.  Freecycle and similar email lists allow people to pick up goods they need for free, and every giveaway prevents a throwaway and reduces the waste stream. If your nonprofit is concerned with arts, public information, or the environment, social media may be part of how you do your work.
  5. Building assets.  A nonprofit’s greatest asset is often its reputation. As Nir Kossovsky has pointed out, your reputation may actually be worth money.  You may spend less on recruitment and purchase of services because the people with whom you do business know and trust your organization.  Employees may tolerate the low salaries typical of the nonprofit sector because they are proud to work for you, and you may acquire partners and funders because they want to be associated with you.  Social media are part of your brand, and they help build your reputation.
  6. And yes, making money!  Just because you’re a nonprofit doesn’t mean you can lose money.  As Robert Covitz writes, a nonprofit is “an organization that reinvests profits and donations into its programs, services, and personnel so as to better fulfill its mission and goals.” To reinvest, you must make a surplus to begin with.  Giving via social media is on the rise, and even the check in the mail is increasingly likely to arrive after the donor has learned about you on social media.

 

So, is your nonprofit succeeding on social media? Comment to tell us your success stories and the challenges you face.

Share of Mind, Share of Heart, by Sybil F. Stershic: a review

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Sybil Stershic

Sybil Stershic

Sybil  Stershic wants you Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: the employees, volunteers, and Board members of your nonprofit organization.  In her new book, Share of Mind, Share of Heart, she explains the top two reasons why.

 

“Your service is your brand.”  Think about it: there are a lot more points where people touch your organization than just the newsletters and emails you send them, or the social media you want them to see.  Every time a client or stakeholder walks up to your reception desk, calls on the phone, takes advantage of a service, attends an event, or volunteers for one of your programs, they are forming their impression of your agency.

That means that the people who represent your organization the most often are not the Executive Director, the Communications Director, the Development Director, or the Board chair.  They are the employees and volunteers who face the public every day.

“Connection is the key.” People who work at your agency for love or money must feel connected to the mission of the organization (and know how they are helping to move you forward). They must connect with your customers (or clients) to stay dedicated to a high level of customer care.  They want and need to connect with other volunteers, and with employees. Indeed, that may be the reason they came to work for you in the first place.  It certainly will be key to keeping them coming back for more.

Stershic calls this concept “internal marketing.”  The term focuses  attention on the fact that employees, volunteers, and Board members are also customers, and they need to be motivated to keep buying what you’re selling: the good name of your organization.

What happens when employees don’t feel valued?  They disengage and leave the organization.  Or worse, they disengage and stay.

Don’t let this happen to you! Share of Mind, Share of Heart is full of examples, tips, and “action plan starter notes.”  The book is slim enough that you can read it through in a couple of hours, then go back and put the suggestions into practice that best fit the way your agency functions now.  That will help you make your organization a better place to work, improve your customer service, and at the same time, communicate to the world what you are all about.

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