Alison Green - Managing to change the world: the nonprofit managers guide to getting results

CONTENTS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Green, Alison.

Managing to change the world: the nonprofit managers guide to getting results / Alison Green and Jerry Hauser, The Management Center. First edition.

pages cm

Summary Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-118-13761-1 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-20590-7 (ebk)

1. Nonprofit organizationsManagement. I. Hauser, Jerry. II. Title.

HD62.6.G74 2012

658.048dc23

2011052644

FIRST EDITION

LIST OF TOOLS

We bet you had trouble finding the time to read this book. If so, its probably because youre feeling serious stress, like many of the nonprofit leaders with whom we work. Youre under pressure from funders, your staff, constituents, perhaps your boss, and ultimately yourself, to be getting more done. Too much of the burden of making things happen is falling on you.

Effective managementhow you get things done through other peoplecould help you accomplish more with less stress, but you may not know where to start. And if thats the case, youre not alone. Nonprofit leaders often end up in their roles not because theyre great managers, but because they are experts on a particular issue or excel at a specific function like communications or program design. If youre one of these talented, committed people, you may have been highly effective at getting results on your own, but you may now have hit the point in your career where your impact will be more a function of what you get done through others than what you do directly yourself.

Fortunately, good management is pretty straightforward. Our goal in writing this book was to create an easy-to-use manual with hands-on, practical advice and tools that will help nonprofit managers get better results in their work. Well cover a range of skills, representing what we think are the most important areas for managers to masterfrom delegating tasks, to setting and holding people accountable to clear goals, to hiring and firing, to staying organized and using your own time effectively. Exercised properly, these practices will make your life much easier.

Most important, though, not only does good management make your life easier, but it also makes it easier for you to get great results.

Although this probably sounds obvious, as managers ourselves we didnt automatically grasp it from the start. Jerrys first real management experience came at Teach For America, a large, national nonprofit where, as the second in command, he was responsible for managing the day-to-day work of the organization. A former teacher, he had been drawn to management partly because he liked seeing people learn and develop to their full potential. He wanted staff members to be happy and fulfilled in their work, and he viewed it as his job to mentor them so that they grew and developed.

That was fine as far as it went, but Teach For America had ambitious aspirations: it was trying to triple in size, raise the quality of its teachers, strengthen its alumni network, raise more money, and build a stronger organization to make it all happen. Early in Jerrys tenure, when he was more focused on mentoring and viewing his staff members satisfaction as an end goal, he wasnt always producing the kind of progress that was needed. Most of his staff members worked extremely hard, but not everyone did. And many excelled at their jobs, but in several critical cases, the organizations needs had outgrown his staff members skills.