On Wednesday, October 19, a group of 12 students from Arizona State University traveled to Houston, Texas, to attend AFP Lead 2022. AFP Lead is a national conference where the best and brightest fundraisers gather to learn and share about their successes and trials in the nonprofit sector.

The group of students from ASU are all a part of the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance Student Association (NLASA), working towards the Certified Nonprofit Professional credential, and have been fundraising for months to be able to travel and attend this wonderful conference. I was one of the lucky students who was able to travel and learn so much from the professionals at the conference. We are so thankful we were able to not only learn more about how to further our careers in the nonprofit sector, but were able to take a break from the heat and actually wear sweaters in the cool Houston air.

Thursday morning we woke up early and ventured to the hotel where the conference was held. Our students were separated from the larger group and put together with a room full of ‘emerging leaders.’ We spent the day grouped with new leaders in the nonprofit sector learning vital skills for leadership and management. We listened to lectures, participated in reflections and had the chance to hear about real life experiences in the sector. We closed out the day by networking…

An important factor that several nonprofits fail to initially consider is how they can sustain programming beyond the initial stages. It should be a high priority for any nonprofit to build itself into a stable entity before trying to save the world. Without stability, the organization will not be around long enough to continually realize its mission.

“For the social enterprise movement to realize its potential, organizations will need to invest in the recruitment, development, and growth of their future leaders, just as for-profits do. People provide the real growth capital for any enterprise — and make it possible for them to have an impact,” writes Gerald Chertavian in the Harvard Business Review. Leaders who wish to successfully run a nonprofit and continue to positively impact society in the future will need to focus their energy in three key areas: staff recruitment, fundraising, and donor and staff retention.

Recruiting

An essential part of creating an effective and sustainable nonprofit is recruiting the right people. Top talent is difficult to find and even more difficult to hire. “Managers across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors are increasingly recognizing that employees are their organization’s most important assets and that the most significant source of competitive advantage comes from having the best systems in place…

Increasingly, leaders of nonprofit organizations manage and drive their missions forward in a more complex and less certain world. Factors including lingering COVID-19 disruptions and widening socioeconomic disparities continue to challenge nonprofits’ budgets, resulting in revenue concerns that keep CEOs, executive directors and other nonprofit leaders up at night.

Fundraisers and the revenue they generate make mission fulfillment possible (while also helping leaders get more restful sleep!). Society depends on nonprofits, nonprofits require sustainable revenue, sustainable revenue comes in large part from fundraising professionals, and fundraising professionals need more support and appreciation. The compromising of these interconnected pieces has led fundraiser retention to become a growing issue for missions.

According to Independent Sector, increased competition among nonprofits and a perceived increase in the scarcity of donors and available funding make it difficult to raise money consistently. The connection between fundraisers’ longevity at an institution to revenue is undeniable; those with four to seven years at the same organization raised 50% more, and those with eight years raised 83% more than their newly hired colleagues. Prioritizing these professionals’ development, wellness and growth increases job satisfaction; as a result, they stay with the organization and do their best work…

While the COVID-19 pandemic may be unprecedented, it is not the only disruption nonprofit leadership will face. Perhaps we will never again see such simultaneous disruption to every aspect of business and personal life, but this is the perfect time to examine strengths and weaknesses specific to organizational resilience. Instead of viewing resilience as an outcome, it is important to understand approaches that generate positive results.

“Incorporating [resilience] qualities into an organizational system equips it to systematically adapt to disruptive challenges. Using resilience as a process, nonprofit organizations can have the capacity to continuously respond to challenges and provide uninterrupted and valuable services,” write Hope Witmer and Marcela Sarmiento Mellinger.

Witmer & Mellinger’s qualities for a resilient organization include: commitment to mission, improvisation, community reciprocity, servant and transformational leadership, hope and optimism, and fiscal transparency. Many of the challenges through the pandemic were not new and will exist long after. Strategically adopting organizational resilience principles will lead to prepared, capable and more sustainable organizations. The following recommendations are based upon present dynamics with expected future significance.

Objective: Intentionally develop organizational resilience…

The Trust Barometer 2021 Global Report reports that businesses are now the only institution trusted by the public, not nonprofits. Reading Tory Martin’s ideas for rebuilding public trust through participation and transparency led me to explore how nonprofits can rebuild public trust through accountability to beneficiaries. Accountability to beneficiaries and their communities, or downward accountability, involves voluntarily opening your organization up to scrutiny by those you serve.

The use of downward accountability mechanisms is growing. Similarly, the concept of empowering beneficiaries and a rights-based approach to development have become more widely used and accepted. Many in the sector may agree with the concept of downward accountability but struggle to effectively put it into practice. Nonprofit leaders frequently named beneficiaries as stakeholders that their organizations are accountable to, but lacked accountability mechanisms that matched their verbal commitments.

Here are a few practical recommendations to implement downward mechanisms (utilizing an ombudsperson, social auditing, participation, etc.)…