The Thoughts & Prayers of Nonprofits
You know when something tragic happens that we all see in the news - like natural disasters or mass violence - you have some folks calling for thoughts & prayers, while others want action? For me, I’m an action person. I don’t want to dismiss someone’s belief in the power of prayer, but we also have power and control on changing our circumstances with policy, with safety networks, and with mutual aid. Thoughts & prayers cannot be a replacement for doing the hard work of change.
Nonprofits have their own version of “thoughts & prayers” and its rampant - implementing change without resourcing change management.
Does any of this sound familiar to you:
There was the time we completed an organization-wide process to refresh the nonprofit’s values, only to find out a majority of staff hadn’t felt comfortable engaging in the process.
Or how each year we change the way we create annual department budgets in the hopes the process gets better, but guidance only consists of one email.
There’s the time we rolled out an entire new database for the whole organization to utilize with two trainings and one import template completed by each team.
And then there are the same three DEI trainings completed on repeat with little staff input or systems change to go with them.
Prosci defines change management as the application of a structured process and tools for leading the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome (such as ROI) on a project.
When I first learned about change management it was like an epiphany. For too many years at nonprofits I’d been raising my hand in meetings about organizational changes taking place to ask how we were building buy-in with staff on the change? Whose voices were being heard? How did we know what we were doing was landing right with the people most impacted. by the change? How would we measure proficiency and utilization with the change?
When everyone just wanted to focus on “is the change done,” I wondered if anyone was watching the trail of staff frustration, gossip, and turnover laying in the change’s wake. Now I knew there is a name for what was missing - change management.
At nonprofits our belief that staff will just “come along because we’re all here for the mission,” coupled with scarcity mindset, means we aren’t resourcing out change adequately. If you’re lucky, your nonprofit has a project management process. In rare circumstances, we’re also resourcing the change management.
But the problem is, when we don’t resource the change management side of a change (that is the people side) and only focus on whether the change is done (the project side), we end up with a one-step forward, two-steps back situation. We maybe have a new system, process, or structure, but if your staff don’t know why the change was made, how the change matters to them, and feel their voice was really heard - you’ve damaged the organizational trust and culture. You’re left with a lot more problems on your hand than when you started. You’re left with thoughts & prayers, and not much action.
Are you going through a change at your organization that you could use some help managing? Let’s chat!
Resources
The Prosci website is full of useful change management resources. Click here for a great breakdown of the difference between change management and project management. And here’s a useful primer on the general steps of change management.