April 6, 2006 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Many nonprofit executives find that a “life cycle evaluation” to determine their organization’s developmental stage
also provides insights about their personal leadership abilities. The life-cycle approach encourages nonprofit executives to figure out whether their organization is in a stage of infancy, maturity, stagnation, or decline — and adjust their approaches accordingly to help the organization perform at peak levels.
Some executives learn new things they must do to help their charity thrive, while others gain understanding of mistakes they have made and how to correct them.
“There is definitely an ‘aha’ moment,” says Susan Kenny Stevens, a Minneapolis consultant who has conducted life-stage evaluations for nonprofit clients.
David Wish, who attended life-cycle training two years ago, now understands why he initially hired the wrong people at Little Kids Rock, the Montclair, N.J., charity he founded in 2002 to provide musical instruments and music lessons to students from needy families.
Mr. Wish, a public-school teacher, says the first fund raiser he hired, for example, came from an older, more mature private school with a wealthy board, which Mr. Wish thought was valuable experience. But the fund raiser, he says, had little knowledge of start-up charities and wanted to rely on what worked at his older, more-established institution.
“He kept giving me advice to get a high-powered board, but try building a powerful board when no one knows who you are,” says Mr. Wish.
After letting the fund raiser go, Mr. Wish says, he doubled contributions in one year by seeking foundation grants, which the fund raiser had shunned. Mr. Wish has recently hired a grant-proposal writer to relieve him of that duty while he concentrates on recruiting corporate sponsors and making contacts with wealthy potential donors. Now, Mr. Wish says, he considers all job candidates in terms of how mature their organizations are and how that might affect their ability to work at his young, fast-growing charity.
A Humbling Lesson
The life-cycle assessment of Little Kids Rock also taught Mr. Wish a more humbling lesson: His strengths as a leader are not necessarily the attributes that his charity will need in the future.
“It’s not hard to find founders who are the greatest asset in the beginning but the greatest liability later,” Mr. Wish says. “I don’t want to play that role.”
He says that he has begun to think about what type of person should lead his charity in the years to come.
“To see all this in the life-cycle context told me I had started a compelling program, and I was great at getting others enthusiastic about it,” says Mr. Wish. “But what business do I have managing a staff of 28? The need for delegating and letting go was a tremendous insight. It was a pivotal moment in my tenure as a nonprofit executive.”
Others who run growing charities find that life-stage evaluations help them take a big-picture view.
After working with a life-stage consultant five years ago, “I became a much better manager,” says Brigit Beyea, executive director of the New York affiliate of Jumpstart, which helps prepare toddlers for success in school.
“As an organization going out of start-up, that was a turning point,” Ms. Beyea says. “I began thinking more of the three-year horizon rather the three-day horizon, aligning the organization with where we wanted to go instead of just making sure the printer was working.”
‘Never Be Complacent’
For organizations in the peak-performance stage, a life-stage evaluation contains one big lesson for its leaders, says B. Michael Zuckerman, director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, in Cape May, N.J.
“You can see that being in prime is a very unstable position,” he says. “If you just coast, it will lead to inevitable slide. You can never be complacent.”
Another thing charity leaders realize from life-cycle assessments: To reach full maturity, or to turn around an ailing organization, they must often drop cherished projects and services to make operations more effective, distinguish themselves from other charities, and sharpen their appeal to donors. That realization came to Jackie Norris, executive director of Metro Volunteers, a Denver group that matches volunteers with nonprofit groups.
Ms. Norris is among 10 charity leaders participating in a $1.9-million project started in 2004 by the Rose Community Foundation, in Denver. The foundation has provided them with an organizational life-stage evaluation and a consultant trained in life-cycle theory, who is now helping the nonprofit leaders move their charities toward maturity over a three-year period.
The life-stage evaluation, Ms. Norris says, made her realize that she should cut “peripheral stuff,” such as management and public-relations training for local charities, in favor of promoting volunteerism. “This helps define our niche and better ask for support,” she says.
Ms. Norris is also taking a close look at expenses associated with the services her group offers. She has already examined one project that trains and places people who want to serve on nonprofit boards, only to learn that it costs $165 per person to provide the service while Metro Volunteers charges only $25. “We need to charge more, look for underwriting, or cut back the program,” Ms. Norris says.
“This is a different approach from our old attitude of ‘Let’s just do the best we can with what we have,’” she says. The life-cycle approach, she adds, “helps you make better decisions.”
