By visualphotos.com

In the nonprofit world, collaboration is more than just a kumbayah, let’s all hold hands and get along concept. It is critical to business success, a logical way to fill gaps in organizational capability, and sometimes even a long-term survival strategy. As such, we believe in a robust, well-defined, and analytical approach to collaboration, and even a differentiation between regular-old collaboration and “strategic collaboration.”

The Greenlights Team recently had the privilege of leading a group of 48 Applied Materials Foundation grantee nonprofits in a full-day “Advancement Academy” focused on collaborative learning and problem-solving, and centered around the concept of strategic collaboration and nonprofit mergers. As a foundation that is on the cutting edge of engaging their grantees in more than just a grantor-grantee relationship, Applied Materials now regularly convenes their Austin-based nonprofit partners to encourage learning, collaboration, and networking, even though their grantees work in fields as broad as education, basic needs, and the arts.

To begin the day, Greenlights laid out a central definition of “strategic collaboration” to distinguish the concept from a more common view of the term. We defined a collaboration to be truly strategic when it involves…

• Two or more organizations…
• working together in a meaningful, well-defined, and deliberate manner…
• by investing time, energy, and resources…
• to accomplish a set of shared objectives…
• that are mutually beneficial to advancing the missions of the organizations involved, and…
• that are more likely to be achieved together than alone.

We further laid out the Greenlights Collaboration Continuum, a construct that allows nonprofits to plot existing or potential collaborations on a scale ranging from less intensive collaborations to the most intensive form of collaboration, outright merger.

We have found at Greenlights, having been contracted by nonprofits to lead many nonprofit merger and strategic collaboration initiatives, that meaningful collaboration takes not just a more analytical approach than is typically afforded but also a different form of organizational leadership. Nonprofit executive leaders and boards who are leading their organizations in long-term sustainable ways are often able to embrace strategic collaboration as a core business practice, to promote it on the organization’s regular discussion and evaluation agenda, and to see it not as a distraction or something that signals weakness, but rather as a source of strength for the organization.

Greenlights was thrilled to be able to partner with Applied Materials in this way and, even more so, we were very encouraged by the high level of engagement by and very positive feedback from the many nonprofit leaders who attended this year’s Advancement Academy and who are now even better equipped to lead their organizations in a more strategic, more collaborative manner.

Greenlights Advancement Academy for Applied Materials Foundation Grantees

So, my wife and I give our two sons (ages 7 and 5) an allowance each week that is tied to their completion of several chores (and the avoidance of certain unwanted behaviors!). Doing your homework, taking out the trash and recycling, not hitting your brother, scooping the dog poop, etc. all get tracked on a little chart on the fridge, and on Sundays we reward them with a shiny new dime for each completed task.

Each boy then splits his dimes into three containers, one for “spending” which they can use to buy anything they choose (within reason), one for “saving” which they must hold onto and eventually will end up in a bank savings account, and one for “giving” which they either put in the offering tray at church or give to one of the charitable causes we support.

So far, this system seems to be instilling in our children valuable lessons about hard work, performance, rewards, discipline, and even philanthropy. Such systems of measuring and rewarding performance worked for me growing up, they seem to work well throughout our economic system, and one would think that they would work in the nonprofit arena too.

But do they work?

At Greenlights, we’re pretty proud of the fact that we evaluate everything we do, every workshop, every consulting project, even sometimes the meetings we lead. We survey our board, our members, our clients, even each other. In fact, if SurveyMonkey had an award for “Most Use By A Nonprofit,” we’d probably win it.

Program evaluation is weaved throughout our culture and all of our programs, both the immediate, short-term variety, and the longer-term, longitudinal kind. And we do it all on essentially no budget (or at least no real designated funding for evaluation). And while we can’t say that we are “rewarded” financially (like my sons are) for achieving certain performance targets, I can say that our funders know about our performance and that many of them choose to fund us based on our demonstrated track record of impact and success.

But we also understand that many nonprofits have a difficult time tracking, monitoring, and evaluating programmatic performance. They lack sufficient funds and staff time for it, their client populations do not lend themselves well to be tracked, or they lack the expertise to design and implement good program evaluation practices. As the nonprofit sector matures, though, and as funders continue to increase their demand for demonstrable “return on investment” for their dollars, we must put aside these excuses as a sector and embrace a new level of sophistication in measuring and evaluating our impact.

To help nonprofits do this, Greenlights has engaged in a new research project to study how nonprofits do or do not evaluate their programs, and we will be publishing this research and our thoughts on it later this year. If you have not yet taken our survey of nonprofit program evaluation, please do so: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Results_and_Impact.

We have also posted several free program evaluation resources and tools to our Online Resource Library: http://www.greenlights.org/resources/resource-library/cat_view/30-resource-library/24-planning-and-evaluation .

The hardest part about our allowance system at home is when one of the boys does his chores and gets paid, but the other one does not. This results in a lot of crying and upset feelings (both by parents and child!), and while we certainly feel guilty for not paying that child, we know it is a lesson he needs to learn now and not later in life when it will be much more costly.

Maybe this is how many funders are feeling these days, with so many nonprofits asking for money, so many unmet needs, and relatively limited philanthropic capital to give away? How about we nonprofits make their decisions much easier by investing in our own abilities to demonstrate meaningful impact and programmatic outcomes.

The way people learn is definitely changing. Schools are shifting to iPad-based curricula. Colleges, universities and companies are relying much more heavily on web-based classes and training, taking advantage of both the affordability of such learning channels and of students’ interest in learning at their own pace, on their own time, and at their preferred location. It seems that good ole’ live, classroom-based, instructor-led training may be going the way of the buggy whip and the wire-line home telephone.

Well, call us old fashioned, but Greenlights still believes in real-time, in-person learning, and we experienced an example of why at an amazing event just this week.

On January 25, Greenlights had the privilege of partnering with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to design and lead a day-long collaborative learning event for all of their Central Texas grantee nonprofits. Some 90 nonprofit professionals representing 30 different health-, human services-, and education-focused nonprofits gave up their full days to participate in this specially-designed event. The results and feedback were wonderful, as evidenced by:

• End-of-day feedback scores averaging 8.5 on a scale of 10.
• Wonderful comments such as “Social Return on Investment (SROI) rocked my world!” and “Great organization and opportunity to network and plan!”
• And even a series of live tweets throughout the day that highlighted the value of the event.

Here’s why we believe the event was so successful, and why we believe nonprofits should continue to, where most appropriate, invest in and deliver in-person, real-time, collaborative training whenever they can to advance their missions:

• Custom-designed learning objectives and curriculum.
  Greenlights took the time to survey the training participants several months ago, and we asked them what they and their organizations needed most from training. They told us they needed help with securing sustainable, diverse funding, implementing a sustainable business model, and measuring and demonstrating impact. So, Greenlights designed a custom curriculum focused on integrating logic models, value propositions and value chain analysis across the organization to raise more money and better measure and communicate impact.
• Get the right people in the room.
  Based on the survey results, we also determined there was a need to get a cross-section of leaders in the room, including the chief program leader, development leader and marketing/communications leader. We invited staff filling all three of these roles to attend the training, as well as Executive Directors, both to attend the full day if possible or to join the training at the end of the day to see and augment their team’s work during the day.
• Focus on real, implementable solutions.
  Many trainings leave you full of new knowledge but without a real action plan for doing something with it. We designed the day to allow for significant collaborative work to be done right there in the training. Participants completed worksheets and templates, like our Logic Model Development Guide and a Simplified Social Return on Investment Analysis. We also ended the day by having each participant complete a specific action plan to how they would take the learning back to their peers, ED and board members and implement it in meaningful ways.
• Make space for collaboration.
  Sometimes participants learn as much from other training participants than from the actual instructor (or even more than him or her!). And most nonprofit staff have little opportunity to get time away from the office and from the daily grind to think strategically and collaborate with their peers. We designed the event to incorporate both a good amount of collaboration time for peers from the same organization and additional time for collaborating with and learning from peers from other similarly-focused organizations.

I can’t express enough how wonderful a sight it was to see more than 90 nonprofit leaders from some of Austin’s top nonprofits hard at work learning new concepts, adapting them for their organizations’ use, and sharing ideas and encouragement with their peers. There is no question that Austin is better off today because of the investment made by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and by their grantee organizations in the power of collaborative learning to advance mission achievement!

This year has been a truly amazing year at Greenlights. We believe that all nonprofits should periodically take time to recognize, celebrate and give thanks for the work they have been able to accomplish. So to model that practice, I would like to thank our staff, board, donors, members and partners for all they have helped us accomplish this year, and I would like to share the below re-cap of Greenlights 2011!

In 2011, Greenlights…

• Completed 3 successful merger consulting projects (AMOA-Arthouse, Faith in Action Caregivers Round Rock and Pflugerville, and Khabele and Primavera schools)
• Conducted 37 other unique, low-cost consulting engagements for nonprofits, including our largest consulting project ever (thank you Dallas CASA), 6 strategic planning engagements, 3 interim ED placements, 3 executive transition management projects, 9 board development engagements, 3 fundraising projects, and more
• Held our  largest Texas Nonprofit Summit ever
• Held our largest Board Summit ever
• Held our largest Town Hall gathering ever on financial management and financial transparency in nonprofits
• Provided professional development workshops and training to more than 1500 people
• Conducted the Applied Materials Advancement Academy, a full-day training for 40 grantees of Applied Materials, plus follow-up consulting with 4 grantees
• Exceeded our client satisfaction and impact targets, averaging greater than 9 out of 10 feedback scores
• Launched the Central Texas Board Report study, which has been downloaded more than 1800 times
• Continued to enhance our website which now regularly receives 15,000+ visits per month
• Doubled our social media audience
• Secured the largest grant in our history (thank you Michael and Susan Dell Foundation!)
• Celebrated our 10^th Anniversary and raised $91,000 (and netted $65,000+) for our Research and Innovation Fund
• Added three new members to our growing team (welcome Katy, Kate and Alanna!)
• Launched our new Community Leadership Council with 14 members
• Launched our new Business Partners program and recruited 20+ new partners
• Grew our membership program by about 10%

It has been good to be part of the Greenlights team this year where we’ve played a significant role in advancing the strength, sustainability and impact of hundreds of nonprofit organizations. I am so proud of our team and so grateful for each of our supporters, partners and members for being part of the broad Greenlights family!

As the debate continues about how best to evaluate nonprofit efficiency and effectiveness, I’ve weighed in with a new article in GivingCity Austin’s Fall 2011 edition. Is it fair to judge a nonprofit by the reported percentage it spends on “programs” vs. administration and fundraising? Should nonprofits be forced to scrimp and scrape to get by each year? Check out my latest thoughts here, and let us know what you think!