Info You Can Use: Tools To Chart Your Organizational Impact

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A partnership of GuideStar USA, Independent Sector and BBB Wise Giving Alliance has created a free online tool, Charting Impact, which non-profits and foundations can use to assess themselves and help in “telling the story of your progress in an accessible, concise way. People want to help you make a difference – through donations, volunteering, and more – but often struggle to find a succinct, consistent resource that clarifies what nonprofits want to achieve and what they have already accomplished.”

The process has participants answer five questions about their organization to help gauge where they stand. Completing the report is meant to complement rather than replace program reviews and strategic planning. The final assessments appear on the site which is intended to be a central resource for those wishing to support a non-profit to obtain more information and assure themselves that the organization has a self-evaluative process in place.

One thing I found very interesting upon viewing some of the sample reports is that the process involves a CEO review, a Board review and a Stakeholder review and informs the reader if those groups have read and signed off on the report. Though the organization can manipulate the results by providing the contact information for stakeholders they know will never be critical of them, the anonymity afforded the reviewers provides an opportunity for the organization to receive some valuable feedback about themselves.

Charting Impact is still pretty new so there aren’t a lot of people who have completed the process. It will be interesting to see how prevalent its use as a resource will be. It already integrates some of the information on organizations GuideStar collects and fulfills a part of BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s charity certification process. If the process is viewed as credible, there is a potential that foundations and funders may require organizations to engage in it to receive a certain level of funding.

It would be unfortunate if Charting Impact became too much a gold standard that individuals wouldn’t make even small donations to organizations that hadn’t engaged in this introspection. I don’t necessarily see that happening any time soon. It would be nice amid all the stories we read about excessive salaries for non-profit executives and mismanagement and corruption to have a measure that provided the general public with confidence about organizational effectiveness.

Stand By Your Non-Profit Until The Bitter End

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Interesting piece on the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the responsibilities of non-profit boards to attend to the dissolution of their organizations.

Janet Kleinfelter, a deputy attorney general in Tennessee, talks about a case where a non-profit abandoned their organization after they realized it could no longer continue. They passed a resolution essentially saying the bank could do whatever it wanted to dispose of the assets and then resigned.

Kleinfelter writes that boards are required to give proper notice to state and federal regulators about the impending closure of their organization and submit the documentation in support of that action.

It is actually better for board members to stay involved with the organization than disassociate themselves. (My emphasis)

“Legally the board is required to dissolve the nonprofit, but when it fails to do so, that responsibility falls to the regulators and the courts.

This process will probably involve subpoenas to members of the former board, which may require board members to retain personal legal counsel at their own expense. What’s more, by resigning, board members may no longer have the benefit of directors’ and officer’ liability insurance. Former board members may even be personally liable for actions done in the name of the nonprofit while it is unmanaged.“

Not Necessarily 10,000 Hours

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Since the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, the idea that you need 10,000 hours of practice to master a discipline/skill has started to become something of an article of faith. However, two posts on the Science of Sport blog argue that inborn talent and opportunity count for a lot more than practice and therefore, 10,000 hours is not necessary for mastery. For some people, even twice that will not result in mastery.

Now probably none of this is news to music instructors and others who are engaged to provide lessons to children who just don’t have the talent to master the subject matter despite the insistence of their parents. People who would never suggest that they could play on a college or professional football team if they only practiced long enough seem to believe that hard work is all that is needed for high achievement in the intellectual or artistic realms.

Most of the authors, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas’, discussion of genetics can be found in the second post. In the first post they directly refute what they say are unwarranted claims in Gladwell’s book.

Unfortunately, Ericsson didn’t show us this data, so we can only speculate. But that didn’t stop Malcolm Gladwell from making this statement in his book “Outliers”:

“The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.

Nor could they find any “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks.” – Outliers, pg 39

Again, I don’t know how he arrives at the above statements – Ericsson presented not a single measure to support these claims (and I happen to know that he didn’t interview him either). As we’ll see shortly, it is actually inconceivable that Gladwell’s statements are true – other study of skilled performance show massive variations, and the same will be true for violinists, of this I’m certain.

They then cite some studies measuring to what degree practicing factors into performance at a masterful level.

So, the average time taken is 11,053 hours. That’s pretty much in agreement with Ericsson’s violin players. So far so good. But look at that Standard Deviation – 5,538 hours, and it gives a co-efficient of variation of 50%. For those not into the statistics, what this basically shows is a “spread” of the values around the average. If the Standard Deviation is small, and the CV is low, then you have a tight cluster – all the individuals are close to the average. But when it’s 50%, then you know you have massive differences within that group.

And that’s what happens when you start looking at individuals – one player reaches master level on 3,000 hours, another takes almost 24,000 hours, and some are still practicing but not succeeding. That’s a 21,000 hour difference, which is two entire practice lifetimes according to the model of practice. It seems pretty clear that practice, while important, is not sufficient for some. And for others, it’s not even necessary.

They also looked at studies of elite athletes on the international stage and noted that they rarely needed 10,000 hours to attain that standing. The USA Olympic athletes in wrestling, football and field hockey pursued their sport 6,000, 4,000 and 5,000 hours, respectively. One Australian netball player only had 600 hours of playing before she made the national team. Michael Phelps had only 4 years or approximately 4,000 of practice when he placed 5th in the 2000 Olympics at age 15. Granted, it was another 4 years and a total of 8,000 hours before he dominated at the 2008 Olympics, but as the authors point out, to place 5th in the world after 4 years of serious practice attests to the value of inborn talent.

The authors agree that achieving elite status is attributable to a complex set of factors that include everything from good nutrition to suitably stable political and economic environment combined with opportunities for excellent instruction and guidance. While you can’t depend solely on genetics alone to produce a superstar, in their mind, inborn ability is the most important factor in reaching the highest level of achievement.

This seems to be an important argument to pay attention, partially in regard to the training of artists, but also in garnering an interest and respect for the arts. People hardly need even 1,000 hours of training to find a lot of enjoyment in experiencing and participating in artistic opportunities. But if you extend the implications of what the authors are saying a little, the idea that people will come to love the arts after being exposed or involved starts to become uncertain. There will be some people who will, as we all hope, get it and be inspired from the first exposure. Some people will simply never ever appreciate it and some will need a lot of repeated exposure before they start to.

You might think that this is all pretty self-evident already and didn’t need pointing out. However, if Ross and Dugas are correct, whether people come to appreciate the arts will depend on their innate capacity to do so combined with the opportunity to have quality experiences rather than just be a factor of straight exposures. This realization begins to complicate the approach to audience development in communities. But it also shows that the effort faces the same circumstances as any educational or training endeavor and can employ some of the same techniques.

Info You Can Use: The “No Social Media Policy” Social Media Policy

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Hat tip to Rosetta Thurman. To paraphrase Thoreau (or The United States Magazine and Democratic Review), apparently the social media policy which is best governs least.

According to a piece on the HR Examiner by Heather Bussing, applying a light hand when creating a social media policy will actually minimize your exposure to legal liability for something your employee writes.

“If you have a comprehensive social media policy that dictates what can and cannot be discussed, you will have to pay someone to monitor what is being said, demand that inappropriate posts come down and discipline when the edicts are violated. How much time, money and energy is this really worth?

Under agency law, if you are directing the conduct of employees in social media, the company will be liable for everything that is said. To the extent something said is defamatory, violates a nondisclosure agreement or just pisses someone off, a comprehensive social media policy is the best way to get the company named in the lawsuit.

If you are not controlling it, then the company generally will not be liable for things said and done in employees’ personal accounts. This is because the employees are not acting in the course of their employment and the employer is not controlling or implicitly approving the actions of its employees. And if there is no deep pocket to sue, the chance of a lawsuit getting filed at all is greatly diminished.”

Having employees make a disclaimer that what they say doesn’t reflect the opinion of the employer can cause someone to investigate whether the employer is closely monitoring what is being said and taking disciplinary action. If this is so then the case can be made that the employer was guiding the content or was aware of the content and made a decision whether to act upon it. The speed and degree to which the employer acted can be used as a basis of arguing approval of the content.

You can also run afoul free speech and right to organize if your policy is too restrictive as well as violate whistle-blower and non-retaliatory protections.

“The National Labor Relations Act protects employees from retaliation by an employer for discussing wages, hours or working conditions. These NLRA protections apply whether or not your company has a union, because they relate to “organizing” or pre-union actions.

The bottom line is that a social media policy cannot prohibit an employee from saying bad things about what it is like to work at your company. Protected expressions include being critical of the bosses, the customers or the stupid signs in the kitchen.”

If you are closely monitoring someone’s personal social media accounts you might be violating rights to privacy and open yourself to hacking charges if you gain access to and use passwords. Monitoring personal social media could lead to a wrongful termination action if it was discovered that you were aware of personal details that might place a burden on the company and moved to fire or harass them into leaving.

And of course, having a strict social media policy can be bad for your public image if it appears you are dictating what is being said rather than allowing for spontaneous interactions.

The article doesn’t really address how constrained you are in acting upon things employees may post on social media sites. People may have protected free speech but there is a difference between getting drunk and telling everyone in the bar that your boss has an unmentionable relationship with farm animals and getting drunk, pulling out your phone and posting the same thing to 5000 followers. That still may be protected, but at some point the scale of people receiving the message is going to be great enough that a business is justified in whatever action they may take.

Bussing does discuss in what situations it is acceptable to monitor social media accounts and to what degree it should be done. As in most things, the best social media policy is preparation and education. Employees should be taught what sort of activity is professional, how sharing certain tidbits of information can violate confidentiality and what opinions may be considered defamatory.