nonprofit best practices
Best Practices: Climbing the Mountain
Mon Aug 30 2010 Filed in: Nonprofit best practices
By Sally Funk
I can see Pikes Peak from my window. At over 14,000 feet, it towers over every other mountain nearby. Yet, like many who live in this area, I’ve only been to the top once. Thousands more have never ascended its heights, although a handful do go up regularly. It’s not that it is particularly hard to do — in addition to a well-maintained hiking trail, there is a road and a train that go all the way up to the coffee shop (yes, coffee shop) on top. It’s just one of those, “one of these days…” goals.
Rather like “best practices” in our organizations. We talk about them a great deal, discussing how to define them, how they can be measured, whether they actually apply to the situation our organization is currently facing, and so forth. But surprisingly few organizations actually achieve the regular practice of “best practices.”
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with best practices. It’s more that, for most organizations, the step from here to there is just too big. When you’re out on the flatlands struggling to meet minimum requirements, it’s hard to imagine climbing the mountain.
Perhaps what we really need are intermediate steps.
Take receipting, for example. The IRS requires organizations to provide receipts for gifts of $250 or more, which provides an external definition of the minimum required practice. Best practice for sending receipts is a 24-hour turnaround from receiving a gift to the mailing of the receipt. There’s a huge chasm between those two benchmarks.
Wouldn’t it be more useful to step away from the “all or nothing” perspective and adopt a stair step of functionality levels something like:
Some might argue that his can encourage a mindset of settling for less than the best and giving up on the goal of excellence. But consider which is better: a choice between a seemingly unobtainable “best” and the wholly inadequate status quo, or an achievable small improvement, followed by others, building to a culture of innovation?
I can see Pikes Peak from my window. At over 14,000 feet, it towers over every other mountain nearby. Yet, like many who live in this area, I’ve only been to the top once. Thousands more have never ascended its heights, although a handful do go up regularly. It’s not that it is particularly hard to do — in addition to a well-maintained hiking trail, there is a road and a train that go all the way up to the coffee shop (yes, coffee shop) on top. It’s just one of those, “one of these days…” goals.
Rather like “best practices” in our organizations. We talk about them a great deal, discussing how to define them, how they can be measured, whether they actually apply to the situation our organization is currently facing, and so forth. But surprisingly few organizations actually achieve the regular practice of “best practices.”
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with best practices. It’s more that, for most organizations, the step from here to there is just too big. When you’re out on the flatlands struggling to meet minimum requirements, it’s hard to imagine climbing the mountain.
Perhaps what we really need are intermediate steps.
Take receipting, for example. The IRS requires organizations to provide receipts for gifts of $250 or more, which provides an external definition of the minimum required practice. Best practice for sending receipts is a 24-hour turnaround from receiving a gift to the mailing of the receipt. There’s a huge chasm between those two benchmarks.
Wouldn’t it be more useful to step away from the “all or nothing” perspective and adopt a stair step of functionality levels something like:
- Minimum requirement – what is legally required.
- Marginally functional – the bare bones of what’s needed to make the effort work. In our receipt sample, this would be sending receipts to all donors monthly or annually.
- Adequately acceptable – working at a level that allows a strategy to work mostly as designed, but not as effectively as desired. For our receipts, that would be a one-week turnaround.
- Commonly effective – this is the difference between “working” and “working well.” For receipts, this would be 2 - 4 days. Most organizations should be able to reach this level and reap the benefits of the improved effectiveness.
- Best practice – that “extra” — of innovation, excellence and ingenuity — that takes your strategy to the top.
Some might argue that his can encourage a mindset of settling for less than the best and giving up on the goal of excellence. But consider which is better: a choice between a seemingly unobtainable “best” and the wholly inadequate status quo, or an achievable small improvement, followed by others, building to a culture of innovation?
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