How can nonprofits help their employees during these hard times? – SHARITY

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Powering Nonprofit Success Through Participatory Processes:

Did you know that organizations prioritizing participatory processes and deliberately decreasing barriers see a significant increase in program effectiveness? This Fall, I’m excited to delve into how this framework powers real-world success through our three-part webinar series, Insights for Impact!

On September 18th, Dr. Inderjit Vicky Basra, President and CEO of the Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center, and Jessica Raymond, former Chief of Staff of the YWCA, joined Sharity Global Expert Anne Miskey to offer real-world examples of ways participatory processes elevated their organizations’ mission and impact. Dr. Basra emphasized the importance of including direct and indirect experts in decision-making conversations. She noted, “…layered communication makes the change.” When those in the community who experience the challenges your organization strives to address work alongside those with academic or professional experience in key areas, your organization can begin to affect systemic change. Jessica added, “When we talk about advocating for people and engaging their voices…here is the mic! You sit at this table, you tell me what you need from us, you make the decision…”

Key takeaways from the conversation included:

Write equity into your policies and procedures.
Avoid “tokenizing” the community you serve. Ensure that if you ask something of your community members, such as asking them to share their stories, you are developing and strengthening a mutually beneficial relationship with them.
Identify ways your organization may connect direct experts, those with lived experience, with donors, elected officials, and other community leaders and influencers.
Engaging all voices allows you to review and evaluate the impact of your programming with an open mind and heart.
Give credit to all the experts helping you execute your mission. Whenever possible, compensate and recognize direct experts, those with lived experiences, for their work on behalf of your organization, just as you would an indirect expert with academic or professional experience.

Dr. Basra summed up the importance of engaging all voices when she described the success her organization has had with connecting survivor mentors with the recently rescued. “[Survivor’s] concepts around hope look very different because they’re sitting across from somebody, that at some point, was in the same space that they are in…Their survivor-mentor becomes a beacon of hope!” Anne added, “The little ways you can connect your donors in real ways to people” will bring about transformation.

How can nonprofits help their employees during these hard times?

Ask Me Anything Summary

Hi, this is carol and i’m here with another ask me anything video. and today’s question is how can nonprofits help their employees during these difficult times? well, it really is a difficult time. what we know is that there are actually more women that work in nonprofits than men.

And we also know that women are losing jobs during this pandemic because of the strains of taking care of children and home schooling and also just from layoffs. so it really is a stressful time for many nonprofit employees.

So how do you help your staff? well, one thing you need to do is make sure you have really good open and clear communication. make sure you’re talking to your staff, let them know what decisions are coming down the pipeline.

Let them know, for instance, if your nonprofit is financially stable, that you have a plan in place to make sure that their job is going to be secured in the long run.

There’s also some really great things that you can do just when you have your staff meetings and when you’re starting to try to connect. I know it’s hard, especially if you’re remotely working and you have people on zoom for staff meetings, but trying to take some time to do a little bit of light fun activities.

There’s a lot of really cool things that you can do out there, even maybe hiring a facilitator to manage a couple of their staff meeting so that you can start to really get your staff feeling like a team even though they can’t all work together.
So those are a couple of things that you can do as a nonprofit to start really taking care of your staff, communicate, and have some fun. have a great week and make sure if you have any questions or if you need any help with anything that you’re struggling with right now, you can reach out to us at ‘carol.wick@sharityglobal.com‘

Or assessments at ‘sharityglobal.com’ if you want to take our online assessment and learn more about the work that your nonprofit needs to do to gland major gifts.