I need to Confess to You...My Secret

OKAY radical honesty time!

I’m not Catholic, but here’s my Confession:

Cynicism was a coverup. For the last two years, I have not known what the next five years would hold. I felt incapable of making a decision about the future. I felt demotivated about the nonprofit world and fundraising in particular. And then, tonight, I surprised myself. It hit me. Why I couldn’t imagine a future.

I held a position in the last few years that left a bad taste in my mouth. For this nonprofit, I wrote the grant proposals, and they got funded. I wrote the compelling appeal letters, the annual reports, the newsletters, and they brought in the money, but I felt disconnected, and I felt ashamed that I was getting money for a nonprofit that would only squander what I was hired to help them get. And I was not sure that any nonprofit that I worked for in the future would be any more deserving, that they wouldn’t also be corrupt and squander my hard work.

And I had not analyzed my motivation in that light, but it really affected me. I felt rudderless. Drifting, wanting to believe that all we needed to do as a sector was band together and the world would magically become a better place.

BUT My own experience with bad leadership belied that. My own experience told me that people involved in nonprofits are just as much out for their own material gain as anyone else, and what’s more, they are forced to conceal this or try to convince themselves that they have a higher, nobler purpose. And most of the time, the board is not paying attention to what is happening, and embezzlement continues to happen, while leaders stay in place, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE CAUGHT. Having a nonprofit job has become just that, a job, instead of a calling.

Let me explain.

URGENCY: Remember when American women got the vote? Women worked tirelessly for two years to get it in America, in 1910, and once they did, then the groups disbanded.

This structure we have is a false one: Causes and nonprofits were never set up originally to employ people like corporations. They were set up to achieve a mission, and then disappear. And presumably people were supposed to figure things out after that.They were never meant to be 9-5 jobs that you showed up for.

They were meant to be things you did because you cared about the mission. Maybe you would work on the cause after your job in the factory, or in your spare time when you weren’t taking care of your children. The urgency was palpable. You HAD to be there. You NEEDED the change. Desperately.

You look at nonprofit job descriptions now and the mission is kind of thrown in as an afterthought. They want you to have experience helping some other mission. They want you to have a background with software. They want you, in short, to be employed, like a corporation would employ you, for wages, where you will hopefully go about your job without too much fuss about whether or not you fully believe in the mission.

What’s the Point? Here’s the clincher. In fundraising, I feel like the most cynical idealist imaginable. I worked tirelessly for women’s rights for several years. And then was thrown out on my ear for absolutely no reason at all. Then I tried to go work for a cause that was about social justice. But when I saw that no one cared about the mission, when I saw that the urgency had left, and that there was no vision from senior leadership, then I just felt completely demotivated about fundraising. I just started to have a bad case of NOT GIVING A RAT’S ASS ABOUT ANYTHING. What was the point? I wondered. What was the point in getting money just so the Executive Director could squander it in some new pointless way ? What was the point if the board were out to lunch and no one actually was paying attention to the real mission? I can say this here, to you, that the status quo suits some senior leaders very well.

So when I went out and looked at other nonprofits and their missions, I saw some people clinging to the tiny raft of their ideas in a sea of administrative bloat and incompetent leadership. And I just thought, you know, there are few enough rewards for fundraising staff at dysfunctional organizations, maybe it’s better to help a lot of different nonprofits than to try to chafe under that yoke again. Can you relate? Have you ever had a terrible case of the FUCK-THIS-JOB-WE-ARE-NOT-REALLY-HELPING-PEOPLE?

If this system is broken, What can we do about it?

I WANT to believe the world will be better if nonprofits can just get their acts together, but in reality, we have to get EVERYONE to get their acts together. And that’s not going to happen in a blog post. But here are some ideas.

• Big ideas and dedication aren’t going to save us. The most tireless, selfless, dedicated people in the world can get used and abused by a nonprofit corporation.
• A good board isn’t going to save us either. Boards change up every year.
• A degree in nonprofit management isn’t going to save us. Just like an MBA doesn’t teach you how to lead a company day-to-day. Theory is nice, but you learn by doing.
• Looking at administrative overhead is not going to save us. Every nonprofit calculates this differently. Just because you’ve learned to read a 990 form does not make you an expert on organizational effectiveness and mission fulfillment. The 990 doesn’t talk about that. Because measuring that is a LOT more complex.

Here’s what I propose:

Unionization: A decent, living wage for nonprofit workers, which will probably only happen if we unionize. Whether you’re a nurse at a nonprofit hospital, or a fundraising professional, wages need to rise with the cost of living, every year.

Remote Working: Living more lightly on the earth. We’ll cook more wholesome food if we work less. We should be able to choose if we want to work from home, to save on commuting costs. Saves on office space too. Extra incentives to use public transport or to bike.

Dignity for All: Nonprofits set up more like Co-Ops, with every employee able to make suggestions and have a voice in leadership. Everyone allowed to come to board meetings. Everyone allowed to help make decisions about who will be the head of the agency. Hiring and firing by communal vote.

Return to Mission: Each year, ask everyone, Are we successfully fulfilling our mission? How many have we truly helped? Should we still exist? Is there someone else out there who is doing what we’re doing? What can we learn from them? How can we partner?

What do you think?

Have you ever felt completely demotivated in fundraising? In philanthropy? In feeling like you’re “making a difference” in this broken system?

What did you do about it? Did you surprise yourself? If so, how?

What do you think this system needs?

Please leave a comment.

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Dear Reader… Can I make a confession to you? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 26, 2011.

Managing Up, How does it work?

Have you ever known a boss or a person in management who just seemed to be there by luck, not by skill or management ability?

Have you ever known a nonprofit leader who didn’t know about nonprofits, but wasn’t aware of how much they didn’t know?

Have you ever heard of the term managing up?

Where does this term, managing up, come from?

Do you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect?

Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.
(from the wikipedia page.)

This relates to Peter’s Corollary.

“Peter’s Corollary states that “in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties” and adds that “work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence”. “Managing upward” is the concept of a subordinate finding ways to subtly “manage” superiors in order to limit the damage that they end up doing.”

How can you manage up?

Well, let’s assume your boss is a prime example of the kruger-dunning effect, and they don’t know what they don’t know, or worse, they assume that they know more about your job than you do, when in reality, they know nothing.

So, if this is the case, how do you get the message across?

First, set boundaries and expectations in your interview, straight out. And if it’s too late for that, then in your next meeting. Say, “Here is how you should measure what I’m doing.”

1. Measure fundraising not just in dollars raised, but in number of people touched.
2. Measure how well you’re doing your job by rebranding and polling community members about what they think of your nonprofit.
3. Measure how many grants out the door, not just which grants you won.
4. Measure the engagement of old and new volunteers and board members. Have you been having more meetings? What new initiatives are you planning?

If you can succeed in turning the conversation from “Where is the money” to “How can we get everyone to take responsibility for fundraising” then you will have succeeded in getting more help and managing up.

Any other tips for managing up? Please leave a comment!

(Also, if you are in a situation where you just want to tear your hair out because of a boss or coworker, we are about to make an app to help Stop Workplace Bullying and you can totally get to the bottom of that problem.)

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Are you managing up? Where does that come from? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 2, 2011.

Flickr image by GinasPics

First off, if you like how I write, you are going to LOVE how I teach. Because then it’s like I’m writing, but you can hear me talk, and then we can have a conversation, too!

Here’s a neat thing: My Wildly Successful Events Webinar on how to get sponsorships on July 13th is all sold out! For the THIRD TIME IN A ROW! PEOPLE REALLY LOVE IT! I am so happy! If you just want tips on how to get mega-sponsorships, then my next sponsorship webinars are September 1st and September 27th with charityhowto. And you can sign up right here.

I also have a new Charityhowto webinar, and it’s all about appeal letters! It’s called Tons of Money in the Mail. September 14th! And here’s where you can read more about it.

And if you just can’t wait for some new info right this month, I’ve got a webinar on managing your online reputation on July 15th that has a few extra spaces left in it. Just go here to check that out!

Have you ever worked with a nonprofit leader that just would say NO to everything you suggested? Did you ever think, ‘Oh M. G. I can’t take it anymore” and run out? Did you ever want to partner with other nonprofits but feel stymied because your organization wasn’t nimble enough to take advantage of opportunities like that? Too much bureaucracy? Or maybe you just didn’t have the power to decide that partnerships could happen?

I’ve noticed some of these issues and I’ve come up with a theory of what makes an effective leader. Whether you’re getting your Master’s in Nonprofit Management or your Master’s in Public Administration, I think these can be useful for you.

Do you have what it takes to be a good nonprofit leader? As I’ve made a study of what helps people be good leaders over the last five years, I’ve come up with six key things that can make or break an organization’s effectiveness. And we all want to be effective, right?

Here are the six qualities of effective nonprofit leaders.

1. Listen to what other people tell you and say yes to their suggestions.
This is as simple as someone saying, ‘Hey, can we partner with Nonprofit X? We could get some more exposure out of it’ and then just say YES. Or if someone else says, ‘Can we get a donor database now? I’ve researched them and this is the best one’ then just say YES. It’s a principle of one of the most successful car companies in the world. Ever heard of Toyota? Anyone at Toyota can make a suggestion and it will be tried to improve the effectiveness of their processes, whatever they are. This is lean methodology, also known as Kaizen. I have a whole section in my book devoted to this concept, and it can make such a difference in terms of making your nonprofit effective.

2. Appreciate people who work for you.
You need to build relationships all of the time, and especially with the people that you work with. These people need to see that you respect them. And when you appreciate them, you show them you respect them, and why they should continue to work even harder for you. A little thank-you when they do something right can mean so much. Maybe a big smile and a “I really appreciate what you did there” at other times. But in my experience so many people don’t know how to do this. If you don’t know how to do this, watch other people who do it really well. And emulate them.

Flickr Picture by Eric Schoon

3. If you have a problem with someone, meet with people and communicate with them clearly. I guess if it gets too serious, you could always use a finger puppet to say things for you?
There is so much bad communication in really tiny nonprofits, and there’s just no excuse for it except that people need to figure out how to communicate without blowing their stack. And what I find helps the most is weekly check-ins with people in your team. Even if it’s just you and the executive director. Get in there and have that meeting. Sit in the waiting area and chat about what’s going on, what you need help with, ask about priorities, etc. If you are off track, it can be corrected quickly with weekly meetings. When you are no longer meeting, communication breaks down and then it’s just a matter of time before you don’t have a job anymore.

4. Have passion for what you are doing and share credit whenever you can.
When you have true passion for the mission, when you are connected to the deepest pains of your clients or donors and you can articulate that to everyone around you, when you really love what you do and how you do it and how it all helps others, then people are going to love working around you and with you. You connect with the pain and then you can connect with a solution. Everyone likes problem-solvers. And also people who share the credit for doing something right. So when you do your work, appreciate the people who helped you do it. When you hold up people of lower status than you, that makes you look like a generous leader. And you are if you can make it a habit.

5. Push yourself to develop new skills and go beyond your comfort zone.
This means instead of saying, “Well, we’re not doing that because we don’t know how therefore it doesn’t matter” just ask someone. Say, why should we do this? What makes it a good thing? What will it get us? And then if there’s an opportunity for you to learn something, like a more effective way to deliver services, then learn it. It doesn’t take that long to learn about what other people are doing. We are getting so interconnected now that almost as soon as an innovation happens, when it’s published online, other people can get aware of it and start to replicate it, or connect with the person doing it and figure out how to make it happen on their scale. This can help you be more eligible for grants, when you take best practices of other nonprofits and apply them to your own. It can also keep you on your toes.

6. Ask for help.
This is huge. This could be partnering with another nonprofit, this could be bringing in an accountant to do your taxes, this could be asking someone to help you with board recruitment, this could be asking your board to help you fundraise, this could be even bigger, this could be getting a consultant to help you do better organizational communication, or getting a scholarship for continuing education for your employees to improve their knowledge. Maybe they just need to learn how to administer the website better. Maybe you need to ask an event manager for help. Asking for help is different than not paying for things. But sometimes, right, there’s founder’s syndrome and/or type A stuff where you think you have to do it all and be it all and you can’t show that you don’t know something, and seriously, it is SUCH a relief to ask other people to do things for you, and/or pay them, and know that it’s going to get done.

Do you agree? Disagree? Any more qualities that you think I’ve left out? Please leave a comment.

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6 ways you can be an effective nonprofit leader originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on July 11, 2011.

Recently, Seth Godin wrote on his blog,

“The factory-mindset encourages every worker to protect his time and his effort. Don’t volunteer because they’ll never give you any slack. Don’t push harder because you’ll only exhaust yourself. Don’t let them speed up the line because it will never slow down again…

It’s true: in a commodity business, productivity only increases as the result of more effort, and that effort is rarely compensated.

We see one organization after another, left unchecked, pushing miners or laborers or bureaucrats to exhaustion, all in the name of enhanced productivity.”

He calls it “underextending.” Does this sound familiar to you in your small nonprofit?

Do you feel like this?

I remember feeling like this, time and again, “No, don’t get all of your work done yet, they’ll just give you more to do, and never appreciate, promote you, or anything!” So it’s creative incompetence. How can I drag this out, just so they won’t stick me with 10 other tasks?

The reason I quote Seth Godin, at length, is to show you that if you are under-appreciated at your job, if people treat you like an easily-replaced cog, if you resist every attempt to get you to do more and more, you are not alone.

Do you want to know who REALLY has cause fatigue?

Us. The fundraisers.

Are YOU getting properly thanked for all of the hard work you do?
Do people at YOUR nonprofit really Appreciate YOU?
Are you tasked with giving out all of the appreciation, but not really getting your share in return?

I don’t know about you, but every time someone comes up to me on the street, I just think, “Oh no, not again.” I don’t want to give to any more causes, because I’ve already been burnt out by the practices above. Do I want to give MORE of my time, MORE of my money, MORE of my energy, for free? It hasn’t worked out so far. Why should it start working out now?

Believe me, when i want to give to charity, I do. But when someone approaches me to give to their cause, I just ask myself, “What good is it really going to do? They’ll mistreat THIS fundraiser, and they’ll be gone in a year, and the whole cycle will repeat again, and they’ll have wasted that money by having to hire someone new.”

As a donor, I’m not looking for efficiency here. I’m looking for a real, human connection at a nonprofit that treats its workers, no matter what their job title, with dignity and respect. A nonprofit that treats its workers well would rise immeasurably in my eyes as deserving donations. Is that too much to ask?

Demand better treatment!

The trouble with being a one-person shop or even just working at a small nonprofit is that you may find you’re too isolated to rise up with your other co-workers. But look, it’s happening all around us. It’s happening in China. It’s happening in Greece. It’s happening in Egypt. It can happen here too. We don’t have to be taken for granted. We don’t have to keep accepting more and more work. We don’t have to accept that we have no power in the nonprofit.

If you’d like to learn more how to create a workplace where everyone has dignity, check out these posts:

What rank is your boss playing?
18 ways to demand dignity at work
Help, my boss doesn’t listen to me! (PREZI)
Are you attacked for your fashion?

Do you want to know who REALLY has cause fatigue? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 30, 2011.

So tell me, as a fundraiser, would you like a higher salary? Would you like grants to fund your salary so that you can keep this nonprofit afloat, instead of your org looking at you as a necessary evil?

Would you like a larger marketing budget? Would you like a marketing budget, period?

When I read this on the RE:Philanthropy blog, I was floored.

Dan Pallotta, bestselling author of “Uncharitable” and founder of the AIDSRide and 3-Day breast-cancer walk, tells 1,000 foundation representatives that nonprofits should “step boldly” into radically new ways to scale their impact.

His first time to address a large group of philanthropists, Dan Pallotta challenges 1,000 members of the Council on Foundations to shake up the system. How?

“Stop asking about overhead and start asking about impact,” -Dan Pallotta

(what a radical concept!) -Peanut gallery

His own launch of the AIDSRide brought in returns of $108,000,000 in 9 years–that’s 1,982x the original seed grant of $50,000; and that’s the secret to scale. Pallotta tasks philanthropy leaders with finding “the next AIDSRide, the next Newman’s Own, or Product Red. They are out there, right now.”

“Fund fundraising,” he says; invest strategically; use your corpus to try loan guarantees; and and start acting like for-profits in 5 key ways:

• Offering competitive compensation
• Spending on advertising & marketing
• Taking risks to pursue new donors
• Allowing longer time horizons for outcomes
• Investing in risk capital for social causes

“We need a venture fundraising movement,” declares Pallotta. With a combined asset base of $1 trillion, U.S. foundations have more power than we realize. “A unified theory of charity is beginning to evolve, and that gives me hope,” he says. It has three components:

• Funding fundraising
• Hyper-vetting for effective nonprofits
• Working together for collective impact

 

Here’s what I think about funding risktaking. “OF COURSE!” What a good idea!

How about you? What do you think? Are you not allowed to make mistakes in your job? Does it make you feel unable to really make free movements and big changes at your nonprofit?

 

 

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Can I get a hell yes? Thank you RE:Philanthropy & Dan Pallotta! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 26, 2011.

I was having this conversation with someone on twitter

And I realized it had been a long time since I talked about jobs that you hate, bad bosses and rankism on here.

And there are like, SO MANY things to say about this!

So, let me ask you this.

Do you wish you could do your job instead of having to be dragged down by people who don’t get what you do and who just tell you NO every time you want to do something innovative?

Do you watch the clock and wait til it’s 5pm?

Does your real life begin AFTER work?

Do you DREAD going into work?

Do you get yelled at on a regular basis at work?

Do you feel powerless to speak up for yourself or you will be fired?

Do you feel like you’re drowning?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, it’s time for a new job.

Find someplace where they CAN appreciate you.

If you want a new nonprofit job, I’m doing a free online training on Thursday, April 7th, from 1pm-1:30pm CST, 2pm-2:30PM about how to get one. The training is called “Employee empowerment and effectiveness” just in case anyone is looking over your shoulder. And it’s free, so no reimbursement forms to sign!

This training will take 30 minutes, and we’ll talk about cover letters, and how to write effective ones.
We’ll go over your first paragraph,
The MEAT of your cover letter,
and your ending.

We’ll also talk about resumes, and networking to find new work. It will be very interactive, with lots of Q & A, (you can message me your questions and I will respond.)

Click here to sign up.

Each participant will get a free gift from me of a cover letter that works really really well for nonprofit jobs, as well as one-on-one time to get the answers you need.

But you have to
click here now to sign up. It’s so soon! Thursday!

Tick tock darling!

Here are some posts to get you motivated and get you psyched for the presentation:
What rank is your boss playing?

Ways to demand dignity at work

How do you recover from a toxic workplace?

How do you respond when a manager ostracizes or yells at you in front of staff

Change your language, change your life

Bullying bosses can cause employee suicide

I can’t wait to help you get a better job!

HATE your job? You are not alone. Join us on April 7th, 1pm CST. originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 3, 2011.

Did you feel burned out on that lifestyle?

What were some contributing factors, if so?

Want me to take a guess?

I just read a blog post by Pamela Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation, “An open letter to CXOs all over the world”.

Here are the salient points from her (extremely well written) blog post.

1. Don’t spend millions of dollars to try and change your culture. Corporate culture is a natural thing that cannot be manufactured.

2. Stop running your company like the mafia. “If you help your employees grow and develop in their career even if they plan to leave the company, you will create an extremely loyal workforce.”

3. Spend a moment walking around the halls of your company and look at your employees.

4. Teach people how to get rich like you.

5. Don’t ask for your employees’ input if you are not going to listen to it.

6. Don’t train people until you know what problem you are solving.

7. Ditch the PowerPoint when you have town hall meetings.

8. Focus on the work people do, not how or when they do it.

9. Watch the burnout.

10. Forbid people to work while they are on vacation.

She says in the article, in so many words, “Fire the assholes, and company culture will change.”

I have known bosses like the ones she described, people who did not know or care how the company was really doing. Jobs where how late you stayed meant you were working hard, not the amount you actually got accomplished before 12pm. Jobs where all employees had salary freezes for 9 years, and the cost of living increase in pay was eaten by the CEO. Jobs where we all got together and to make a strategic plan, and over and over again, the plan would be completely ignored.

And best of all? These jobs were at small nonprofits. Yep. Nonprofits are no safer than big corporations for the little guy.

So, if you’re considering a career change, and think that nonprofits will bring you that warm fuzzy feeling instead of a big corporation’s cold efficiency, don’t assume anything.

What would you like to do to change the nonprofit system?

If I were you, I would start to bring back some accountability among our leaders by becoming one of them.

Start by going to sit on a board of a small nonprofit. Look at the system that is in place. Are there checks and balances? Start digging. Start noticing the signs of nonprofit mismanagement. They are remarkably similar to business mis-management.

How much turnover has there been in the last year? The last five years? If there has been a lot of turnover, who is responsible for it?

Start asking questions. Innocent questions. “Why are we doing it this way?”

“What’s another way we could do this?” “Why can’t this person make a mistake?”

“Why am I getting paid a salary when salaries are supposed to be reserved for managers, and I’m not managing anyone, and I’m expected to work all of this overtime for free?”

“How do we celebrate what’s working?”

“How do we celebrate mistakes and encourage people to make more of them?”

“How do we deal with conflict here?”

“Is the employee handbook followed, or is it really more of a guideline?”

“Are our policies and procedures protecting or harming our workers?”

“If we have at-will employment, and are not protecting our workers, why do we expect them to do a good job for us?”

If it’s not safe for you to ask these questions where you currently work, have you ever thought about forming a union?

A union could protect you from being discriminated against, help you get cost-of-living pay increases, and more. And if you are fired for trying to form a union, the union will fight for you, and win, because that is actually illegal.

What do you think? Do you recognize some of this typical corporate mis-management within your own nonprofit?

Sound off, I’m listening!

If you’re feeling fed up and ready to do something, check out these posts:
How do I start a union?
Bullying Bosses can cause Employee Suicide
Is your nonprofit promoting a culture of destitution?

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

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Fire the assholes, and company culture will change originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 1, 2011.

Lady the fuck up dude!

Where do you think the phrase “man up” comes from, and why do you think it references getting things done?

If I were you, I would question this phrase before adding it to my lexicon.

Did you know that the world over, women do most of the work, and get paid the least? It’s true!

Ask the UN, and they’ll say:

“Globally, women’s participation in the labour market remained steady in the two decades from 1990 to 2010, whereas that for men declined steadily over the same period; the gender gap in labour force participation remains considerable at all ages except the early adult years.”

“Women spend at least twice as much time as men on domestic work, and when all work – paid and unpaid – is considered, women work longer hours than men do.” -DESA

Want more statistics and more context? Full report here.

In the US, according to an April 2010 article in TIME magazine, “U.S. (Caucasian) women still earned only 77 cents on the male dollar in 2008, according to the latest census statistics. (That number drops to 68% for African-American women and 58% for Latinas).”

And in the UK, The Economist says: Women who work full-time earn, on average, 17% less per hour than men working full-time. For women who work part-time, the gap in pay relative to full-time men is a huge 38% per hour.

So reading all of these statistics makes me really mad. How about you? How are YOU going to combat the gender pay gap?

So, do you want to MAN UP or LADY UP? Why is “success” a male attribute, according to this phrase? Why isn’t it also a female attribute? How can we challenge the assumptions inherent in this?

Instead of automatically going for “Man up” in your next conversation when you’re asking someone to get something done, why not try “Lady Up” instead?

It’s more accurate.

What do you think is the source of the gender pay gap?

Want to start a new catchphrase with me?

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First Name:

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Lady up and get things done! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 17, 2010.

Brendan Benson singing Tiny Spark

Have you ever been really irritated by people at work? What did you do about it?

“Try to understand that an oyster can only make a pearl” -Brendan Benson, Tiny Spark

Can you turn that irritation into a beautiful pearl?

How could you do that?

Well, you could take my webinar! I’m going to be talking about how to figure out what is wrong at your nonprofit, how to name it, and how to start the conversation at your charity to make things better. Is your boss being a gatekeeper, not letting you talk to the board? Is your board member being a seething giant, and yelling at you? Is your coworker being a snubber, and not saying hello or goodbye to you? How do you deal with this? Do you just watch what happens? Do you take a screaming tirade silently, and then go kick the dog, or kick someone lower than you in the hierarchy? Do you want to stop this vicious cycle?

Where’s the pearl? How about starting conversations, pulling a better rank, the rank of the persuader and the activist?

The Official Details
Managing Workplace Effectiveness

I am giving a webinar for TANO! (Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations) on September 22nd, 2010, from 2pm to 3:30pm Central Time, USA.

Do you wish you could be more efficient or effective in your job? Do you feel like a somebody or a nobody at your nonprofit? Join us on September 22nd, when we talk about rank in the workplace. Get the vocabulary you need to name and claim what is going on at work. In this webinar we’ll cover nonprofit communication and status dysfunctions and what to do about them.

Cost: Free for TANO members, $10.00 for non-TANO members

Register Here – https://cc.readytalk.com/r/9hxoenwn7027

Event Contact
Mary Beth Harrington
(972) 839-9960

Tip of the hat to all of you Pixies & Benson fans out there!

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Communicate better with this Sept 22nd Webinar! Come on Pilgrim! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 17, 2010.

Think about your old or current workplace.

How your emotions have gone from soaring hope to plunging despair in an instant.

How your sunny first beliefs about this job crumbled away in the harsh reality, as people showed their true faces and negativity.

How you hoped your desire for mentorship and continuing education would be honored, and it wasn’t.

How it was harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning.

The day you realized that you could have no loyalty to people in your office who betrayed you, who yelled at you, or socially ostracized you in other ways.

How you kept asking yourself, why why am I going to this job that I hate?

Why can’t I find a new job that’s better?

Or even, “Why am I looking for a new job at all? All jobs are the same!”

Think about how that workplace has affected you, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. With the prospect of leaving it all behind, do you feel liberated and joyful, or has the negative energy of your workplace rubbed off on you, leaving you feeling exhausted and deflated? If it has, here’s how you can start to recover your balance.

Start to address these things one by one.

Feelings: “I just want to cry” “I just want to scream.” “I just want to hide somewhere.”

Jennifer Louden, Author, The Woman's Comfort Book

Beliefs/Values: “I don’t believe that there are any good bosses.” “I’m such a lazy, dumb worker, I deserved all of the abuse that boss gave me.”

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay

Ideas: “There are too many people competing for shitty jobs! Bosses can treat people like crap and they can’t do anything but hang onto the job because they’re too scared they won’t find another one!”

When you start to address your ideas, read Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore and Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta. Dan Pallotta talks about nonprofit dysfunctions, and can help you address what may be holding your old organization back, and the sector as a whole. It can be very healing to name and claim what’s been going on, what’s making your nonprofit so dysfunctional, and the people in it so dysfunctional. So even if you can’t take back the months or years you spent there, knowing it was a systemic problem instead of just you can be comforting.

Work ethic: “Why should I work hard for anyone after this terrible experience? Won’t everyone just take advantage of my good nature? Is it even worth it to look for a job in this field?”

Barbara Winter

Here’s another way you can recover, aside from reading the books above. Journal every morning, for 3 pages. However long that takes you. Just wake up and journal. It can be about anything. There are no rules except that you fill up 3 pages, longhand. No checking email, voicemail, texts. Just journal right there in bed.

If you need prompts to journal, think about these questions.

* Where am I at right now, physically? Emotionally?

* What’s my outlook, my assumption as I respond to daily events? Am I assuming the best? The worst?

* How clear is my thinking? Am I distracted easily? Can I concentrate on what I used to enjoy?

* What did my sense of purpose used to be? What is it or where is it now?

* What can I do to feel joy every day? Draw a picture? Sing a song in the shower? Walk my dog?

* What one change can I make right now that will help me feel good in this moment?

* What can I do to take care of myself today?

Thanks for reading. You CAN recover from that toxic workplace. And if you need any help, I’m here for you.

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

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How You Can Recover From A Toxic Workplace originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 3, 2010.