With the growth of a non-profit come changes, some unexpected, and growing pains. As Sofia Crisp shares in this post, leaders of emerging non-profits should ‘be careful what they ask for’. If a growing non-profit organization’s resources are at risk of being overwhelmed, a leader will have capacity challenge on their hands.
In this Series, My Non-profit Journey: What I Wish I Knew When I Started, eight leadership wishes shared by Sofia Crisp with Your Outcomes Well are being explored.
- Crisp is the Executive Director/Founder of Housing Consultants Group, Greensboro NC.
- This blog post will explore: Growing Pains for Growing Non-profits.
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Sofia Crisp:
Be careful what you ask for. With growth comes change. At times, as we’ve grown over the years, we have been faced with capacity challenges. To put it simply, the work we have to do and our resources at a given moment are not in sync. The struggle continues. The best way to clearly ‘paint a picture’ of my housing non-profit’s changes is to compare it to the evolution of a Caterpillar to a Butterfly (Martha Beck, 4 Stages of a Major Life Change). The NC non-profit organization I’ve led, since 2004, has gone through all four stages as it has grown.
In the first phase (Dissolving), home foreclosures were mounting in our area. It was unexpected. It wasn’t pretty for our clients, because of the seriousness of some of their situations. It wasn’t pretty for us, because we were unprepared. Finding a way to manage the unexpected influx of clients was a growing pain we faced.
In the second phase (Imagining), we faced a new set of capacity challenges. First the Good News. This phase allowed us to envision what we could be, from Dreaming to Planning. How could I, as Executive Director, best manage the growing organization’s caseload? Now the Bad News. Two big leadership issues arose during this phase:
- How to get current staff up to speed and keep up with the growth.
- How to hire new, qualified staff to keep up with the growth, while still maintaining the quality of existing services already being provided.
In case it wasn’t already obvious, being ‘high touch’ and sensitive to the needs of our clients is very important to me. So, being more efficient, without having to sacrifice service quality, was a challenge for us during this phase. If a new approach wasn’t both effective and efficient, it wasn’t going to be embraced and practiced within my organization.
Reforming, the third phase, is best described as beginning to make the dreams and planning, done in the prior phase, come to fruition, only to fail, repeatedly. Just when I thought we had it right, something unexpected and undesirable would happen. Imagine driving on a zigzagging, scenic road which is full of potholes, hidden hazards, & detours. In the midst of a successful period, when everything was going well, we’d suddenly be faced with a problem to overcome. Typically, with relatively little response time, I would have to start all over and reframe how something would be redone. So that the client wouldn’t suffer, I therefore had to respond quickly and properly.
How did I handle these challenges? This is where my faith, passion for the work, and tenacity fueled the mental self-talk which I did daily.
- Without that conversation in my mind daily, the organization would not be in existence today! Beyond my self-talk, to keep myself motivated, it has also been important that I keep my staff motivated too – and working in their respective gifts. The wrong people can’t do their work right if they’ve been assigned the wrong role. So, even if I have the right people on my team, they need to be working in their gifts.
The work that non-profits like mine do isn’t about money, recognition or power. It’s about the passion of helping people. As my Pastor says, in the Non-profit world there are no “I’s” and little “you’s”. It’s about the entire team working for the greater good of helping people. The growing pain was getting the right team, with everybody working within the organization’s core competencies.
This brings me to the final phase, Flying. This is the last stage of the metamorphosis of a Caterpillar to a Butterfly. This is, thankfully, the change phase we’re in now. We are in our 11th year. We have established our footprint. We, Housing Consultants Group, provide services differently than other providers in the area. We’ve established our niche market and are focused on what we do that others do not do.
Given the inevitability of change, what does all this mean? I know that another change, and the challenges that go with it, is just around the corner. Again, with growth comes change, growing pains, and capacity challenges. Change and challenges are, I’ve discovered during my journey, two sides of the same coin!
LEARN
1 – Four stages of a Major Change:
a. Dissolve – Things literally break down
b. Imagine – Envision, Plan
c. Reform – Make changes, in order to improve
d. Fly – Move ‘through the air’ under complete control
2 – “You Gotta Have Faith” – George Michael sang it well and correctly. Both in the spiritual and the natural realms, your faith, your belief system for what is not yet manifested, but which one believes is possible, is necessary, especially when things don’t go according to plan. Crisp, as described above (3rd Phase) knows this all too well. Her experience isn’t unusual. Reforming, that is implementing changes, is a zigzagging road, not a straight street!
3 – In the end, the mission of the organization is so critical because it will be the force which carries you when challenges come. In what Crisp shared, it’s readily apparent that she remained focused on her non-profit’s core purpose. Distracted leaders have a harder time doing this.
GROW
1 – Let’s presume you have the passion and desire to run your non-profit organization. The capacity challenge presents a new question.
- Can you be a chameleon? (i.e. – can you adapt to your surroundings and the circumstance that you find yourself in) Many business Owners, and non-profit organization Founders, are smart and talented, but yet they suffer due to Tunnel Vision. When the circumstances change, and they will, they’re simply incapable of adapting to the new reality. As a result, the operation they lead suffers greatly or literally ceases to exist.
2 – Can You Stand The Rain? Now I’m going back to a popular New Edition song from the 90’s. While it is a love song, the lyrics still make a good point:
On a perfect day, I know that I can count on you
When that’s not possible
Tell me, can you weather the storm?
Storms will come
I know all the days won’t be perfect
But tell me can you stand the rain?
The first Grow principle is about the character trait of being able to accept and adapt to change. The second principle speaks to your ability to endure.
- Do you have the fortitude to withstand the challenge?
- Can you endure when things get tough?
These are the 2 question to ask yourself. In any endeavor you are in, or will face in the future, the answers will reveal things you’ll need to successfully overcome distinct challenges as you grow.
Growing Pains for Growing Non-profits
To succeed as a non-profit leader, you need to be able to manage growth – and know that there are associated pains that a larger organization will experience. To expect to skip Dissolving (a turbulent stage), going straight to Imagining, and to have a failure-free implementation (Reform Phase) of your plans, before you succeed and ‘fly’, is a grand fantasy! That’s not the way major changes occur in reality.
- Have you been able to grow and prosper your organization without any surprising, unexpected challenges?
Again, with growth comes changes and challenges. If you understand the four phases of major changes, you’ll avoid being overwhelmed by the types of growing pains described by Sofia S Crisp in this post.
The journey of one non-profit leader, Sofia Crisp, continues next week.
Your Outcomes Well
(to be continued)
Photo credit: plancas67/flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Your Outcomes Well
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