Use Policies, Procedures to "Organize" Your Nonprofit Organization

Does it feel like your nonprofit organization is less than organized? Does you staff know how to handle unusual situations when they arise? These are serious questions. Working - let alone managing - in a chaotic environment leads to low morale and poor client service. Staff members need to feel confident, empowered, and prepared in whatever circumstances they face. The best tools you can provide for staff are a clear sense of direction and clear parameters for action. Sound difficult? It isn't. You can empower your employees by following this simple formula:

Mission --> Policies --> Procedures --> Training --> Review

Mission
Why does your organization exist? If you don't know, you can be certain that neither do your staff members. If you do not yet have a mission statement, now is the time to craft one. A mission statement is simply a concise summary of what your organization is trying to accomplish. For example, a nonprofit that runs a shelter might exist "To provide nourishment and temporary housing for the city's homeless and to connect them with appropriate social service agencies." Be careful as you craft your mission statement; it will shape everything else you do.

Policies
Once you have your mission statement in place, it is time to work on your policies. Policies are written statements that define how your organization will operate. Each policy should address a specific aspect of your operation. For example, you might have policies that govern the expenditure of funds or the amount of sick time to which paid staff are entitled. It is critical that policies do not clash with one another. If your policies undermine one another, the result will be chaos. You policies should be collected into a policy manual and should be available to all staff members at all times.

Procedures
After drafting a mission statement and establishing your policy manual, you need to communicate how your organization will put these documents into practice. To do this, you will need to write procedures. Procedures explain the details of how your policies will be administered in everyday operations. For example, if you have a sick leave policy, then staff members must understand how and to whom they report the time that they are taking off. Like your policies, procedures should be collected into an easily accessible manual. They must mesh with your policies and they must outline a realistic course of action for staff to follow. If your procedures are simply idealized statements that can't be carried out, staff will quickly discard them. Soon, everyone will do everything in his or her own way and your organization will have devolved back into chaos.

Training
So far, you have a lot of great ideas on paper. They only way you can translate them into action is to communicate them to staff and provide training. You simply cannot provide too much training. The more you prepare your staff, the easier time they will have helping you accomplish your mission. Retraining should occur whenever a policy or a procedure changes. All new staff members must be trained as soon as possible. The result will be an organization that operates consistently and wastes no effort in the accomplishment of its mission.

Review
Once all these items are in place, it is critical to review them on a regular basis. The environment in which your organization operates can change quickly. Don't let antiquated policies and procedures hold keep your staff from fulfilling the mission to which they have dedicated themselves.