GUEST POST // How Engaged Employees Can Help Your Nonprofit Thrive
By Tim Badolato of eCardWidget
Staying motivated and motivating your employees determines whether your nonprofit is able to complete day-to-day functions. After all, fundraising and meeting program goals can be challenging, and it’s easy for even dedicated employees to occasionally feel disengaged.
When you are able to keep your team motivated, your nonprofit can make leaps in progress from advancing new projects to fine-tuning your current processes. Fortunately, employee engagement is rarely fickle and can be maintained with the right strategies adapted to your team’s unique needs.
To help your nonprofit thrive with a passionate team, this guide will explore three benefits of highly engaged employees and how you can motivate your team.
Spend less time on hiring and training.
While new employees have the potential to bring great value to your nonprofit, finding new employees and getting them up to speed takes time and resources. This can be especially challenging for nonprofits with high levels of employee turnover.
However, an engaged workforce tends to be a retained one, and the more senior employees you have, the less time you’ll need to devote to onboarding and recruitment.
While employees come and go for all sorts of reasons, you can likely engage and retain a majority of your team by:
Showing appreciation. Outside of their paychecks, how do you show your team you care about their contributions? You can show appreciation for your employees in a variety of ways, from saying thank you at the end of the day to applauding a job well done in front of your entire team. You can even create a culture of appreciation by encouraging employees to send each other eCards. When one member of your team does a great job, another employee who saw and appreciated their actions can shoot them an eCard highlighting their accomplishments.
Offering opportunities for growth. Your team members want a career where they can expand their skills, have opportunities to take initiative, and oversee their own success. Make sure employees know what opportunities for advancement are available to them and what steps they can take to grow their responsibilities and reach the next step in their careers.
Being transparent about compensation. While your employees may be passionate about your cause, they also need a reliable paycheck to stick with your nonprofit. Astron Solution’s guide to employee compensation emphasizes fostering a culture of transparency by providing information about why compensation decisions were made, encouraging employees to ask their managers questions, and even offering an employee assistance program to help team members have better financial literacy.
Think of your employees as you would a fundraising event. You have to invest time and resources into them to see worthwhile results. When employees feel like their work is being appreciated and adequately compensated, they’ll be happy to stick with you for the long haul. Not to mention, building a reliable team of senior employees reduces training costs and makes sure everyone can complete their work independently.
Solidify a foundation of knowledge.
Hopping on the latest trend in nonprofit fundraising is exciting, each offering a new chance to earn more and hit your annual fundraising goal for sure this year. However, while some trends may evolve into standard best practices, many end up being far less successful than your most reliable fundraising tool: the wealth of knowledge your employees have accumulated through their years in the nonprofit space.
Of course, you only have access to this foundation of knowledge if your nonprofit takes the steps to build it. You can retain more employees, help them develop their skills, and turn their great ideas into core fundraising practices by:
Promoting internally. Rather than recruiting brand new employees to fill managing positions, look to the team members who already know your nonprofit inside and out. Internal promotions can ensure knowledge stays in your organization and is passed down to new hires, rather than lower-level employees needing to help guide a new manager. Plus, showing your team that they have the opportunity to advance internally can help keep motivation high.
Creating a mentorship program. Encourage senior members of your team to directly pass their knowledge on to new hires with mentorships. Mentorship programs can help new employees get insight into the inner workings of your nonprofit and lead them to form a stronger connection with their mentor.
Implementing documentation practices. Whenever a member of your team develops a new process, have them write down what they did and how others can replicate it. This could be documentation for writing a successful grant application, using your CRM to generate compliance reports, or how to ask a specific major donor for more funding.
Having a foundation of knowledge also speeds up the hiring process when you are ready to grow. New hires will have an extensive team of senior employees to turn to for questions in addition to documentation for all of your core software and daily operations.
Spread positive word-of-mouth marketing.
Nonprofit employees who feel positively about their cause and their employer can be one of your most useful tools for building connections and generating community support. Some of your employees may be able to connect your organization with potential sponsors and major donors, whereas others might have a network of family and friends who are happy to volunteer.
To tap into these connections and the power of word-of-mouth marketing, you need to create a positive working environment. You can make your employees want to support your organization even when they’re off the clock by:
Building a positive workplace culture. eCardWidget’s guide to company culture explains how workplace culture is made up of three factors: values, attitudes, and practices. You can showcase your nonprofit’s values and encourage more positive attitudes by implementing policies that make working for your nonprofit a better experience. This might involve encouraging questions and transparency, publicly recognizing accomplishments, or hosting cultural events that enable employees to get to know each other.
Encouraging participation in your community. While you likely focus on what your team does while they’re in office, you can create a better holistic experience by encouraging philanthropic activity in your greater community. You might promote volunteering by offering volunteer grants or even allowing employees to take time off to go volunteer.
Listening to employee feedback. Your employees want to be part of a team where their voices are heard. Implement practices, like manager one-on-ones, where every employee can share their ideas and voice concerns without worry.
Along with earning your nonprofit more community support, cultivating a positive reputation can also help with recruitment. After all, if you are known for treating employees fairly, fostering their growth, and being a force for good in your community, it’s far easier to find skilled new hires who are ready to work.
Highly engaged employees keep your nonprofit running, and you can motivate them to continue their hard work by showing your appreciation, providing opportunities for advancement, and fostering a positive work environment.
This guest post was written by Tim Badolato.
Tim Badolato is the CEO of eCardWidget.com an innovative platform for digital employee recognition, donor acknowledgment, business marketing, and nonprofit marketing. He has a passion for using technology to drive positive outcomes for mission-driven businesses and nonprofits.
