Excellent article… I manage organizational learning projects for big corporations, paving the way for P2P content sharing, but I actually do not know a lot about nonprofits institutions and this article provides a bunch of useful insights. Thanks.
You may wish to read and reference Marilyn Darling’s report on organizational learning efforts in philanthropic organizations, “A compass in the woods; learning through grantmaking to improve impact.” Learning is tough even when we are intentional about it. I would ask, however, whether we need to look at the apparently positive outcomes of not learning.
I’m deeply committed to supporting organizational learning as well as learning across organizations doing similar work.
Since 1975 I’ve led a small non profit that connects business volunteers with inner city kids in on-going tutoring and/or mentoring. Between 1975-1990 I did this while holding retail advertising jobs with a large corporation, where my job was to develop advertising that reached 20 million people a week and attracted them to one of our 400 stores in 40 states.
Between 1975 and 1990 our program grew from 100 pairs of youth and volunteers to 300 with virtually no paid staff. Thus, to try to keep everyone informed of what was going on and what we were trying to do I tried to duplicate the mass communications of retail advertising with the motivations of a learning organization.
I made information available to our volunteers and students that they could use to inform their own weekly efforts and created socializing activities to encourage informal information sharing. The core information of what we were doing did not change from year to year so as volunteers stated with the organization longer they begin to aggregate more knowledge and experience and were able to help newer volunteers. As a result we had high attendance and retention rates of youth and volunteers and our enrollment grew from year-to-year.
In 1990 left the corporate job and converted the program to a non profit and became its full-time leader. The same challenge of communicating to large numbers of volunteers remained, but now there was also a challenge of providing information to Board of Directors and donors in order to find the money needed to operate the program.
In 1993 I created a new version of the original program working with 7th-12th grade youth. We started with 7 volunteers and five teens and by 1998 had an annual enrollment of nearly 100 pairs of teens and volunteers.
At the same time we decided to try to build a better understanding of all tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region and created a Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy to do that. Through an on-going survey we learned about nearly 200 different sites offering various forms of tutoring and/or mentoring. I began to build a library of program files, training manuals, etc. and a newsletter to make program leaders, donors, media and political leaders aware that this information existed. Starting in May 1994 we organized a networking conference every May and November to help programs connect with each other so the information flow could go through many networks. These were attracting 200-300 participants by 1999.
When we went to the Internet in 1998 we moved our library and database to a web site and continued to aggregate information and share ideas. Now the information was available to people all over the world and the ideas were from people all over the world. Between 2000 and 2010 we’ve put most of our planning documents on wikis, along with volunteer training handbooks, weekly guidance, tutoring, mentoring resources, etc. Our sites now record over 5000 visitors and 100,000 hits each month.
The information we were aggregating about tutoring/mentoring programs throughout Chicago was available to our own volunteers, directors, students and donors, at the same time it was being made available to all other programs in the region.
Here are the challenges I’ve found.
a) There is a vast amount of information and it cannot be learned in a short period of time. Most people coming into my organization (and most others) as a volunteer or director have not spent many years thinking about how to operate a tutor/mentor program, let alone how to be an effective tutor/mentor. I’ve built my own understanding of this information over 35 years. I know of no university or high school service learning program guiding students through 4 to 8 years of experiential learning so they could enter careers in this field with a broad base of knowledge that they could build on in future learning.
b) It’s been difficult to find the dollars needed to maintain the library,, or to build a staff of people beyond myself in my own organization who had in-depth awareness of what is available. There are few dollars available for advertising that draws attention to it.
c) Because of too few dollars there are never enough people who understand what is available in the information library and who can facilitate understanding of the information or to show others how to use it. I feel there is great potential of students in high schools and colleges taking this role.
d) There is too little time available for volunteers, Board members, staff leaders to spend time every week reading, reflecting, and looking for ways to use the knowledge to improve their own efforts. Many small non profits have thin infrastructures and staff wear too many hats. Time for learning is just not regularly available in the day-to-day operations of a program.
e) Perhaps the greatest challenge to small non profits is that the high staff turnover in programs means that while we were able to build relationships in some programs where people began using the information library these relationships do not pass on to replacements when people left jobs. In my own organization changes in Directors and lead staff every 2-3 years meant we were constantly starting from scratch training new people to do their jobs, and in trying to build awareness of the information available to learn from, and motivating people to use the to broaden there perspective and inform their own involvement. If staff do not know what is in the library and how to use the information they are less effective in supporting the use of this information by volunteers and students. I developed a weekly email newsletter sent to volunteers and alumni pointing out information and encouraging people to read it.
f) Even though the Internet makes a vast library if ideas and knowledge available there are too few on-line tutor/mentor communities where people doing the same work are working with the same information and where youth, volunteers, donors, leaders are all participating. There is too little time for staff, volunteers and directors to get involved with these.
All of these challenges can be overcome but the solutions involved teaching problem solving, learning and innovation should be integrated into learning as early as middle school so that by the type people reach the workforce these are ingrained habits and their knowledge of social sector issues and solutions has already began to develop.
I made information available to our volunteers and students that they could use to inform their own weekly efforts and created socializing activities to encourage informal information sharing. The core information of what we were doing did not change from year to year so as volunteers stated with the organization longer they begin to aggregate more knowledge and experience and were able to help newer volunteers. As a result we had high attendance and retention rates of youth and volunteers and our enrollment grew from year-to-year.
BYKatie Smith Milway, Partner, The Bridgespan Group
I appreciate the examples that readers are providing of how learning flows are impacting their organizations. The audience at our Stanford Nonprofit Management Institute presentation had a chance to become a learning lab, and each share at their tables the most useful incentives and processes they had implemented to keep their organizations learning in ways that advanced their missions.
Please feel free to put more ideas in the hopper via your comments, and we will distill them and play them back in a way that is accessible to SSIR readers.
I am an Organizational Learning and Performance graduate student. I have worked in Educational environments and non-profits for twenty years. Everything that you stated in the article is totally aligned with other articles and case studies that I have read. I especially liked the focus on doing four things well as well as the explanation of gaps. You provided some great examples of learning organizations. Thanks for doing the research.
Hmm it appears like your blog ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what
I submitted and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog.
I too am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to the whole thing.
Do you have any tips for inexperienced blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.
COMMENTS
BY MArcello
ON July 14, 2011 01:48 PM
Excellent article… I manage organizational learning projects for big corporations, paving the way for P2P content sharing, but I actually do not know a lot about nonprofits institutions and this article provides a bunch of useful insights. Thanks.
BY John David Smith
ON July 15, 2011 06:27 AM
You may wish to read and reference Marilyn Darling’s report on organizational learning efforts in philanthropic organizations, “A compass in the woods; learning through grantmaking to improve impact.” Learning is tough even when we are intentional about it. I would ask, however, whether we need to look at the apparently positive outcomes of not learning.
BY Daniel Bassill
ON September 5, 2011 04:55 PM
I’m deeply committed to supporting organizational learning as well as learning across organizations doing similar work.
Since 1975 I’ve led a small non profit that connects business volunteers with inner city kids in on-going tutoring and/or mentoring. Between 1975-1990 I did this while holding retail advertising jobs with a large corporation, where my job was to develop advertising that reached 20 million people a week and attracted them to one of our 400 stores in 40 states.
Between 1975 and 1990 our program grew from 100 pairs of youth and volunteers to 300 with virtually no paid staff. Thus, to try to keep everyone informed of what was going on and what we were trying to do I tried to duplicate the mass communications of retail advertising with the motivations of a learning organization.
I made information available to our volunteers and students that they could use to inform their own weekly efforts and created socializing activities to encourage informal information sharing. The core information of what we were doing did not change from year to year so as volunteers stated with the organization longer they begin to aggregate more knowledge and experience and were able to help newer volunteers. As a result we had high attendance and retention rates of youth and volunteers and our enrollment grew from year-to-year.
In 1990 left the corporate job and converted the program to a non profit and became its full-time leader. The same challenge of communicating to large numbers of volunteers remained, but now there was also a challenge of providing information to Board of Directors and donors in order to find the money needed to operate the program.
In 1993 I created a new version of the original program working with 7th-12th grade youth. We started with 7 volunteers and five teens and by 1998 had an annual enrollment of nearly 100 pairs of teens and volunteers.
At the same time we decided to try to build a better understanding of all tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region and created a Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy to do that. Through an on-going survey we learned about nearly 200 different sites offering various forms of tutoring and/or mentoring. I began to build a library of program files, training manuals, etc. and a newsletter to make program leaders, donors, media and political leaders aware that this information existed. Starting in May 1994 we organized a networking conference every May and November to help programs connect with each other so the information flow could go through many networks. These were attracting 200-300 participants by 1999.
When we went to the Internet in 1998 we moved our library and database to a web site and continued to aggregate information and share ideas. Now the information was available to people all over the world and the ideas were from people all over the world. Between 2000 and 2010 we’ve put most of our planning documents on wikis, along with volunteer training handbooks, weekly guidance, tutoring, mentoring resources, etc. Our sites now record over 5000 visitors and 100,000 hits each month.
The information we were aggregating about tutoring/mentoring programs throughout Chicago was available to our own volunteers, directors, students and donors, at the same time it was being made available to all other programs in the region.
Here are the challenges I’ve found.
a) There is a vast amount of information and it cannot be learned in a short period of time. Most people coming into my organization (and most others) as a volunteer or director have not spent many years thinking about how to operate a tutor/mentor program, let alone how to be an effective tutor/mentor. I’ve built my own understanding of this information over 35 years. I know of no university or high school service learning program guiding students through 4 to 8 years of experiential learning so they could enter careers in this field with a broad base of knowledge that they could build on in future learning.
b) It’s been difficult to find the dollars needed to maintain the library,, or to build a staff of people beyond myself in my own organization who had in-depth awareness of what is available. There are few dollars available for advertising that draws attention to it.
c) Because of too few dollars there are never enough people who understand what is available in the information library and who can facilitate understanding of the information or to show others how to use it. I feel there is great potential of students in high schools and colleges taking this role.
d) There is too little time available for volunteers, Board members, staff leaders to spend time every week reading, reflecting, and looking for ways to use the knowledge to improve their own efforts. Many small non profits have thin infrastructures and staff wear too many hats. Time for learning is just not regularly available in the day-to-day operations of a program.
e) Perhaps the greatest challenge to small non profits is that the high staff turnover in programs means that while we were able to build relationships in some programs where people began using the information library these relationships do not pass on to replacements when people left jobs. In my own organization changes in Directors and lead staff every 2-3 years meant we were constantly starting from scratch training new people to do their jobs, and in trying to build awareness of the information available to learn from, and motivating people to use the to broaden there perspective and inform their own involvement. If staff do not know what is in the library and how to use the information they are less effective in supporting the use of this information by volunteers and students. I developed a weekly email newsletter sent to volunteers and alumni pointing out information and encouraging people to read it.
f) Even though the Internet makes a vast library if ideas and knowledge available there are too few on-line tutor/mentor communities where people doing the same work are working with the same information and where youth, volunteers, donors, leaders are all participating. There is too little time for staff, volunteers and directors to get involved with these.
All of these challenges can be overcome but the solutions involved teaching problem solving, learning and innovation should be integrated into learning as early as middle school so that by the type people reach the workforce these are ingrained habits and their knowledge of social sector issues and solutions has already began to develop.
BY Alchemy
ON September 30, 2011 06:05 AM
I made information available to our volunteers and students that they could use to inform their own weekly efforts and created socializing activities to encourage informal information sharing. The core information of what we were doing did not change from year to year so as volunteers stated with the organization longer they begin to aggregate more knowledge and experience and were able to help newer volunteers. As a result we had high attendance and retention rates of youth and volunteers and our enrollment grew from year-to-year.
BY Katie Smith Milway, Partner, The Bridgespan Group
ON October 6, 2011 01:01 PM
I appreciate the examples that readers are providing of how learning flows are impacting their organizations. The audience at our Stanford Nonprofit Management Institute presentation had a chance to become a learning lab, and each share at their tables the most useful incentives and processes they had implemented to keep their organizations learning in ways that advanced their missions.
Please feel free to put more ideas in the hopper via your comments, and we will distill them and play them back in a way that is accessible to SSIR readers.
BY Regina Bash-Taqi
ON April 8, 2012 05:51 PM
Found this a really useful article as someone just exploring this field. Helped me to begin to understand how theory can be put into practice.
BY Sara Rice
ON May 12, 2014 06:49 PM
I am an Organizational Learning and Performance graduate student. I have worked in Educational environments and non-profits for twenty years. Everything that you stated in the article is totally aligned with other articles and case studies that I have read. I especially liked the focus on doing four things well as well as the explanation of gaps. You provided some great examples of learning organizations. Thanks for doing the research.
BY plenty of fish edmonton
ON October 14, 2015 03:21 PM
Hmm it appears like your blog ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what
I submitted and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog.
I too am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to the whole thing.
Do you have any tips for inexperienced blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.