Leading Your Nonprofit In a Time of Pandemic
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This article was originally posted on March 12. Other articles on related topics can be found here.
Your annual plan probably didn’t factor in the likelihood of a global pandemic, did it? And yet, here we are …
Despite the profound uncertainty, you need working assumptions to guide your choices and provide a framework for others to understand those choices. My personal theory—the one underlying the advice offered here—is that the pandemic will cause substantial disruption for most organizations over the next three to six months, after which there will be a return to more stable conditions. Here’s how you can successfully lead your organization through these next few months:
Focus on staff needs. For your staff, the pandemic is only secondarily an organizational crisis; their primary concerns will be personal—their own health, health of family members, child care disruptions, etc. This is natural. Pushing against it will be futile and only lead to anger or resentment. Instead:
Revisit sick leave and work-from-home policies. Because your policies were not designed to deal with a pandemic, it may be appropriate to make short term adjustments.
Be flexible. Each staff member will have different needs so don’t establish one-size-fits-all solutions and expect that to suffice. Make sure that mechanisms are in place to grant exceptions. Whenever possible, delegate authority to others so that all staff feel comfortable asking for what they need.
Actively demonstrate support and encouragement when staff prioritize personal considerations over work. To the extent that you’ve cultivated a work-comes-first culture, you may need to be assertive in reassuring folks that you’re sincere.
Explore creative ways for staff to support each other. A staff committee may be best situated to address this.
This Isn’t Teleworking goes into much greater detail about how to navigate the challenges of having staff work from home.
Supporting staff through this crisis—or falling short—will have long term impacts on staff morale and loyalty.
Review organizational plans. Whatever you were planning to accomplish in 2020—even if it was just to stay the course—just got harder. It’s time to adjust.
Start with taking a hard look at your financial status and prospects. Your Financial Readiness for COVID-19 offers guidance about how to approach this. Adjust projections to reflect your current guesses about how the next several months will play out for your organization. If you’re depending on substantial income over the next few months, that may be a problem. Whatever your circumstances, update your Board, or at least your Treasurer, as soon as possible.
What can be delayed? If you were planning to implement new programs or develop internal capacities or infrastructure, reassess timelines. It’s probably too early to reduce core efforts, but trimming non-essential projects immediately may be wise.
Along the same lines, clarify priorities. Assuming some work needs to be abandoned or delayed, what are the most important pieces to keep moving forward?
Scale back expectations for any work requiring engagement with outside stakeholders. This work will be impacted not just by your organization’s challenges with corona-related issues, but also those of your partners.
Consider risks associated with upcoming events. If you are planning major activities, you’ll certainly be considering cancelling or postponing these. But if you do elect to move forward, particularly with events that are only a few months down the road, you may have vastly more bargaining power than normal. Negotiate hard for reduced and/or refundable deposits on venues, hotel blocks and travel.
Adjust hiring plans. If you’re delaying work, delay hiring.
Don’t treat this as a one-time exercise. Schedule regular sessions to review plans as circumstances evolve.
Continuity. You may personally be impacted by the pandemic. Preparing for this can mitigate the risk to your organization if you become unavailable.
Decide who would take charge should something happen to you, and then who would be next in line after that.
Make sure those selected have formal authority, feel adequately empowered and supported, and know what’s at the top of your list of priorities.
Consider other vital functions and who can take these over in an emergency. Of critical importance are payroll and, should you provide it, health insurance. There will be more.
If you use outside vendors, understand their continuity plans as well.
Stay informed. You are less likely to make good decisions when you don’t have up to date information on the evolving situation. Just as importantly, your decisions won’t be as credible, undermining the strength of your leadership.
Your staff will reasonably expect you to know what local authorities and the CDC are advising.
A wise friend recommended the following resource for employers from Fisher Phillips and this one from the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits. I also highly recommend 17 small ideas: bringing more goodness to corona times.
Check in with local peer organizations to see what resources they’re relying upon.
This can be time-consuming. Consider delegating much of this function to a senior staff person who can brief you as needed.
Stay apprised, personally if possible, with what’s going on with your staff. Spend more time than usual in the coffee room, keep your door open and find other opportunities to engage. If this feels a little awkward, that’s probably a sign you should have been doing more of this all along.
Constituents. Organizations will face vastly different considerations about whether and how the pandemic is likely to impact constituents.
Think through how your organization would like to be able to respond in different scenarios, considering your organizational capacity and that of other organizations that serve the same constituency.
Provide as much clarity as possible to relevant staff and partners so that they in turn can inform and respond to constituents.
Build flexibility into both your process and your protocols so that you can quickly adjust as the situation warrants.
This is another opportunity to delegate to a working group comprised of appropriate staff members.
Communicate! Clear, credible communication from leaders is absolutely vital to staff confidence and morale during difficult times.
Communicate regularly with your staff—at a minimum weekly—even if you don’t have anything new to offer. For most organizations, an all-staff email will be appropriate. Use candid, direct, language and demonstrate empathy in your messaging.
Crises breed rumors, which can be highly counterproductive when they influence staff behavior and stressful even when they don’t. Don’t wait for someone to ask you if they’re true. Credible, regular and authoritative information minimizes the rumors and water-cooler gossip.
Understand the parameters of what you’re able to say about health issues of coworkers.
Make it as easy as possible for staff to raise questions and concerns. Invite them to ask you and offer alternative avenues for those uncomfortable approaching you directly or publicly.
Don’t pretend to have all the answers. It’s absolutely OK to say that you don’t know—and it’s credible. Whenever possible, define the parameters of that lack of knowledge: “I’ve asked X to find out” or “I hope to have a better answer for you by Monday,” or “I haven’t had time to look that yet.”
Step up communication to other stakeholders as well. Your board, volunteers, constituents, funders and the general public are all audiences that may benefit from hearing from you. Center communication on your work and any adjustments in programming, but also recognize what is happening publicly. Here again, maintaining credibility is essential to the effectiveness of your communication.
Few leaders will be completely comfortable taking on this situation and it won’t always be clear where to find answers. But you don’t have to figure this out alone. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or unsure, ask for help. Look to senior staff members, Board members and others to support you through this. As always, please feel free to reach out to me for a pro bono consultation if you think it might be helpful.