Female entrepreneurs are more likely than their male counterparts to see their loan applications rejected or underfunded, and New York City is launching a program to close the gap.
New York City Credit Program Aims to Help Female Entrepreneurs
Pretrial Justice Reform Study – New Jersey Report #1
Evaluation of Pretrial Justice System Reforms that use the Public Safety Assessment.
Structure According to Strategy
Structure According to Strategy
Everyone who meets me learns fairly quickly that I value structure. I spend a lot of time discussing structure, and I firmly believe that good people fail in the absence of it.
Structure impacts communication, productivity, morale, efficiency, organizational learning and effective knowledge sharing. Well-designed structure promotes growth, drives innovation and provides clarity in roles and expectations.
Companies build new structures for many reasons: a reaction to market shifts, to improve financial performance, to enhance internal collaboration. Industry disruption on a global scale has led to more frequent restructuring–nearly half of all CEOs launch a restructure during their first two years on the job.
At The Fedcap Group’s recent Solution Series on organizational structure, one of our panelists, Mike Sicard, Chairman and CEO of USI Insurance Services emphasized that structure has to follow strategy, and given the complexity of today’s environment, evolving organizational structure looks more like a chocolate chip cookie than the top down, formal hierarchies of the 20th century.
To drive innovation and growth, many companies are moving from 20th century hierarchical, siloed structures to flexible, collaborative structures with flatter networks and fluid, -outcome-focused teams—arranged within the organizational cookie like those chocolate chips. We need to learn how to change, restructure and work with cross-functional teams. The proactive participation of mid-level managers in flatter organizations produces positive outcomes.
Also stressed during our Solution Series was the idea that structure must be in service to strategy. Structure cannot be designed in the absence of understanding long term strategy.
One size does not fit all anymore as John Sutherland points out in European Business Review: “The purpose of structure is to organize your resources in such a way that you are able to deliver your strategy.” To prevent bureaucracy from suffocating innovation, he said, “effective structures bring clarity so that everyone can quickly understand how they are to act and relate to others, internally and externally.”
Today’s leaders understand that innovation is the key to growth and survival, and many believe that structure determines how innovative their organizations can be.
In a world where technology, markets, politics, and economies are in constant flux, one thing is certain: structure that supports strategy results in innovation, productivity and financial performance is the way forward.
Gettin’ Out of Jail
Up to 88% of the people arrested in the city will be released without bail while their cases are pending under changes to the state’s criminal justice laws coming on Jan. 1, according to the state Office of Court Administration.
Honoring our Veterans–Individually
Honoring our Veterans–Individually
As we honor our veterans today, I am so pleased to invite Colonel David Sutherland, Chairman of Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Services, to be my guest blogger. His experiences and voice are so important for us all to hear.
Diversity and inclusion frequently take a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, recruiting and retention may focus on veterans, as a whole, rather than the divergent qualities that enhance thinking and execution.
It’s ironic that lumping veterans together as a category defined as “diverse” may cause us to ignore the individual characteristics that make them assets to organizations.
I like to say that if you’ve met a veteran, you’ve met “a veteran.” One veteran, one time, each one is unique.
We veterans are more than just the sum of our parts. Yes, Veterans Day is a celebration of an amazing group of people. At the same time, we are remiss in not looking beyond the massed surface and into each one’s experiences and goals.
My wish is for you to get to know us as a unique group of people who have taken a different path to get to this point in our lives, and who may have hit roadblocks on this journey created by their service to our country. Let’s start with three areas key to ensuring that veterans succeed where they live:
- Working with purpose. Those who served in uniform boast years of specialized training that make them experts in their fields, yet there remains significant underemployment and uncertainty. That’s why Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Services works with employers, hiring managers, and recruiters to improve workplace hiring programs. This work goes beyond employment programs for veterans as a whole and instead seeks to establish a culture that considers the specific skill sets of each veteran and matches them to the position best for them.
- Healing with honor. Let’s look at the data. Burn pits, enormous craters where waste is openly incinerated, are this generation’s Agent Orange. These chemical hazards are responsible for causing cancers, tumors and respiratory issues. Opioid abuse among combat-exposed individuals is 7 percentage points higher among those who deployed but didn’t see combat. Further, the number of veteran suicides exceeded 6,000 each year from 2008 – 2017 – or more than 60,000 over a decade. Part of what drives these numbers is an epidemic of disconnection that happens when we look at veterans en masse rather than creating a culture that considers the unique needs and isolation of each individual. It’s about making it personal – for both the veteran and the civilian.
- Living with hope. T.S. Elliot said, “Home is where our story begins.” Dixon Center and its partners, among them Soldier On and Freddie Mac, are working to expand affordable housing, educate community-based organizations on fair housing practices for veterans, and increase compassionate outreach to those who are, or are at risk of becoming homeless. The goal is not to create new programs. Rather, the goal is to enable the integration of housing services that consider each veteran’s needs into existing programs to increase impact.
This Veterans Day let’s keep in mind that as with people, one size does not fit all. In fact, one size often fits none.
Thought Leadership
Thought Leadership
In the age of social media, when anyone with many Friends or a large Twitter following can be considered a thought leader, we need to step back and consider exactly what thought leadership is in the non-profit world, and why it so important for us to develop it to our best advantage. Thought leadership is a way for a brand to position itself as a leader in its field or sector by demonstrating its values, its expertise, and sharing its thinking about the future.
Michael Brenner, recognized as a top marketing influencer by Forbes and by Huffington Post as a top business keynote speaker, believes “thought leadership means you provide the best and deepest answers to your customers’ biggest questions in the formats your audience likes to consume.” To Brenner “authentic thought leadership remains a driving force in successful companies across almost every industry.”
In Business News Daily, Skye Schooley, writing to define thought leadership and why it matters, adds “As a notable expert in a specific company, industry, or society, a thought leader is someone who offers guidance and insight to those around them. In other words, a thought leader has a positive reputation of helping others with their knowledge and insight.”
As Caroline Avakian points out in the Jewish Philanthropy blog: “Thought leadership is not just a PR function. It requires that we have an idea–something to make the world a better place, something that will solve a problem or improve a process.” Organizations can be treasure troves of excellent ideas waiting to be unleashed and shared with the world. These organizations can succeed with limited resources and small or non-existent communications and marketing teams that are allocated to drumming up support in an overcrowded charity marketplace.
An organization’s energy is sometimes focused on elevating a single member of its team to thought leadership status, usually someone high in the hierarchy like the executive director. At The Fedcap Group, conversely, we are totally committed to populating our organization with thought leaders who serve as a collective asset. When we foster a culture of deep learning and train staff in our core philosophy and values, we will develop more ways for thought leadership to become embedded in the DNA of the agency. We recognize that thought leadership can come from any source – executives, customers, product managers, designers, customer service reps, and sales people. We all have knowledge, experience and a point of view. As it permeates the organization, it organically spreads to the community.
Avakian notes, “Thought leadership is arguably the most effective and least expensive way an organization can build awareness, support for ideas, and influence the communities it needs to reach, including decision makers, policy makers and donors.”
Finding The Best Talent In A Highly Competitive Environment
Finding The Best Talent In A Highly Competitive Environment
According to Roy Mauer in a blog for Society of HR Management, “Nonprofits should emulate corporate recruiting to compete for talent. Yet, 64% of nonprofits do not have a formal recruitment or retention strategy.”
Profit making companies can spend vast sums to bring top talent into their organizations, but what about organizations with limited funds that must compete for the same talent?
I believe it is our culture that drives people through our doors.
Jason Walker, Director of Talent Acquisition at Habitat for Humanity International, believes that a workplace culture that engages top talent requires a well-structured, strategic hiring plan closely tied to the agency’s mission. “In support of our mission,” he states, “we act intentionally to attract talent that has both the values and skills to expand Habitat’s impact and the way we address housing needs.’
The struggle is to know what you need and why you need it, then accept nothing less. This resonates with me. I have found that it is MUCH more costly and stressful to an organization to hire the wrong person because we are in a hurry to fill the slot, than it is to wait and find the right person.
Candance Ho from Whole Whale recommends that, after defining the talent required, an organization create a scorecard that lists all the attributes that it is looking for in an employee, and why those attributes are needed for that position. Whole Whale’s talent scorecard’s attributes include “efficiency, empathy, analytics, curiosity and a positive outlook.” At The Fedcap Group we use terms such as:
- Passionate: They are driven to create/identify and resource the most effective ways to solve problems for people with barriers.
- Informed: They are current within their respective fields.
- Credible: When they speak, people listen because of their depth of knowledge and expertise.
- Smart and Fast: They can see the end result and take quick, thoughtful and decisive action.
- Creative: They generate innovative and often unexpected answers to difficult problems.
- Curious: They thrive on new information and opportunities.
- Dedicated: They run a continuous campaign to advance the position of The Fedcap Group and the people we serve.
- Understand the concept of “Good to Great”: They constantly look for opportunities to improve the work of The Fedcap Group, searching for best-in-class practices, but not reinventing the wheel.
- Flexible: They are able and willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
- Fun: They take their work seriously, but not themselves.
Nonprofits also need to find candidates who care about their mission. Do they understand what we do? Can they describe it? Did they care enough to do the research?
Critical to finding the right candidate is having the right job description that makes people want to work for our organization. Recruitment at its core is marketing, and it is smart to engage a marketing firm to review the language in job descriptions. According to Nonprofit HR, the Corporate Leadership Council found that a well-executed EVP (employee value proposition) is invaluable in ensuring that job descriptions stand out. A good EVP is a simple, focused statement of why someone would want to work in your organization, and according to Nonprofit HR, it can improve the commitment of new hires by 29%. It can also solidify the organization’s brand and guide its recruitment strategy. “To create an EVP, compile data from employee engagement, onboarding and exit surveys. Identify key trends from among those three types of interactions. This may include information on benefits your employees value, elements of the workplace culture that help them succeed or simply why they enjoy working for the organization.”
We can compete with the for-profit environment—we must leverage our mission, have a smart strategy and tell the story of what we do in a compelling way.
I welcome your thoughts.
City Invests $391 Million in Communities and Comprehensive Reforms to the Criminal Justice System
The Urgency of Effectively Managing Reputational Risk
The Urgency of Effectively Managing Reputational Risk
Reputational risk is now the number one concern according to a survey reported by Bruna Martinuzzi in a 2018 American Express blog. We see almost daily in the media, how easily a company’s reputation can be ruined—this is a growing danger we face.
Fortunately, there are many ways to protect our reputations, but we need to develop a solid approach to management of that risk. Reputation is “the emotional bond between a company and its stakeholders,” according to Melanie LoBue in her blog at reputationinstitute.com. Reputational risk can threaten the life and longevity of our organization, increase risks to the likelihood of negative events and public opinion, and impact income, as well as public image.
Just as we have smoke detectors to detect a potential fire, we need a similar detector for reputational risk, suggests Carrie Minnich in her blog from the CPA Center of Excellence. At the speed of sound or a simple click, an organization’s reputation can be devastated. For non-profits, the impact on reputation may be even more devastating. As Minnich points out, a hit to a reputation can result in loss of volunteers, lack of referrals, decrease in the win rate of proposals, and create difficulty in hiring and attracting top quality board and staff. She suggests as a starting point periodically “googling your organization to see what others are saying.” It is imperative that we are aware of what the public sees so that we can aggressively correct inaccuracies and mis-information. We also need to monitor third party websites such as GuideStar, the National Center for Charitable Statistics, and the Better Business Bureau to verify that their information about us is accurate and thorough. It is helpful to create forums for board members, staff, consumers and our community partners to tell us what they are hearing about our organization.
Possibly most important, we need to develop a culture and organizational values that drive how employees comport themselves: a culture where staff at all levels of the organization hold one another accountable for ethical behavior, creating an environment of “see something, say something.”
We must own our reputation and actively pursue strategies to communicate who we are to the broader stakeholder community. This requires development of a communication and social media strategy that is smart, conveys our message, and is consistently pushed out over a long period of time. And, we have to live up to this message.
According to Nonprofit Accounting Basics, a growing number of organizations are appointing individuals or creating executive-level committees to lead risk management endeavors. At The Fedcap Group we have not centralized this function, but have actively communicated the importance of risk management–including reputational risk—being the job of every employee. It is a topic of significant importance to executives across The Fedcap Group and discussed during every Corporate Week. We also have an agency-wide Brown Bag Lunch on this topic that I lead annually. It is a major component of our Leadership Academy and our Executive Institute. It permeates the conversations of our organization.
This threat is real. A 2016 investigation by The Washington Post found that over a four-year period, more than 1,000 major US nonprofits disclosed in federal filings that they had suffered a “significant diversion” of assets from internal wrongdoing.”
As Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you’ll do things differently.”
I welcome your thoughts.
Solution Series – Organizational Structure: A Tool to Advance Innovation and Bottom Business Line
Solution Series – Organizational Structure: A Tool to Advance Innovation and Bottom Business Line
On Wednesday October 16th we hosted our biannual Solution Series — Organizational Structure: A Tool to Advance Innovation and Business Bottom Line—at Mutual of American in Manhattan. A packed house of new and longtime supporters and friends of The Fedcap Group heard a dynamic panel of experts lead a compelling discussion about organizational structure. Hundreds more participated via livestream! The panel included –
- Michael Sicard, Chairman and CEO, USI Insurance Services
- Dianne Morales, Executive Director and CEO, Phipps Neighborhoods
- Mario Desideiro, Enterprise Solutions and Analytics Practice Leader, Managing Director, Huron Consulting Group
Takeaways from the discussion were that structure should be designed to unlock teamwork and creativity; that structure must enable employees to always challenge themselves and have a vested interest in outcomes, and that structure must be flexible enough to allow for the ongoing infusion of new talent. The panel emphasized how strategy drives structure, that the design and building of structure must be intentional, and that while no single structure works for every organization, transparency and cross-functional teamwork are often hallmarks of successful structure.
Thanks to Mutual of America for hosting this event. Stay tuned for information about our spring Solution Series!
