Nonprofit OS
By Starsha Valentine
Partner and Mid-Atlantic Managing Director
Building a movement is hard. Building an organization to support that movement is even harder.
Hiring staff, managing the finances, and measuring impact can all feel daunting for any founder hoping to do their work effectively. Social justice organizations have seen the same turnover and burnout rates as many traditional nonprofit organizations citing things such as toxic work environment, ineffectual leadership, and interpersonal conflict. But these are only symptoms of a system not built to support the work and the people doing it.
Building an organization that can sustain social impact requires the adoption of values-aligned operations, and those operations include practices that govern an organization and drives its culture. These collective practices and processes are called your Operating System (OS). For many BIPOC leaders, traditional approaches to developing their OS don’t fit community-centric movement strategies—structures such as a strongly hierarchical organizational chart, top-down decision making, resources allocated based on performance, etc. However, by creating systems that allow for Collaborative Leadership, Programs Management, and Inclusive Tools, you can ensure the longevity of the organization’s mission, even as leadership changes over time.
An OS for social impact includes various components—like team dynamics and community engagement—that support the daily operations. In recent years, BIPOC leaders have adopted innovative ways to design their internal systems that disrupt traditional approaches and keep their organization in alignment with their intended mission.
How are leaders developing their OS?
As movement-building organizations formalize and set their internal structures, some have chosen to lead their operations from a space of shared responsibility and accountability. This has resulted in models of decision making that employ a more circular governance structure to move their work forward. Purpose Possible client Dreaming Out Loud uses a Co-Development Director model that leverages individual strengths for a stronger development team—one director manages institutional giving while the other handles corporate partnerships. These models allow the organization to craft roles that amplify individual strengths while removing the typical siloing that happens when organizations are scaling their operations. Particularly in times of transition or turmoil, collaborative leadership democratizes power, increases inclusion, and improves the skillset of the collective.
An extension of a democratized leadership structure is building an inclusive process of program management. The very process for how an organization ideates, develops, and tests the impact of its program is a part of its OS. By using a process called Human-Centered Design, organizations are creating a set of practices that govern how they manage programs and how they design the work to meet the expressed needs of the community they serve. Fertile Ground spent several years hosting listening sessions and organizing community members to determine that they wanted a community-owned grocery store in their neighborhood. Now they’re planning a capital campaign to do just that—all created and led by community members. This is an example of the community-centric approach to program development.
Even the technology tools you use to manage your data and program operations can be built with an inclusive, equity-centered approach. In today’s remote work era, using tools like Slack to manage asynchronous working increases employees’ ability to build schedules that best suit them and their families. The ability to have effective remote work improves diversity, promotes equity, and increases accessibility for all team members.
Having a set of values that guide your OS is a great foundation for a healthy, resilient organization.