Cultivate Your Staff In These Dog Days Of Summer

Emily Hane ?is the Director of Learning at Nonprofit Connect. In this role, she partners with national and community experts to provide training, leads roundtables, and is always happy to connect you to the on-demand resources you need to do your nonprofit job well.

Earlier this summer, a friend gave me several of her raspberry bushes. They were big, lush, and thriving. After a few weeks, it was clear they had taken root. The transplant was a successful onboarding, of sorts, and the bushes started to fruit almost immediately. Fast forward two hot, neglectful months later, and I now have dried out sticks where vibrant shrubs once were. Because they were doing so well, I ceased to nurture my garden rockstars.

Too often, I’ve seen the same thing happen in nonprofits. The reliable staff who are thriving don’t get watered. Overtime, they leave for better environments or wither up. One of the best things a manager can do is develop and nurture your staff. Even though onboarding is over, your team deserves to have continual care.

Here are a few recommendations:

• Enroll your team in a fall institute. We've heard from a large swath of past institute participants that the best thing they come out of an institute with is a renewed set of confidence in themselves and their job. Help your staff reach new heights and potentials, and invest in their career. See our currently enrolling institutes here.
• Encourage your team to become Nonprofit Connect speakers. Do you have a whiz of a content calendar manager? A grant writer who seems to get great results? An office manager with productivity and organizational skills to share? Push your team out of their comfort zone and encourage them to complete a presenter interest form. Teaching is the ultimate form of skill mastery and a great stretch goal.
• Ensure your team members have their own Nonprofit Connect login so they can access the eLearning Center. Need to learn how to write a press release? Looking for some basic tips/tricks for your volunteer manager? Wondering about how to 'make the ask' to a donor or funder? The eLearning Center has a huge swath of resources to pick through, from previous webinars, to templates, to tips/tricks articles, there's a bit of something for all your needs. Free of charge as part of your membership, your team has hundreds of on-demand learning resources at their fingertips, encourage them to take-charge of their own growth. Log in to the Member Information Center here, or if you don't know your login email us at [email protected].

In these dog days of summer, I ask how are you cultivating your team?

Best,

Emily

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