Learning Culture is Crucial to Nonprofit Staff Engagement
How building a learning culture for your nonprofit will allow your team to hone their craft and improve communication so that you can amplify your mission with energy.
A learning culture exists when an organization uses reflection, feedback and sharing of knowledge as part of its day-to-day operations. It involves continual learning from members’ experiences and applying that learning to improve. -- The Center for Nonprofit Excellence
You went into non-profit work because you care about making the world a little bit better. You are dedicated to the people who participate in your programs. You hear all the time that participation makes a difference for people. And yet...
But imagine the impact on your program and your team if you did have a system in place to cultivate continuous learning. A learning culture doesn’t emerge without intention. You need to build a learning culture.
One reason to invest in building learning into your program cycle is that continuous learning is important for engaging your staff.
Nonprofit people are some of the best people. They do this work because they give a damn. I believe that one of the most important ways to continuously improve your programs and make an impact is to cultivate your team. Build a culture that is good for your team, and they will bring more energy and dedication to the work.
Let’s be honest, it can be hard to work in the nonprofit sector. Staff turnover is higher than average for many systemic reasons, including a lack of funding for the health of the organization (i.e., employee compensation or having enough staff to manage the work).
Employee turnover is costly to your organization, and staff engagement is crucial for reducing staff turnover. [Read more on that from the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance: https://nla1.org/cost-of-employee-calculator/]
Here are 3 ways a learning culture engages your team.
1.????A learning culture treats staff as experts.
If you want staff on your team to feel included, value their knowledge. Nonprofit staff are the experts of their programs.
Traditional evaluation relies on an outside expert to look at data or conduct interviews and write recommendations. There’s value to having an outside perspective at strategic intervals (after all, I did that work for many years). But even more important is having a system in place for continuous internal learning. After all, the staff who run a program usually understand in detail what happened with implementation or what they need in the future.
Trust the experience of program staff. Bring program staff into conversations around asking good questions and analyzing data. If you recognize them as the experts they are, most staff members will feel more engaged with the work.
2.????A learning culture encourages nonprofit staff to hone their craft.
Your program staff are the experts of implementing their programs (see above). Giving them space to reflect and identify their own next iteration for learning empowers them to be constantly developing their individual skills.
Implementing mission-driven programs requires a wide range of transferrable skills.
Effective program implementation depends on the skills of program-level nonprofit staff, including:
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What other competencies would you add to that list? Please share below.
[Read more about the Nonprofit Leaders competency model from Johnson Center for Philanthropy here. Note: I serve as an instructor for their Strategy & Evaluation course. https://johnsoncenter.org/competency-models/#nonprofit-leaders-1-1]
Even if you have implemented the same program 25 times, there is always room to learn more. Especially when you recognize that the complex social environment where you are aiming to make a difference is always changing.
Learning should be enjoyable. By embracing program implementation as a craft to be honed, we allow space for investing in our staff as professionals who are constantly improving.
3.????A learning culture leads to better communication.
According to the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance, poor communication is a leading cause of staff turnover and negative organizational culture. A learning culture creates space for important conversations.
If you bring stakeholders together to identify beforehand – and reflect afterwards – on why you do this work and what success looks like you will clarify your program work in ways that lead to overall healthier communication.?
The fact that nonprofit work is meaningful is not always a given. In my experience, nonprofit staff don’t always have a clear picture of the difference their work is making, beyond the day to day. Have you ever worked on a team where you were so busy implementing program after program that there were times that you wondered if your approach was really making a difference?
Building continuous learning cycles requires getting on the same page about where you are now and where you are going. The most productive way to have these conversations is to bring in program staff, external supporters, and community members for broad conversations. This sounds nice on paper but isn’t the way nonprofits typically make decisions around program design or reflection. But bringing in different voices will strength your ability to ask generative questions and ultimately strengthen your programming.
[Check out my free resource at the end of this post about bringing different stakeholders into the learning & evaluation planning process.]
Sometimes these conversations are hard. People will not always agree on what the program outcomes are or what the mission of the organization should include. For example, I once facilitated an outcome mapping workshop for a team that was conducting virtual workshops on the topic of educating families about healthy grocery shopping. The team had differing opinions about what type of behavior change would come out of participants gaining more knowledge around healthy food. Would increasing a family’s knowledge about food make that family more empowered to search for affordable, healthy foods? Or, the team asked, did they more specifically want participants to feel comfortable purchasing specific food labels (i.e. organic, GMO, etc.)? Identifying their outcomes allowed this team to narrow down how program success would look and what they wanted to measure to check in on the health of the program.
Holding space for these conversations down is immensely valuable. It will shape how you design and implement your programs as well as how you continuously improve.????
Knowing where you are going as a nonprofit program team is inspiring.
Clear communication is a major challenge for many nonprofits. But when you come together as a team working towards social change you generate energy. When you stop constant implementation cycles and identify a strategy for what you want to happen, your stakeholders – including your program staff – get excited for the future.
Where would our world be without the mission-driven people that work at nonprofits?
How can you build a learning culture that embraces your team as experts in ways that excites and engages them?
You need a plan.
Having a learning & evaluation plan is a game changer that can have a dramatic effect on improving your program and engaging your stakeholders so that you can meet your mission. Wondering what data to collect? Start with what questions your stakeholders want to know. I created this free resource to get you started.
Research & Evaluation | Qualitative Analysis | Writer | Men's Health Inequities |
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