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By Paul Clolery
Money spent on professional development at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy is intended to be stretched to its maximum impact, even though getting approval for courses is relatively easy to get. There’s a catch, though.
“All we ask is that they teach what they learn. That’s one of the ways that investment pushes out to the whole organization,” said Jake Voit,
chief operations officer. “They also have to present their idea of how they want to teach it,” said Voit. It could be a presentation of the key learnings or an overview of the material, such as elements of the legal process or case. The person talking the class decides what’s important to pass along to others, he explained.
Large nonprofits have learning management systems (LMS) and numerous budget line items when it comes to professional development. Smaller organizations, say $5 million or less, have a less formal process but use creativity to ensure training needs are met.
For example, mentoring, participation in the organization’s events, and including training goals in annual reviews are strategies used at the Marfan Foundation in Port Washington, N.Y. The foundation has a remote workforce of just fewer than 30 staff. The organization’s budget is roughly $5.4 million with 82% of revenue going to mission.
When it comes to training, oftentimes need is assessed and training found in what April Dawn Shinske, chief communication and marketing officer, described as the supervisor-staff partnership. “A staff member might approach a supervisor to express a training need and determine together if identifying a training source and investing time and budget in the particular type of training makes sense for both the organization and the team member,” explained Shinske. “Training plans are also made during our rigorous annual performance review process.”
Mentoring and coaching are organizational priorities, said Shinske. There is an annual staff retreat that brings the remote team together and includes strategic business learning, team-building and social-emotional learning best practices. In addition to day-to-day coaching, working at events such as walks and galas around the nation “helps staff to learn by doing alongside seasoned colleagues,” said Shinske. Staff also use learning resources such as those provided by systems vendors, and trainings available from free or lost-cost sources such as LinkedIn Learning. There also is a strategic investment in a small number of learning subscriptions, such as those provided by Ragan Communications.
The Travis Manion Foundation in Doylestown, Pa., has 80 full-time staff and is about to acquire another organization adding 13 people. “Everything at TMF is volunteer-led” explained Joshua Jabin, chief operating officer. “There is a seven-month leadership course for volunteers that utilizes a Learning Management System (LMS) with much of the content repurposed for staff, so everyone has access.”
The LMS is mostly leadership content. It is mostly about leadership topics. “Everything we do is underpinned by positive psychology. We have a course that teaches positive psychology and the different components of well-being,” said Jabin. Mental health, discovery and self-reflection are taught to staff and volunteers so that they can understand their personal character strengths to thrive personally, and in the workplace, Jabin said.
Approximately one-quarter of the staff are military veterans, and another one-quarter are military connected. The emphasis is on principles instead of rules. Onboarding is a full-year process that sets up goals and provides broad guidance, he called “left and right limits” and then empowering people to do their jobs.
The first week is intensive meetings with human resources administration and within the first 30 days a new hire must learn by going out to experience services by being a part of community events.
“We run our organization a lot like the way I was brought up in the Marine Corps, where I spent 20 years,” said Jabin. “We take the role of mentor very seriously, where feedback is continuous. It’s not about formally coming together once a month or once a quarter to do any sort of official review. It is a culture of constant feedback. We do an annual review but there should not be anything new on it that hasn’t already been discussed throughout the year.”
If you’re a coordinator, then you are preparing to be a manager. “We want staff to already think of themselves as a leader, taking on additional responsibilities,” he said. The intention is to give staff guidance and structure “to take people who are not yet managers and show them what it means to own your piece of TMF, showing them what it means to operate at the next highest level,” said Jabin.
Learning is a combination top down as well as bottom up. The organization holds monthly training as well as optional “brunch and learns” that focus on personal and professional development. “Monthly trainings are more about what we need you to know to be successful at Travis Manion Foundation,” he explained. The entire staff is together for one week of annual in-person training, putting much of the onus on individuals and their managers to develop each person in their specific role.
There is an opportunity to go outside the organization with classes at community college, conferences and online via platforms such as Coursera. The organization also uses Echelon Front, a close partner that does in-person, intensive leadership training. It is a type of leadership boot camp Jabin refers to with the military term “muster” and an important way that TMF prepares staff to become managers and take on additional levels of responsibility.
Like TMF, onboarding at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy in Saint Paul, Minn., is a year-long process that shifts focus after six months, Voit said. It starts with a six-month plan for new employees. There is a six-month review and then the employee identifies things they want to learn. “I think it is better to ask people why they think it is good for them and what they think they are going to get out of it, how they decide it is valuable,” said Voit.
Staff are not pushed to go outside the organization for training, except for specific technology training and ongoing challenges for how to manage security of older technology. “We’re not trying to get everyone to learn the same things in the same ways,” said Voit. “We want people to grow to become the best they can become and that is what they will provide to the organization.”
Voit prefers diverse approaches to get to the training goal. “People are on their own journey of growth, and we support that path,” he said. Of course, there is a method to the structure. “It’s generally everyone receives equity training and interpersonal skill development. That’s just something we are training everybody on,” said Voit.
The organization has two budget lines for professional development so that it can be customized for the person’s growth. Each person receives a few hundred dollars a year from one budget bucket to be able to sign up for simple conferences and webinars. The staff can use the allocation any way the person sees fit. The other line item is called big ticket professional development. That goes to travel for conferences and one-on-one coaching.
There are few, if any surprises at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. The organization has transparent salary bands that cover from the lowest paid to the highest level and within those bands are salary ranges.
The philosophy is pretty simple. Said Voit: “We know what the goals are. We know what the outcomes are. We are not going to micromanage anybody on how we get there.”
