What’s your comfort level with change? 

Do you embrace new stuff – especially unexpected new stuff?

If you’re involved with nonprofits, you’re in the change business, like it or not. Nonprofit organizations exist to heal the sick, address threats to the environment, build affordable housing, end oppression, create transformative art, strengthen youth, etc. If you want to succeed, you must be a thoughtful, courageous, creative change agent.

Which leads to my next question: How well do you manage change? Can you steer and shape these changes to the benefit of your organization?

Changes comes in many flavors

Not all changes are created equal. Indeed, your ability to shape and manage change is based, in part, on your ability to recognize which kind you’re dealing with.

With thanks to the Institute for Conservation Leadership, here’s a simple typology of change that’s both intuitive and instructive.

Developmental improvements

Developmental improvements are the incremental, step-by-step changes you make to upgrade current systems. For example:

• Improving your use of social media.
• Organizing a training series for volunteers.
• Learning to facilitate hybrid meetings – and acquiring the technology to support this.
• Upgrading to a more sophisticated accounting system.
• Recruiting new board members with specific skills and networks.

For successful, established nonprofits, a lot of change management is about continuous improvement: tweaking what works to make it work better.

Stage changes

Stage changes define major shifts in an organization’s life cycle. Several classic cases:

• An all-volunteer group hires its first paid staff.
• Moving from local to regional: a group serving one community expands to a second location.
• Having completed a capital campaign, you open your new facility.
• After piloting a new program or strategy, you start sharing it with others – perhaps on a fee-for-service basis.
• Your founder and long-time executive director retires.

In many cases, stage changes can be predicted and planned. In other situations – for example, a key person passes away unexpectedly – they happen without warning. In this circumstance, you may experience the moment as transformational change (see below). 

This is a great argument for succession and/or contingency planning. When the unexpected happens, you can be prepared.

Transformational

Transformational changes are big, complex, and sometimes unexpected. So many examples!

• Responding and adapting to COVID-19.
• A merger between two groups creates a new organization with a new identity.
• Losing a major donor slices a big hole in your budget, forcing you to re-think your programs.
• Receiving a massive grant (for instance, MacKenzie Scott money) opens new opportunities.
• A natural disaster – flood, fire, hurricane or earthquake – leads to major shifts in programs and operations.

In this last situation, many nonprofits jump in to help with disaster relief, regardless of their mission. This leads to transformational questions: How is your organization changed by the experience? What are the implications for your mission and programs? Which new alliances created during the crisis do you want to maintain and deepen?

What’s your favorite flavor?

Most of us have a preferred change model. Take a moment to consider which one attracts you the most … and why.

• Development improvements
• Stage changes
• Transformational

If you have a favorite flavor – one that feels most comfortable, or maybe inspires you in productive ways – pay attention to that. This could be your change agent superpower.

On the other hand, this could also be your blind spot, because not every circumstance requires the kind of change you’re most comfortable managing. 

For example, when faced with a transformational moment, the incremental approach probably won’t work. The inverse is also true: not every problem or opportunity requires a thorough makeover. Small steps, when taken thoughtfully, can lead to big change.

Want more? Sign up for the webinar

On September 27, I’ll be presenting  a new webinar on change management, hosted by the Community Resource Center. In addition to the many flavors of change, we’ll discuss:

• Leadership skills and tools for change management. 
• Creating change at different levels: personal, interpersonal, and within groups.
• Using peer support to plan for change.

I hope you can join us for an interactive, dynamic, and fun experience.