Note: This guest post is by Daonese Johnson-Colón, MLS, SHRM-CP, CPC. Thanks, Daonese!

A payment is late. A staff member needs access to a system. A new project is ready to launch, but no one has created the process. Someone needs to figure it out.

What do you do? You send it to Admin.

Each request may be reasonable on its own. But when the people responsible for your organization’s operations become the place where everything lands, you’re creating a problem much larger than an overworked team.

A strength and a trap

I spent years leading nonprofit operations/administrative teams that were good at figuring things out. That was both a strength and a trap.

When something became urgent, we could usually solve it. When a responsibility didn’t have a clear home, we could usually find a way to handle it.

But the ability to figure something out doesn’t mean that Admin or Operations should own it. In fact, whenever we accepted the role of “organizational junk drawer,” we were enabling other departments and leaders to avoid difficult tasks and decisions.

All about infrastructure

Consider the foundation of a home. Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about the foundation when it’s doing its job. Lacking a solid foundation, however, the house cannot stand.

Similarly, a nonprofit cannot function well and strategically without administrative infrastructure that supports its work. Finance, human resources, technology, compliance, policies, processes, and decision-making structures may not always be visible in your programs, but they shape the organization’s ability to deliver it.

How this impacts your programs

Consider a hypothetical fellowship program. Participants apply, interview, receive acceptance notices, complete onboarding, attend sessions, receive payments, and eventually graduate. The organization then follows up to evaluate and understand what changed for them.

We might describe all of that as programming. But every stage depends on operational decisions. Who collects participant information? How is it protected? Who approves payments? When do instructors receive agreements? What information does the organization need to evaluate the experience?

If those systems are incomplete, participants feel it. They receive information late. Payments are delayed. Staff give different answers to the same question. The organization keeps apologizing for problems that could have been anticipated.

Your administrative expertise (or not) is a big part of how people experience your mission.

Integrating Admin and programs

That is why program leaders should incorporate administrative systems early and often. Designing a program and then asking your admin team to build the relevant processes puts your organization in a reactive position.

Program leaders understand what participants and communities need. Administrative leaders understand the infrastructure required to deliver that work effectively and sustainably. As you plan, both perspectives belong.

What can you learn?

Daily transactions matter. People must be paid, records need to be accurate, and systems need to work. But those transactions also provide information.

A delayed payment may reveal unclear approval responsibilities. Repeated requests for system access may reveal an incomplete onboarding process. A recurring workaround may tell us that a process no longer fits how the organization functions.

All of that is discovery. Your administrative team needs the capacity to not only respond, but to also understand what those patterns reveal and strengthen the systems producing them.

Three action steps

For executive directors, boards, and program leaders, here are three places to begin.

1. Clarify ownership. Look at the work that repeatedly lands in the laps of your Admin team. Does it belong there? They can help to design or manage a process without owning every step within it. Make shared responsibilities explicit.

2. Plan with your administrative leaders, not around them. Before announcing a new initiative, discuss the people, money, systems, time, and processes required to deliver it. Bring operational thinking into the conversation while there is still time to shape the work.

3. Protect time to improve the infrastructure. If every hour is prioritized for urgent requests, systems improvement will keep getting postponed. Agree on infrastructure priorities and invest time, resources, and leadership support to make them happen.

Close the junk drawer

The next time something lands in your administrative department because no one understands where else it belongs, ask why it landed there.

Then ask a second question: What could Admin be planning, building, or strengthening if the people who work there weren’t always being asked to figure everything out?

Your mission depends on the answer.