The air is changing, and it is becoming dark earlier here in the Northeast. The stores have been in back-to-school mode for months. Yesterday I noticed that the Halloween candy is on sale at the supermarket.

While it is true that many employees and volunteers will be on vacation until after Labor Day, for those of you in the office, it’s time for you too to switch into “back-to-school” mode.

In order to hit the Fall running, here are some tips for the coming weeks:

1. Introduce new people and new roles: If you have done summer hiring or people have moved into new positions, it is a good idea to let the board of directors, staff, volunteers, members and users of your services/programs know. Have press releases been sent out announcing new leadership, and if appropriate, have meet-and-greets been held? Nametags for events and name plaques for meetings are always a good idea.
2. Determine/review strategic direction and plans: If you are working under an operative strategic plan, have you assessed your organization’s performance against the plan recently? If so, what are the next steps? Does everyone on the team know your strategic direction? Think of your strategic direction as the thematic unit for the quarter or semester. Everything you do should answer the question, how does this further our mission and direction?
3. Set organizational goals and priorities for the semester (or quarter): What are the goals and priorities for your organization overall and for each department, working group and committee? There are no A, B, C’s in nonprofit management only dollars, services and programs. How will you measure your success during this period?
4. Have individual meetings with employees to define responsibilities, set personal goals and professional trajectories: Your employees may be out of school but everyone needs an advisor or mentor. Take the time to meet individually with your staff and listen to their thoughts about their roles and where they see themselves going. Since people who work in nonprofits earn less than their for-profit counterparts, it is essential that they feel valued and a sense of professional development. Your people are your biggest resource.
5. Devote time to team building: As anyone who has worked in small to medium nonprofits knows, regardless of your job title and description, everyone needs to pitch in. Success requires team work. Teams aren’t built overnight. Take some time at the start of the school year cycle for some team building either at the office or on a retreat.
6. Invest in new systems: Just like students need to do back-to-school shopping for clothes, notebooks and organizers, the organization needs to assess its back-to-school supplies and systems. Think of September as a fresh start and an opportunity to adopt new ways to be efficient and organized.

The calendar provides natural rhythms that regulate our lives. Take advantage of this restart to launch a great year for your organization.

Nanette Fridman is the President of Fridman Strategies, a consulting firm for mission driven organizations. She can be reached at fridmanstrategies@gmail.com or @NanetteFridman.

Number 1: Both require setting realistic goals.

Deciding how much you want to loose and how long it will take you needs to take into account your age, stage, activity level and life-style. The one who will be most disappointed and discouraged if you fall short is you so it is best to be realistic.

With fundraising, it is also important to assess the feasibility of your campaign or target for an event based on history, likely donors, competition, the economy and star and work power. Setting realistic goals and managing expectations is crucial because your organization’s  budget and ability to carry out its work depends on it!

Number 2: Both need a system to track  information.

Study after study shows that people who write down what they eat loose more weight. Why? Because writing down everything you put in your mouth make you more conscious of what your are eating and of your calories. Some people use charts, some scribble on a napkin and yes, there are many apps and sites for tracking your calories for phones, tablets or computers.

Good fundraising practices require good information. The more you know about your donors and prospects, their giving histories, their involvement and interests, their personal lives and connections, the better off you are. And you need a system that is updated regularly for recording what you know whether it is Donor Pefect, Raiser’s Edge, eTapestry, Sage or an excel spreadsheet.

Number 3: Checking in and being accountable are keys to success for both.

For the first three four months of my “new eating habits” , I paid  for a nutritionist to come to my home weekly and weigh me in. If I knew she was coming on Tuesday, I knew it was time to tighten my belt and reign in my averaged calories by being extra good Sunday and Monday. Having a scheduled check in made me accountable.

Whether running fundraising campaigns or events, volunteers and professionals must be accountable for their assigned solicitations and have scheduled, regular check-ins. Peoples lives are busy and even those with the best intentions, need a reminder and a push.

Number 4: Both are about good habits and are continuous.

The reason why nutritionists don’t like the term “diet” is because is connotes  something that is for a finite period of time. Rather, they prefer clients to “change their eating habits “and “adopt healthy lifestyles”  for the rest of their lives by giving them the tools to make good choices.

Truly successful fundraising isn’t about one event or one campaign. It isn’t finite. It is about long-term, on-going relationships and cultivation. The best fundraisers I know have good habits. These habits include email check-ins, scheduled coffees, lunches or drinks when there is no “ask”,  acknowledgement of  life-cycle events and other business and communal achievements with donors and continual prospecting.

A final note, in fundraising and dieting, it feels great to hit your goals!

Why does this matter in my work with organizations? Because how people are feeling affects their mood, their behavior and their performance whether or not they are aware of it. As Schwartz says, “To feel valued (and valuable) is almost as compelling a need as food. The more our value feels at risk, the more preoccupied we become with defending and restoring it, and the less value we’re capable of creating in the world.”

When people don’t feel valued and appreciated either by their board, their manager, their peers or their customers, it eats away at them and at best, it makes it nearly impossible for them to achieve what they are capable of and at worst, can have a cancerous affect on anyone with whom they come into contact.

This is why great leaders know that it is not just the kind and mensch-like thing to do to care personally about those in your organization but it is part of your job in pursuit of maximizing the organization’s returns. Because when leaders and managers listen to, respect and make others around them feel valued and appreciated, people perform at their best and organizations can thrive.

You can read Tony’s blog post at http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/06/the-only-thing-that-really-mat.html

Because people take vacations and aren’t on normal work schedules during the summer, often board or committee work gets placed on hiatus until the fall. Some boards choose not to schedule summer meetings  at all and even those that do often have light attendance and scaled back agendas.

While you may come to work in sundresses and shorts, smart staff and lay leaders of nonprofits do not take the summer off. Rather, they use this precious time to lay the ground work for a successful year to come.

While other nonprofits are in vacation mode, take advantage and get a head start on a great year  by doing the following:

- Revisit your Strategic Plan. Assess where you are at. It is time for you to update your Plan? If so, start to design the process you will use to do so.

-Create/update your Marketing Plan. Update your media contacts/list. Analyze and compile your PR and marketing efforts to date.

-Create/update your Financial Resource Development Plan.  Clean/update your databases. Research grant opportunities and create a grant calendar. Sketch an event calendar for the year.  Review/update donor software to make sure it is up-to-date and you are taking full advantage of what it can offer.

-Sketch out the organization’s calendar by department and as a whole.

-Review job descriptions and make sure they accurately reflect the jobs people are actually doing. Update personnel records. Work with staff to set goals for coming year (depending on your review cycle).

- Have a staff service day to spruce up your offices. Paint the walls. Plant a garden.

-Plan a staff retreat that allows for learning, reflection, bonding and fun!

- Communicate with your board members at their summer locations about the work you are doing over the summer and plans for the coming year. Send out the board meeting calendar for the year and update contact information.

Summer is the perfect time to catch up on some of the strategic projects that time doesn’t always allow for during the hustle and bustle of the rest of the year.  If your organization takes full advantage the slower pace to get to some of these done, you will see the dividends and thank yourself the rest of the year!

Before you commit to a fundraising event, make sure you ask these three questions:

1) What is the realistic amount that we will net from this event? Be sure to include ALL expenses and to be conservative in estimating sponsorships and attendees.

2) Do we have the bandwidth in terms of staff and volunteers to put on this event? If you don’t have the internal staff to handle an event and will need to hire an outside event coordinator, planner or additional staff of any kind, be sure to add this to the expenses.

3) What is the opportunity cost of this event? By doing this, what  are you not going to be able to do because you won’t have time or staff? How many of your potential “asks” are you using for this event and is this the best way to maximize their giving potential?

These three simple questions can save your organization a lot of time and disappointment. Don’t be afraid to stop and ask!

Tonight is the CJP/PresenTense  Boston Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship launch. (You can watch it live at http://presentense.org/live). An email I received today about tonight’s launch party at City Year said, ” Ignited by CJP (Boston Jewish Federation) and PresenTense,  eleven fellows will begin their journey to change Boston and engage, leverage, and inspire the Jewish Community.” The fellows have developed their ventures over the last six months.

In the Jewish communal world, there is a lot of buzz about young (state of mind, not necessary chronological)  social entrepreneurs.  Social entrepreneurship  is used to describe organizational ventures – both for and non-profit – that bring about communal or societal change.

These are just few groups who are all seeking to empower, train and in some cases, fund Jewish social entrepreneurs.

PresenTense mission is to engage and inspire creative minds investing their ideas and energy to revitalize the established Jewish community.  Every week, in cities around the world, PresenTense Community members gather to discuss new ideas, build networks with like-minded individuals, learn from one another, and launch startup ventures that lead to new pathways for Jewish engagement and community building. PresenTense trains individuals to become pioneers. Social entrepreneurs have launched 42 ventures since 2007 through their Social Entrepreneur Fellowship such as the one in Boston, and PTSchool has trained 450 Jewish organizational professionals to upgrade their organizations’ operations.

In 2010, the Joshua Venture Group will invest in eight leaders with unique ideas they believe will significantly impact the Jewish world. Social entrepreneurs selected to participate in their Dual Investment Program will receive over $100,000 in funding and support – including training, exposure and access to networks in the Jewish world – which will equip them to realize their visions and transform the Jewish landscape.

Slingshot, a project of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, profiles annually new and innovative organizations, many prime example of social entrepreneurship. There is also a Slingshot Fund which invest in some of these projects which they publicize in their annual report.

Machon Hadar is an institute that empowers young Jews who build vibrant Jewish communities through two initiatives: Yeshivat Hadar, the first full-time egalitarian yeshiva in North America and the Minyan Project, which provides  resources, networking and consulting for more than 50 independent minyanim nationwide.

The hope  of each of these initiatives is to support innovative, creative social entrepreneurs whose ideas will enrich Jewish life and  attract new people across a variety of channels, those who are “unaffiliated” in the establishment vernacular. (The establishment includes Federations, JCCs, long-standing advocacy agencies such as ADL, AJC, Hadassah etc and  synagogues.)

In speaking with a highly successful Jewish innovator with close ties to the organized community recently, we spoke at length about the recognition on the part of the established Jewish community of the need for innovation (as exemplified by  CJP  partnering with PresentTense) and at the same time, concern by some in the organized Jewish community  that the best and brightest are choosing the social entrepreneurial route as opposed to engaging and becoming leaders within the existing organizations.

Our lengthy discussion can be summarized into four main reasons why younger creative, committed Jews are attracted to the  entrepreneurial route:

1. The bureaucracy and tight control by major donors of established organizations sometimes make them seem impenetrable, out of touch or difficult to work with.
2. Established organizations tend to be slow to effectuate change.
3. Favorable generational attitudes of entrepreneurs; 20-40 somethings grew up idolizing Andy Grove (Intel), Michael Dell (Dell Computers), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Yossi Vardi (Israel’s ICQ co-founder, later bough by AOL)
4. Technology makes it possible to reach and organize people without significant overhead.

On this night of the CJP/PresenTense launch, CJP should be applauded for embracing social entrepreneurship and bridging the worlds of the established Jewish community and the next generation of innovators.

This is why communication with key constituencies is absolutely essential when managing any change process.

Communications should be:

• Direct and timely.  Information that affects people should be delivered officially before it seeps  through the grapevine.
• Sensitive. Often changes mean some loss whether of services, programs, jobs or a different way of doing things.  Communications should be sensitive to people’s emotions.
• Two-way. Interested parties need time to digest and understand the proposed changes and how they impact them and a forum for questions and discussion, whether real or virtual.
• Mindful about the Past, Present and Future for the Organization and Mission. Pay tribute to Past. Seek to explain the Present including motivations for changes. Look forward to the Future.

From a practical point of view, it is often very difficult when organizations are in the midst of change to take the time to communicate, but it is exactly when thoughtful,  honest and direct information is needed.  Leaders should expect emotional reactions. Emotions flow in the nonprofit world not just because of personal relationships and concerns as in any organization, but also because people feel strongly about the causes and missions of the organizations they support.

When there is a change, the challenge is to be respectful of and honor the past,  be mindful that people may need to go through a period of grief and mourning of the status-quo and/or past and try to direct people to focus on the future of the cause or mission.

Leaders are selected for an organization at a moment in time during which they organization is seeking particular skills, energy or attributes for the stage and place the organization is in. Organizations’ needs evolve as people grow and evolve.

No one is perfect. We all have areas in which we can improve and further develop.

If the leader has the passion for the mission, vision for the organization, noteworthy core talents and skills and the  respect and trust of the organization and its constituencies, the board should consider investing in the leader with executive coaching or other professional development tools.

Mature, secure leaders are able to earnestly assess their own strengths and weaknesses and should welcome feedback and the opportunity to refine or improve their skills.

While expenditures of  time, energy and finances are required for leadership development, it can be a good investment for an organization if their leader’s performance shows real promise .

• Our mission has drifted or is no longer relevant.
• We are too dependent on a few donors or sources of financial support.
• Our numbers are artificial.
• We are losing market share and can’t seem to regain momentum.
• We are not attracting strong leadership or are not developing our leaders.
• Our brand is irreparably damaged.
• We don’t have the right professionals in place.

Not being able to, or maybe more appropriately stated, not wanting to see the truth  gets in the way of organizations being able to make the necessary changes and to overcome the challenges they face and to innovate.

Board meetings are not the time for rubber-stamping, puffing, job protecting, sugar-coating or self-congratulating. If boards aren’t able to have honest conversations and identify and face their challenges head on, the organizations are wasting valuable  time that could be spent addressing the real issues that stand in the way of operating in a healthy, efficient, effective and sustainable way.

On the contrary, if the board room encourages and is open to honest and self-critical assessments, the organization will be stronger for it and able to make tough decisions and embrace the changes necessary to survive in a competitive environment. The key is to reward the truth and don’t shoot the messengers.

If you want to have a resilient, sustainable, growth-orientated organization, there needs to be  a sanctuary of truth in the boardroom. Don’t be afraid to insist that board members and staff take off their rose colored glasses.