Nonprofit HR’s Blog

Whether you’re the President, Executive Director, COO, VP, Corporate Services or someone else in senior management — running a Nonprofit Organization is challenging. Your responsibilities include strategy, program delivery, fundraising and day-to-day operations. Not to mention; keeping the Board happy, managing your numbers, keeping the lights on, and the ‘care and feeding’ of the folks who arrive at work every day.

This NHRC presentation is based on a book, “The NPO Dilemma.” The book itself is based on 25 years of HR, organization and management consulting to NPO’s. It is a set of ‘dispatches from the front lines,’ providing a compilation of both theory (how NPO’s should be managing their Human Resources) and practice (how NPO’s manage their Human Resources function in real life).

Out of this comes a series of nine HR dilemma’s faced by NPO senior management every day. A dilemma is a problem offering only two possibilities, neither of which is practically acceptable. (We all know of course, that there are always ‘way more’ than two choices.) The dilemmas we discuss are:

1. CEO vs. COO?  Where does the Executive Director best spend their time?
2. Do You Have the Right Jobs in Your Organization?  How do you know?
3. Will the People You Hire Stay? Why?
4. Public Sector or Private Sector?  Which are you?
5. Are You Paying Properly?
   • Are you being fair?  Do you know what ‘fair’ is?
   • What is your market position?  Can you compete?  Against who?
   • How can you afford key hot skills?
   • Do you pay for performance?  Should you?
   • Internal communications?  Who knows what, when?

Tim McConnell is the Managing Partner of McConnell HR Consulting Inc. He is presenting “The NPO Dilemma” on Monday, October 8 at 11:45 a.m. during the 2012 Nonprofit Human Resources Conference.