How to Think Strategically In A Short-Term World with Karen E. Osborne

Do you want to raise more money and connect with more supporters this Giving Tuesday, and throughout the entire giving season? Then check out Givebutter! Givebutter is ranked as the #1 software for fundraising, donor management, and auctions on G2, the largest independent software review site. And the best part? Givebutter's all-in-one fundraising platform is completely free to use—forever! Just go to jcsocialmarketing.com/givebutter to create your account and you could win a free campaign marketing review session with me and the Givebutter team!

Click here to get Karen's list of strategic questions, as mentioned in the episode.

In this episode of Nonprofit Nation, host Julia Campbell engages in a conversation with Karen E. Osborne, a seasoned professional in the nonprofit sector and a suspense/mystery writer. The discussion delves into strategic thinking, creativity, philanthropy, and the future of fundraising.

Karen shares her journey into the nonprofit world, emphasizing the commonality of people stumbling into the profession and the importance of building a network and seeking guidance. The conversation then shifts to strategic thinking, where Karen defines it as the ability to anticipate, look ahead, find opportunities, and consider external factors. She highlights the detrimental impact of silos on strategic thinking within organizations and emphasizes the value of curiosity and information gathering.

The conversation touches on Karen's dual role as a writer, sharing her creative process and the inspiration behind her novels. For small nonprofits, Karen recommends building a strong, active board, focusing on impactful stewardship, investing in good software, and continuous learning.

The episode concludes with a reminder to stay curious, continuously learn, and avoid complacency. Overall, the episode provides valuable insights into strategic thinking, creativity, and effective practices for nonprofits, offering a wealth of knowledge for both seasoned professionals and those new to the sector.

Connect with Karen Osborne on Instagram

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Transcript

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Do you want to raise more money and connect with more supporters this giving Tuesday and throughout the entire giving season? Then check out Givebutter. Givebutter is ranked as the number one software for fundraising, donor management, and auctions by G Two, the largest independent software review site, and the best part, Givebutter's all in one fundraising platform is completely free to use forever. So just go to Givebutter to create your account and you could win a free campaign marketing review session with me and the Givebutter team. So go to jcsocialmarketing.com Givebutter. I can't wait to see you raising more money online. On with the show. Hello and welcome to NonproFit NaTion. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit Nation Podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And today we're going to ask the question how to think more strategically. This is definitely something I struggle with, and I know a lot of you struggle with. We're also going to talk about creativity and finding inspiration and a lot of different topics. And my esteemed guest is Karen E. Osborne. And the reason that I invited Karen onto the show is that I was intrigued by her keynote at Planet Philanthropy, which is entitled Strategic Thinking, a superpower that increases your effectiveness and advances your career. And I love that. So Karen believes in the power of philanthropy, generosity, and service. She built her career around these passiOns, not only as a major and principal gifts officer, vice president, speaker, teacher, consultant, and coach, but also as a donor, volunteer, and board member. So she's seen all of the different facets and the different sides of the sector. For 18 of Karen's 45 professional years, she held leadership positions, director of major gifts, director of development, and VP for College Advancement at colleges and universities. And for the past 27 years, Karen has served first as president and now senior strategist at the Osborne Group, an international management consulting and training firm. She enjoys a rich volunteer life. I'm sure she's going to talk about that. I'm also intrigued by her forte as a suspense and mystery writer. So she's written, and forgive me if I get these wrong, getting it right, tangled lies, reckonings, and this historical and suspense novel, your fourth right, Karen. True Grace, releases in September of this year, of this recording, September 2023. And she also manages to find time to do a weekly video, blog, or vlog called what are you reading? What are you writing? Which showcases authors and other creatives. I don't know how you have the time, but thank you so much for being here, Karen. Thank you for inviting me. Julia. So I want to talk today about strategic thinking, planning, and fundraising, philanthropy, but also creativity. So we have a lot to cover today. But I want to ask you, like, how did you get started in the nonprofit world and in nonprofit work? Back in the day, my journey was very common, that people would say, when you ask that question, people would say, well, I fell into it. I didn't even know it was a profession. I didn't know anything about it. I love that now people choose it. People go to school for it. People know that it's a profession. At least more people know that it's a profession. But I literally talked my way into a job. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea. Literally. I used to be the impostor syndrome that people talk about. Well, it wasn't a syndRome. I was an imposter. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. But one of two things happened that, how did you get started? Two big moments happened. One was, I found out how generous development people are. So my first job, I realized that I didn't know what I was doing. And I got in my car and I drove to these various not for profits and said, I just got this job, and I don't know what I'm doing, and I wonder if you could help me. And these women just said, yes. They said yes, of course. And here's the grant proposal, and here's a sample. This. And then the second thing that happened was I went to a conference. My boss sent me to a conference of development people. And there I was in this sea, this sea of people who did the work that I was doing. And on the stage was this man talking about what a noble profession it was. All of that happened within my first six months, and I realized that this was something I wanted to do, that I was excited that I got here. So I no longer fell. It was then stepping in what you. Just said about development people being so generous. I experienced that as well in my first development job. I was emailing people. I was in different Facebook groups. I would email people and ask them their advice and what they thought and their experiences. And I found the very same generosity that you found. It's a wonderful, amazing thing when you think about people who, in their jobs, get to see people at their worst. When you think of all of our first responders and people that have jobs where they're only called when bad things are happening, we are so fortunate because we are there when something good is going to happen. So not only do we have these generous colleagues, but the donor base and the volunteer base, they're at their best when they're working with us. They might be a son of a gun at home, but when they're working with us, they are trying to do something good. We're very blessed. So tell me about this topic on which you speak and write about strategic thinking. So in my work, I Teach strategic marketing and strategic communications, and I try to encourage organizations to be very proactive rather than reactive. But you say that strategic thinking is the superpower that will increase your effectiveness and advance your career. So can you give us a little flavor? Like what is strategic thinking in your mind? So strategic thinking is the ability to anticipate. That means you're looking out. You're looking far, far out. You're not a short term. What's happening tomorrow. I have to do this because you're taking time to look out and to look wide. What is going on? What is going on around me? Then as you're looking out and wide, you are finding opportunities that you can apply to your work. You're also thinking about what other people are doing around you. So silos are like the worst. Because if I don't know, and even the smallest, not for profit, I'm always shocked at how a little tiny not for profit when one person's wearing twelve hats still lives in a silo because they don't know what the other, the only two other people working there and they don't know what the heck those other two people are doing. Silos kill strategic thinking because you have to be curious, you have to be gathering information, and you need to put those things together to come up with solutions, ideas. So even something as simple as one of the things that I'm known for is strategic questions. Asking strategic questions. Most people who have known me through the years come up to me and say, oh, my goodness, I still have your strategic questions. I use them every day. Don't go out without a list of your strategic questions. And that's a great example. So one thing I could do when I'm visiting a donor or a volunteer is I could say, how's business, and how are the kids, and how's the dog? And they're happy that I remember those things. But how powerful is it to ask a strategic. I was just talking to Julia Campbell. I don't know if you know her, but she was talking about generosity. And can I ask you, how did you learn to be generous? How did that happen in your life, and how have you passed that on to children, grandchildren, whomever? Can you talk about that? That's a strategic question. And the reason it's strategic is that I am asking it to gather very specific information, and it's going to be a wealth of information with a question like that. But I went in knowing what information I wanted to gather because that's going to help me put a strategy together, a donor plan together for that volunteer. So anyway, that's an example of strategic thinking. So thinking with the end in mind, thinking about, not just, okay, I have to meet with this donor. I need to ask them ten questions so they feel heard. I need to check this off my checklist. It's what do I actually want to gain from this experience? What do I hope to glean from this person, and what do I hope to walk away with? Yes. And then the other part of that is, what do I want that person to think, feel, and do as a result of this conversation? So there's two endpoints. There's the endpoint of what do I need to gather and what am I going to do with that information. But what do I want the donor, the volunteer, to think about my organization, feel about my organization, and then actually take a step, an action step that's going to move the relationship along. But if I don't think that way, or if I'm thinking about, oh, what am I going to do in this visit? In the car while I'm driving to the meeting or while I'm setting up the Zoom call, like, oh, yeah, I remember, okay, you end up not being a strategic thinker. You end up being a tactical thinker, short term tactical, rather than long term strategic. Can you give some more examples of questions that we can ask? That question is phenomenal. How did you learn how to be generous? That kind of, like, takes my breath away. I've never been asked that question, and I wish, as a development director, I had known to ask that question because it's so personal, but it still lets them tell you the story in a way that frames it in the culture of philanthropy. So it's not like, oh, tell me how you started your business, because that's obviously, you could read that online, right? You could Google that. So you're saying, asking questions that really you can't Google. Like, you got to get to the heart of the donor heart of the person that you're talking to. Let's say I made a gift to a museum, and maybe my purpose was I, like, socializing with the upper crust and all the people that do at the museum, I find. Or maybe my reason was I just love art and I'm a collector. Or maybe my reason was that I think art helps transform the people who are participating. It gives people possibilities, and I want people to take away from being in an art museum a transformative experience. Well, boy, you got a lot to work with there. It tells you where you might take your strategy because of the quality of the answer. So having really good. And one of the things we could do, Julia, if you want, if you're viewers, I really do have an amazing set of strategic questions. I was just going to ask you, can we get these questions and where can we get them? Yes. So I will make sure that you have them available and you can post them for your audience or however you want to use them. We give them away free. Well, I know that people will be clamoring for these questions, so I will put them in the show notes. I'll put a link to the download in the show notes, because just those two questions. First of all, I've never heard those questions. How did you become generous? Or who taught you about generosity? And what are some ways that you have helped people and what has been the impact? Honestly, I think that we should ask anyone running for office those questions. I think we should ask anyone that is trying to work in the sector those questions. Wouldn't it be amazing if CEOs were asked those two questions before we hired them? And definitely board members. Definitely board members. Unfortunately, when CEOs, when we don't ask CEOs those questions, then we hire people who are very good at knowing how to run the business, but they don't understand philanthropy, because if they've never given a gift, if they've never felt the joy, the absolute joy of giving, it's going to be very hard for them to think about how they're going to make someone else feel joyful. They take a transactional approach to it rather than a joyful approach to it. So why are we so bad at this in the sector? We're really bad at thinking strategically, what are some of the things you've seen? So one is, we think we're good at it. So when you think you're good at it, you don't make any effort to get better or learn. Another is, I mentioned the silos. If we live within, to be a strategic thinker, you have to be curious and you have to be gathering. And if you are in a siloed organization and you don't be the one to go and step over there and find out what's going on over there and what's going on over there, then you can't think strategically and come up with good strategic ideas and strategies and plans, things like that. Another reason is that we are in a short term world, so everything around us is short term anyway, all of our politicians and everybody. But even within our institution, everything is short, short term. And we can feel the pressure of that short termness. That event has to produce X, and the event is in three weeks or six weeks. So how are you going to do it and whatever else it is that we have to have this much money by this time, or we have to get these articles out, or the magazine's deadline is, or whatever it is we live in this short term. Short term. I don't know if your audience, do you guys have a strategic plan? Do you have one for your unit? If you are in charge of annual giving, regular giving, do you have a three year plan or do you have a one year tactical plan? So we have to get out of that short term. Everything just happens at are. And also, nobody teaches know I'm doing two AFPs, so by the time this airs, I will have done them both. Planet philanthropy. And then I'm doing one in Seattle on the same topic. And the response when I mentioned it was, oh, yes, because that's not something that is within the norm, but it. Needs to be, oh, 100%. And what's so interesting is that I sort of built my name and my career on teaching social media tactics. But then what I started to see quite a few years ago is that the tactics don't matter if you do not have this strategic plan foundation. All of the tactics. It's sort of like if you don't have the blueprint to your house, you want to paint the walls before you've even built the house. I was speaking with a gentleman. He called me and he wants to be an author. And he said, so I've already started researching publishers. And so I listened and listened, and I said, is the book finished? And he said, no. I said, okay, we have to start there. We need the foundation, and very much the strategic plan is our foundation, and it should be a living, breathing plan, a tool, as opposed to an exercise that then we put it up on the shelf. So how do we make the strategic plan a tool? So, just to give you an example, I sit on the school board here, the regional school board, and before my time, we spent a lot of money on a strategic plan and a consultant and all of these different groups. And I think it's exactly what you said. We just didn't have that end in mind. We thought, oh, we need a strategic plan because we need one, because every other school district is doing it and because it's a good thing to have, or, I don't know, it's like a tick mark off the checklist. So how can we convince either our boss, our higher ups, our supervisors, our board, that this is not just something that we need to check off the to do list? Okay, this is very meta. How can we think more strategically about creating a strategic plan? So one of the things. So I'm the chair of the Board of Easter Seals Florida, and we have a strategic plan that we look at every quarter, and it is everybody's job because there are really good goals in it, there are concrete things we're trying to achieve. Smart goals, specific, and that whole smart, smart goals. And every quarter, the board and the staff have conversations about, are we living up to our plan? Where are we on it? How does that affect this decision? We have a big decision to make, and one of our first questions is, how does that fit in with the strategic plan? And before you even have a strategic plan, is there a vision? Because the vision has to be out there. The plan should be in support of the vision. Is there a value statement because the strategic plan should reflect the organizational values? I'm always surprised at how we don't use values. I don't know what they think. But you wouldn't not have it in your home. Every time you send your children out into the world, you wrap them in the family values, whatever those are, or the things that we believe, the things honesty and whatever those things are. But then we send employees out in the world, who do they know what our values are? Did they agree to them? Were they part of them? Did we use them in the hiring process? So vision, values, strategic plan is the foundation of that house that you were building. And we can't be painting walls if we don't have our foundation. Yeah, if we don't even know, what are we building? A three story house, a two story house, a beach house, house in the mountains? We don't even know what we're building half the time. And it's sort of like building the plane while you're flying it. And we brag about that. Julia, don't. Oh, yeah. We were laying tracks while the train was coming. We were. As if that was a good thing. It's not a good thing. And the house analogy is really a good one because you look at all climate change that's happening. So as you're looking out, you would be thinking about, oh, I have to build a house that can withstand what I see coming. Well, that's what we need in our not for profit world. We need a plan that's going to be able to handle what's coming. I didn't even think about it. You just kind of blew my mind a little bit. I'm thinking, wow, Because I live in Massachusetts, we deal with snow, right? We deal with a lot of snow and winter. Yeah. You wouldn't build, like, a house that's meant to be in Key west for Massachusetts and vice versa. I mean, that's really interesting, actually, to think about not only what are you building, how are you building it, and how is it going to withstand the future? So that kind of leads me to my next question, which is a very big and broad question. So you often speak on the future of fundraising and philanthropy in terms of how we can be more strategic in our thinking about the future of what's on the horizon of fundraising. What are some maybe tips you have for us, or what have you seen with your clients? So one of the things that I came up with, this little formula, because it lets people put things in the boxes and think clearly. So the first part of the formula is proven practice, not best practices. Best practices is, I could just tell you, well, best practices says blah, blah, blah. And that's my opinion. But if it's proven practice, that means I have some data that I can share with you, I have some proof that this really works. So you start first with proven practices, because we can't just throw things away. The pandemic really taught us a lot, and we let a lot of proven practice stuff go by the wayside as we tried to jump on the new bandwagon of how we're going to make things work. So it's proven practice plus innovations, because a lot of innovations do happen. I'm so against people just chasing shiny new things. Oh, that's the shiny new thing that we all have to do. You're not thinking strategically. How does that fit with our culture? How does that fit? But there were lots of good innovations that do fit. Now here's the hard one. Minus unworthy activities. Because we do so many things because we do them. We do so many things that we don't have any real proof that it's smart or strategic or getting us accomplishing our goals. And so if you do, proven practice plus innovations minus unworthy activities equals success. That's my formula. That's amazing. I was just talking to a client today and I do a lot of digital marketing audits and assessments. So we comb through the website, the email, the donation page, the social media. I can't even tell you how much of it is best practices like, oh, this is what I read in an article. You have to post on LinkedIn four times a week and not proven practices backed up with data. Also minus unworthy activities. I think that we are so stuck in sunk costs and status quo and oh, we set up a Twitter account five years ago, or we've been doing this for so many years, we've been sending out a print newsletter for 25 years and no one really cares or reads it and it costs a million dollars. What are those unworthy activities? And I love that you call them unworthy because I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but what I hear, and I'd love to know what you think, like what you mean by the word unworthy but not worthy of our time and resources and bandwidth. Exactly. That's why it's unworthy. It's not worthy of our time and our resources. And there are a lot of things. There are a lot of things that we do. And maybe someone who's listening to this is fortunate and their organization doesn't have a lot of things. Maybe it's just one thing, but you find that one thing and what does it do? It frees up time and resources to do one of those innovative things or to expand on proven practices. There's an opportunity cost to unworthy. It's not just the cost of time and money, it's what else you're not being not able to do because you're doing that unworthy thing. You say yes to something, you have to say no to something else. I don't remember who said that. Probably Brene Brown. I quote her all the time. Wow. Okay. Now I really do want to talk about your work as a suspense and mystery writer because I just think that's amazing. So I have two books they're business books. And I just think the creativity and the innovation involved in being a suspense and mystery writer is so huge. Could you tell us a little bit about your creative process and how you came to do this and talk about Impostor syndrome? I think a lot of people want to write a book and they don't think that it will be in any way received. So I think it takes a lot of courage to do that. So if you can just tell us a little bit about how that came to be in your process. The first one, I was working flat out. I was on the road as a consultant four times a week. I was living in airline lounges and hotels and on airplanes. And these two women just started talking to me in my head. They just started having conversations with me. And I always had my laptop with me. And I took out my laptop and on the plane or sitting on the floor because back then there wasn't like a plug everywhere in the airport. So I had to walk around and find the vacuum cleaner plug type. I wrote the first one working. And then once I wrote the first one, the second one just came. New women started talking to me and new guys. New villains in reckonings. Number entangled lies number two, which is the murder mystery. No. And I would be so smart, so smart, Julia, if I wrote series. But that's not what happened. No, really. Those do better. Those do so much better in the world. People like, you know, I just respond to the people who are talking to me. But entangled lies, the murder mystery had a bad villain, male villain. And then I thought, what if I had a female villain who you're not sure if she's a good guy or a bad guy. So I write a lot of strong, flawed, complicated women. So I have three novels getting it right. Tangled Lies, which is the murder mystery Reckonings, which came out last year. And then this year I have True Grace, which is a historical novel inspired by my grandmother. And I think this is my best, best work. I think this is going to be. A friend of mine wrote me. She's not a close friend. She's a writer friend and the writer colleague. And she read the manuscript and she wrote back and she said, girl, this is your bestseller. So I'm hoping she's righT. So by the time this comes out, true Grace will have been launched and you'll be able to find her everywhere that books are sold. 1924. It takes place in 1924 during the Roaring Twenty s and the Harlem Renaissance. And the settings are the Congo, England, Jamaica and New York. Love it well, I love historical novels, so I will definitely preorder that for sure. I will definitely put in the show notes. So we have to wrap up here. But this has just been really one of my favorite conversations. I've really loved it. Where should small nonprofits, those ones that you were talking about, that they were. It's so funny what you said. I think you're so right about a small nonprofit wearing 20 hats, but all the hats are siloed. So where should we start thinking strategically? What are some quick things that we could maybe do? Some tips that you have for a small nonprofit? So there are four things that will help any small nonprofit, and the first one isn't quick, but it is really important. You need a board that's a force multiplier. You need a board because you don't have staff. So who's going to be out there doing all right? And you have to be instrumental in building that board. The second one is you need amazing stewardship because you can't afford a big, big organization. You lose donors. You don't have great retention numbers. Okay? But new ones come in. Not when you're little. You can't afford to lose one. And that means that you're stewardship. And stewardship isn't thank you notes. Stewardship is about impact, impact, impact. Julia, I want you to know that this got shown in this place and this place, and so many people wrote me and said they were going to buy my book. So thank. Right. I'm telling you about the impact. I'm not just saying, oh, thank you for having me three months from now, six months from now, I'm telling you, this is the difference you made in my life, and I want to thank you again. That is the power of stewardship. The third, my son taught me because he grew up in small shops. I grew up in big shops with departments. I had the research department and I had the alumni department he grew up in. It was him. And he said the third thing that was so important was that you have good software. If you're spending all your time trying to come up with the data and the information. Bandaid Frankenstein. Worth investing in good data. And then the thing that's true for everybody. Everybody. You got to learn your craft. And as soon as you start thinking, I know it. I know all of it, I'm good, you are dead. Because if you don't stay fresh, if you don't know learning, like just today, Julia, you said those two questions were the first. Know you were taking in something, and you're an experienced, accomplished, successful. But you were willing to learn something we all have to learn. So those are my four things. Small shop. Incredible. If anyone had the fortune of seeing Karen speak at Planet Philanthropy, then you're very lucky. And I'm just so thankful that you took the time to be here today. Where can people find you, connect with you, and learn more about what you do? So theosbornegroup.com and Osborne is Osbornei Am also Karen Osborne.com. That's my writing life. And then I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, and I'm on YouTube. Karen E. Osborne, we will link to everything in the show notes. Oh, my gosh. Well, when the movie gets made, we will have you on again. We'll talk all about that. But this was just phenomenal. And this just goes to show the power of conferences and just the I always look at who the speakers are at conferences, and I always research them. And I just think it's such a phenomenal platform to be learning about new people and learning about new things. And it's just like you said, Karen, like, staying fresh, staying inspired, just always being curious. And that's really how I try to live my life. So I feel very validated. And thank you so much for being here on the podcast. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app, and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review, because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to, and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. Th so that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell 77. Keep changing the world, you nonprofit unicorn.