In the nonprofit sector we generally do quite a bit of reflection on our work. We often ask ourselves what good nonprofit leadership looks like and how we can be better practitioners and change agents. Yet one thing we don't talk very much about is how labor and employment practices affect the answers to those questions.

When we decided to take a look at labor issues this month, we found that the list of things we could talk about, both in and out of the nonprofit sector, could make for months worth of blog posts. As our economy moves toward knowledge work and away from what we traditionally think of as "labor," we're renegotiating boundaries like the 40-hour work week and the minimum wage.

Those of us in the nonprofit sector are especially impacted by these issues--not only are we workers ourselves, but we're also often in the position of advocating for those who are marginalized in the economy and vulnerable to exploitation. This month we wanted to take a closer look at how young nonprofit professionals could not only be better advocates for themselves, but also more effective and informed advocates for their communities.

We'll be talking to experts in the fields of labor and management about what issues YNPs should have on their radar and how they can deal with some of the labor issues they may be encountering in their own workplaces. We'll also be talking transparently about how YNPN handles some of these issues as an employer.

And we hope to talk to you about your experiences. On May 23 at 2 pm CT we'll be hosting a Twitter chat to talk about labor issues in the nonprofit sector. Join us for the chat and all of our content and conversations this month with hashtag #nplabor.

At the beginning of this month, we asked you about your professional intentions for the year. We weren't surprised that many of our members were already thinking about how to make 2014 a great year professionally.
As we wrap up our #workresolutions series, we wanted to share some of the tweets and LinkedIn comments we got about your intentions for 2014:
 

@DM3AZ Possibly my 2014 mantra "I will manage my emails, not let emails manage me!" Yep #workresolutions @ynpn
— Millennial Speaking (@GenYtalk) January 23, 2014

What are your 2014 #workresolutions? I want to get more involved in tech policy and advocacy! @ynpn — Jessica Rothschuh (@JessieRothschuh) January 23, 2014

@ynpn #workresolutions this year, i’ll embrace the weird, wild, millennial freelance economy by starting independent projects i care about
— Dory Trimble (@doryelizabeth_) January 24, 2014

I love this and am planning on it myself RT@ynpn A #workresolution to consider for 2014: Take the initiative. http://t.co/gTuanh6fNF
— kalammi-ty (@kimlammi) January 15, 2014

@ynpn I'm going to pass the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) exam in 2014. #workresolutions
— Jessica E.M. Aleksy (@JessAleksy27) January 23, 2014

  Catching up on professional development was a popular resolution:

@ynpn I will identify resources: books, trainings, etc. I need in order to be more successful at my job #workresolutions
— Ashley C. Hernandez (@AshCorrinn) January 6, 2014

And even our ED Trish got in on the action:

Mine? Building more chapter voice AND a badass #ynpn data system! RT @ynpn This year we're all about #workresolutions http://t.co/2ovApiK0iF
— Trish Tchume (@ttchume) January 6, 2014

 
The most common theme, however, was the need to do less and restore work/life balance. YNPN member Natasha Golinksy wrote a great post on reverse resolutions, or choosing things that you're not going to do in the year ahead. This idea hit home for quite a few people:

Hm, @ynpn things I'm NOT going to do this year. guilt myself, say yes to EVERYTHING and try to fix every org I work with. #workresolutions
— Dania Toscano Miwa (@daniamiwa) January 14, 2014

@YNPNportland @ynpn @ngolinsky Love this idea! I'll be thinking about what's on my "don't do" list for 2014... #workresolutions
— Liza J (@lizaface) January 14, 2014

@ynpn I've stopped everything except looking for a full-time job. No more can go out until something comes in!
— Katie Greer (@KC_k8e) January 14, 2014

Did any of these resolutions resonate with you? It's not too late to share your #workresolution with us in the comments.

Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion on Twitter and LinkedIn to share your #workresolutions with us. Every month we'll be talking about a new topic here on the blog and on social media, so make sure you're connected and part of the conversation.

One final note: At the end of our January newsletter, we took a quick poll as to whether our members set new year's resolutions or not. The answers were almost equally split, with 54% saying they do and 46% saying resolutions just aren't their thing.
Regardless of whether or not resolutions are your jam, we wish you a year filled with professional success!

YNPN member Natasha Golinsky shares her take on #workresolutions: the reverse resolution.

As a working mom of three young kids with volunteer commitments, a huge extended family, and a household to run, a question I get all the time is “How do you get it all done?"

People always assume that I’m swamped with things to do; however, the truth is that I have lots of spare time (more than I’d like to admit). Despite my to-do list, I manage to watch a bit of TV every day, read about a book a week, and spend lots of time with my husband and kids.

It’s not because I know millions of personal productivity short-cuts, but it’s because I keep things simple. I’m very conscious of just how much time I have and how much emotional energy I have to go around. After years of being an over-commitment-aholic, I finally wised up and realized that everyone loses when things get too busy in my life. Not only do I feel more stressed out but my kids start acting crazier, my marriage feels strained, I start to fall short on commitments, and the quality of my work decreases. It's no way to live.

This year instead of bogging yourself down with a ton of resolutions that will only put you under more pressure, why not make some “reverse resolutions” (i.e., things you’re NOT going to do)? We all have way too much on our plates and not all of it has a great return on investment. Why not strategically get rid of some of the items on your task list this year instead of piling on more?

Which five things are you doing right now that don’t have a decent enough pay-off for you to keep doing them?

Which things do you need to quit? (FYI: Quitting something unproductive doesn’t make you a quitter. Continuing to do something unproductive is actually a very silly thing to do.)

Don’t worry about how quitting this task will look to others around you. Your primary responsibility is to yourself and your mental health. Chances are that anyone who would judge you is just as over-committed and feels jealous that you had the confidence to stand up for yourself and your quality of life.

This year, do less. Under-commit and enjoy some time off. Make this the year that you get back to enjoying your life instead of constantly feeling like you’re drowning in to-dos.

Natasha Golinsky is the founder of Next Level Nonprofits, an online training company dedicated to helping new Executive Directors learn how to "stop putting out fires" and "start blazing a trail" instead. You can find her on Twitter as @ngolinsky

by Trish Tchume, Director, YNPN National

Recently we here at YNPN have been discussing how important it is for us to model the way that we think the sector could be doing social change work so that the way we work and the amount we work is sustainable and leads to real transformation.  This is one in a series of posts about the small steps we are making internally towards radical culture shifts that will facilitate just that.  

By 2011, after years of being an all-volunteer organization, YNPN National managed to raise enough money to hire our first ED, who turned out to be yours truly.  Not only was this role a first for the organization but it was a first for me, so I wanted to learn not only the practical basics of running an organization but also how people in my position personally handle the ‘swirl’ of nonstop to-do’s.

I learned two basic things about being an ED from these conversations with other ED’s:

1) Being an ED was apparently going to be really hard and overwhelming. And if it’s not hard and overwhelming, you’re probably doing it wrong.

2) It is very important to talk all the time - with other EDs, with your board, on panels, on Facebook, to toll booth operators (whoever has ears, really) - about how hard it is to be an ED.

Equipped with this information, I settled into my role and prepared for it to be hard and overwhelming. Not surprisingly - it was hard and overwhelming.  Up until this point the network itself and the myriad of people and organizations interested in the network had been dreaming big about “what we could do if only we had more capacity...” This list ranged from the practical (i.e. finally upgrade that ugly website) to the revolutionary (i.e. become THE pipeline for moving diverse talent throughout the social sector) and everyone could not be more excited to finally have a person - an actual person! with a face!  and an email address! - to share their big ideas for how to make these dreams real.

This translated into a lot of meetings. I mean A LOT of meetings. Notebooks filled with the ideas that people would very much like to see me move forward. Yesterday, please.

I said yes to everything and promised to do even more.  I also felt completely overwhelmed and wasn’t sleeping, but then I remembered from my conversations with the other EDs that horrible feeling meant that I was doing things right.  I remember lying in bed thinking about how many meetings I had each day and how little I was looking forward to most of them.  It took me awhile but finally, I started thinking about the one part of being an ED that no one had really said much about up to that point:

For the first time in my life, I was “the boss.”  Technically, I could decide to do whatever I want.

This, however, landed on me not as a realization of power but as a sense of responsibility.  I wasn’t just “the boss,” I was the leader of an organization founded in part to counter the culture I was currently swept up in. (Apparently that point was lost on me in the swirl.)  So I began to think very practically about how I would want to make more space for myself but also what I would want to model for both our members and the wider sector.

Thus the December Strategy was born.  

Initially, I set the entire month of December aside as a time to regroup, reflect, and think big picture. I turned down all meetings, phone calls, and speaking engagements for the whole month of December in order to catch up on work and sleep and I just hoped that people would understand.

I still remember the first email that I sent in response to someone requesting a meeting in December. It was right before Thanksgiving and the thought of asking someone to hold their idea till January 2012 seemed both outrageous and rude.  But I’d made a commitment to myself and I was determined to stick to it.  So I agonized over the wording of the email for 45 minutes, read and re-read it, hit send, and waited for the reply.  I expected a few things in return:

1) Pushback from the person letting me know that their issue was incredibly important and they couldn’t possibly wait for 6 weeks to discuss it.

2) No response at all from the person, ever, and refusal to partner with YNPN whose Director was clearly a giant diva.

To my huge surprise, I didn’t get either reaction.  The person actually wrote back 10 minutes later to give me props!  In her response, she let me know that of course the conversation could wait till January and she congratulated me for being so good about setting boundaries for myself.  Of course, I didn’t tell her that I was setting these boundaries now because I’d done such a bad job of setting them during my first two months that I no longer had a choice, but her encouragement built my confidence.  Soon I found myself firing off “Talk to you in January!” emails without flinching.

And just like that, the December Strategy became a thing.

While technically, the December Strategy remains the space that I will set for myself for the third year in a row during the last month of 2013, it has come to mean much more to me than that.

- First, it has come to symbolize a resistance to the notion that all types of nonprofit work carry the same level of urgency.  The work that YNPN National does is important.  But we are not Doctors Without Borders.

- Second, it’s a tribute to a Meg Wheatley quote I once heard during a speech given by Kim Klein: “If we want our world to be different, our first act has to be claiming time to think. We can’t expect those who are well served by the current reality to give us time to think.  If we want anything to change, we are the ones who have to reclaim time.”

And she’s right.

-      Finally, it’s a reminder that I and so many of my fellow YNPNers were drawn to this network and continue to be committed to it because it gave us the space to organize in a way that values both mission and the people working towards that mission - something that many of us were not seeing in the vast majority of the organizations where we were actually employed.  In this way, the December Strategy feels like as much of an opportunity as it does a responsibility to model the way we believe the sector could be working more strategically towards social change.

Do you have a version of the December Strategy - a small but radical way that you or your organization is changing the way you work, in order to work better for change? Let us know in the comment box!

 YNPN National is currently working on broader strategies to address the issues of coaching access and affordability.  As part of that strategy, the following post is part of an ongoing series aimed at raising awareness about the importance of coaching and tools for accessing this critical support - both amongst our members and the sector at large.
 

Unleashing Your Best Self: An Interview with Cathy Wasserman, Professional Coach

By Betty-Jeanne Rueters-Ward

Last year, I sought out a colleague for a heart-to-heart: Alongside my demanding nonprofit job, I yearned to move my career forward. My coworker seemed to have endless energy and inspiration for his own professional development. He urged me to hire a coach, and referred me to Cathy Wasserman, owner of Self-Leadership Strategies, which provides depth, career, and executive coaching.

I became a client of Cathy’s – and a passionate believer in the transformative power of coaching. I recently spoke with Cathy about her work:

Why work with a coach? What’s in it for social change leaders?

CW: Coaching enables people to dig deep around their unique strengths, growing edges, and values. Ultimately, when people maximize what they can share of themselves, social change efforts maximize as well. Social change requires as many people as possible to articulate their ideas, problem solve, and bring their best self to their work.

Coaching lends itself well to the challenges and complexities of addressing social problems. It helps people navigate contradictions within organizations: the gaps between mission and what is actually happening.

Coaching can exponentialize someone’s work for social change – both within larger society, and within themselves as a healthy, effective change agent. Coaching allows people to learn from all that is happening, and sustain themselves for the long haul.

What mental barriers do you see in people struggling to reach career goals?

CW: There’s a real challenge in allowing ourselves to be fulfilled, to go for what we want, to stop doing what isn’t working. Human beings have trouble embracing our greatness and possibility; we tend to undervalue our skill, value, and intrinsic worth. We over-identify with our inner critic, and work within environments that feed that back to us.

Ironically, those barriers are often catalysts for growth – levers for unleashing more of ourselves – but in the moment, they can be confusing and frustrating. Coaches help people to realize their mental barriers as opportunities for growth and discovery.

Are there particular challenges nonprofit leaders face?

CW: Intrinsically, there’s a sense of “fighting the good fight”, of coming from behind. Nonprofit leaders, more than the average person, have a sense of scarcity, of more limitations they’re working against. There are also logistical realities of working for nonprofits: For example, because there is less money than in the corporate sector, there is also less leadership development training available.

What’s one exercise someone can engage in to move forward in their career?

CW: Start by getting clear on your mission, values, and priorities – personally or professionally. I consider that the foundation of the house of leadership. We need that to help direct our energy and stay on track. It’s difficult to move forward strategically and sustainably without that “north star”.

How did you get into coaching?

CW: I’ve coached informally throughout my career, for example as a community organizer in the feminist and youth movements. There wasn’t much language of coaching at the time – it was just something I did. Eventually, I studied social work and was trained as a therapist, a discipline closely related to coaching.

I decided to work at both micro and macro levels: Besides coaching individuals, I worked as a management consultant for the Support Center for Nonprofit Management. Through one of my trainings I met folks from Idealist, and was invited to write a career coaching column, “Ask Cathy”. There was a tremendous response from readers seeking coaching, so I developed a coaching business. As with many coaches, my road was long and winding – but really, I’ve been coaching all along.

Would you recommend coaching as a career path for others?

CW: Coaching requires an ability to really witness and be present to someone. It demands skill and mastery of one’s relationship to the self. As that muscle is built, you can be more and more available to others, and support them in a powerful way, helping them unlock themselves and explore what’s going on within them.

Coaching isn’t for faint of heart. You need to be able to go into crevices of someone else’s humanity. People will resist and limit their own growth and get frustrated by it, which can make the coaching process difficult. A coach has to be energized by that challenge.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a coach?

CW: It’s a real privilege to witness someone’s growth process, as they tackle the truth of who they are, who they’ve been, and who they’re becoming. Sometimes it’s about bravely looking at your own “shadow” side, and dealing with it. The role of coach and client is to take risks and move forward, even with the fear and anxiety and doubt that come up. That people allow this process to happen is a source of great gratitude and joy for me.

 
Photo Credit: tanyabrown.net

The Stress of the “5-Year Plan"

By Alicia Jay, cross-posted from www.rabbleup.com.

I recently asked a room-full of emerging social change leaders to close their eyes and picture their professional selves in 5 years. Everyone closed their eyes, and sat with the visualization. After the exercise, I asked for reactions. A few folks shared their visions– brilliant and inspiring.

Then, one brave woman stood up and said, “That exercise really stressed me out!”  I LOVED her honesty, and it really got me thinking.

Projecting into the future has always been one of my go-to tools whenever I’m feeling stuck, bored, or just planning for my next steps. I love imagining myself 5 or 10 years from now. My Type-A side is nicely balanced with my inner day-dreamer, and visualization remains one of my strongest manifestation tricks.

But, for some, or maybe even for many emerging leaders, conjuring up that  vision is terrifying or impossible:

How am I supposed to know where I want to be in 5 years, I’m not sure where I want to be next month?  

I like what I’m doing now, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to continue this work for 5 years? 

I don’t see how I can support myself financially doing non-profit work for the long-haul? These are all valid feelings.

If these types of questions are resonating with you, I encourage you to throw away the idea that you need a “5-Year Plan” and just simply start with one basic question for your work NOW:

How do you want to feel at work every day? 

Get specific with your answer. Here are some examples from recent conversations I’ve had (paraphrased) to get the juices flowing:

• I want more responsibility at work—I want to feel like my boss and co-workers trust me, and are willing to give me big projects to work on without micromanaging. I want to feel acknowledged for the good work that I have done. I’m a team player, but I also want ownership.

• I like my job, but I want to feel more stable. I know my organization is having financial trouble, and I’m worried that if they have to cut jobs, mine will be the first to go. I don’t know much about how the fundraising works, but I’d be happy to help in any way that I can. I wish I could be included more in decision-making conversations, or at least feel more clued-in to what’s happening.

• I think I’m in a rut. Between working a day job and volunteering on the weekends, I think I’m getting burnt out. I want to feel excited to go to work, not exhausted and dreading every Monday morning. I want to feel supported, inspired, and like I’m making real social change every day.

Again, the more specific of a picture you can paint, the easier it will be to take action steps.

The person from the first example decided it was time to have a conversation with her boss about more responsibility and taking the steps to work her way up to a manager’s role. She also realized that in a few years, she might want to be a Program Director or other manager of some sort.

The next person decided to schedule an informational interview with someone that works in philanthropy. Instead of feeling disempowered by the fundraising aspect of his organization, he realized he might actually want to pursue either fundraising or even grant making in the future.

This last example is arguably the most common situation I hear. There is no one prescription for this situation, and in my experience, it’s the right time for many people to get more personalized and ongoing support.

If you’re finding yourself on the brink of, or already, in a cycle of burn out, come say hi over at www.rabbleup.com, and take the FREE questionnaire and get a personalized response directly from me.

___

There’s no need to force a “vision” if it’s just not coming to you. Leadership vision is only useful if it’s a source of inspiration and motivation, not stress.

Don’t want to plan out your life for the next decade?! No problem, just start with how you want to feel tomorrow.

Alicia Jay is the founder of Rabble Up, a coaching and training program for emerging social change leaders. Go to www.rabbleup.com for more information or to schedule a free coaching consultation.

Photo by Blue-ridge.

It’s been quite an adventure serving as a YNPN LaunchPad Fellow these last nine months.

When I started as YNPN National’s Talent Coordinator, I was new to YNPN and eager to plug into a network of supportive peers and colleagues who, like me, were building their careers in the nonprofit sector. LaunchPad provided me a unique two-fold opportunity: to build my own professional path, while helping build YNPN as a dynamic, evolving, increasingly influential national organization.

LaunchPad in itself was a bold new experiment for YNPN, and the Talent Coordinator position was no exception. My charge was to help YNPN align its organizational values and goals with its strategy for recruiting and managing talent (folks like our chapter leaders, national staff and board). Though it was not clear whether or how a talent manager would be part of future YNPN staffing structures, it was clear to me how much YNPN sought to be intentional about its values, culture, and strategy - especially how that showed up in the day-to-day, year-to-year experience of its leaders.

In that spirit, new resources and blog content - focusing on leadership development, volunteer management, organizational assessments, and more - began to emerge. In my first blog post I shared some of my lessons and philosophy about talent management, as they often aligned with YNPN’s own ideas.

Later, I reflected on the results of our Virtual Road Trip, through which YNPN National learned about out chapters’ major experiences, challenges, and opportunities with managing their own talent. This data, combined with ongoing research on talent management within and beyond the nonprofit sector, inspired YNPN’s first webinar series, “Developing Human Capital for Chapter Success”.

Finally, I got personal. A professional development session with the LaunchPad team on “Complexifying Self Care” inspired a blog post and later a Spark Speech and break out session at this year’s YNPN National Leaders Conference. So many of our YNPN leaders are grappling with how to work sustainably, live healthily, and live out their callings to the nonprofit sector. This conversation is much larger than YNPN alone, most recently prompting a crosspost between YNPN and Idealist Careers.I am deeply grateful for all of this dialogue - and action - around how to collectively build a nonprofit sector that intentionally and strategically ensures that well-being of its leaders and the integrity of our work.

This spring, I hinted at a report in development, which would articulate YNPN’s own model for recruiting, developing, and managing talent. That report is now available ([wpfilebase tag=fileurl id=87 linktext='Talent Management Report - YNPN 2013' /]), and I welcome your feedback. What are your own chapters’ stories regarding talent? What values and strategies inform the ways your workplaces develop their leaders? How can research and story-telling help us build the systems and structures we need to support leaders working for social change?

Read Report Here: [wpfilebase tag=fileurl id=87 linktext='Talent Management Report - YNPN 2013' /]

I hope you’ll stay in touch as this first cycle of LaunchPad Fellowships wraps up, and I take on a new role with YNPN moving forward. Can’t wait to get active in my local chapter!

By Betty-Jeanne Rueters-Ward, LaunchPad Fellow and National Talent Coordinator

Photo from joangarry.com

Like many YNPN members, my early life experiences informed my professional life today. Active in my church in childhood and adolescence, I developed a deep commitment to social and environmental justice, and joined multigenerational teams volunteering for a variety of causes. In college, I was lucky to study abroad through Semester at Sea, which (as I then described) “smacked me in the face with my own privilege”, exposed me to extreme wealth disparity and racism around the globe, and caused me to question most of what I knew: my middle-class lifestyle, my major life choices, and my role in a world that was both so beautiful and so broken. As I began to look for full-time work following college, I was certain – fervently, urgently so – that I wanted to devote my life to social change, and my professional life to the nonprofit sector.

Already then, I knew my tendencies -  to overextend myself, to neglect my own health, and to fuel my work out of guilt, urgency, and a sense of martyrdom – which left me drained and burned out, often. In my first full-time job, as a national community organizer, I epitomized workaholism and experienced physical and emotional pain because of it. I began to despair that I would not be able to live out my calling to work for social change, without sacrificing my health and relationships in the process.

Early in my career, I was fortunate to enroll in a graduate school launching a first-of-its-kind experiment: a Masters program in Social Change at a theological school (seminary). The program sought to provide not only professional and academic training, but also spiritual and emotional grounding, to social change leaders. I was encouraged to make sense of my own experience, and place it in a larger context of social movement history. I explored common struggles social change leaders experience in their professional and personal lives, and how these may differ across class, race, gender, and other identities. I devoted my final project to “Personal Sustainability and Mental Health in Social Movements”, using my own story as a central narrative. It was another privileged experience, to immerse myself in the study and implementation of “self care”. That program would have been difficult or impossible to complete if I hadn’t been a middle class, school-loan beneficiary without dependents.

The “self care” theme has shaped my life and career ever since. In most leadership roles, from counseling youth to managing political campaigns, I experienced external factors (i.e. workplace environments) and internal factors (i.e. my own psychology) that predisposed me to burnout – reminding me again and again to sharpen my strategic work-planning, boundary-setting, and care-taking skills. I’ve found purpose in mentoring and training others on how to cultivate health, care, and sustainability within their own social change efforts. And, I’m constantly trying to understand how my social location – for example, as a white middle-class formally-educated woman – impacts my needs for, and practices of, “self care”.

This theme came up immediately when I began working with YNPN National, via the LaunchPad Fellowship program. As Talent Coordinator, I work with our Director, Trish, to evaluate the experience of YNPN leaders – for example our LaunchPad Fellows – and systemically cultivate a work environment in which we reflect openly on our challenges, support each other in taking care of ourselves, and plan and execute our work in strategic and sustainable ways. It’s an awesome challenge.

In our most recent LaunchPad staff meeting, I offered a professional development presentation centered on an essay called “An End to Self Care” by my friend and collaborator B Loewe, which builds on “Communites of Care” by Yashna Padamsee. Both were published in Organizing Upgrade, an online forum for community organizers to share and develop strategy. “An End to Self Care” came out last fall, and ignited a national conversation.

The article doesn’t so much seek to end self-care, as reframe it. Self care, as it’s usually understood, is an individual – rather than collective – task, often inaccessible and irrelevant to those who aren’t middle-class people with leisure time (i.e. no family dependents). Self care is often framed as another “to do” on an already unwieldy workload, leading to unrealistic, unattainable expectations that can make us feel bad about failing to adequately care for ourselves.

There are many insights in the article, so I’ll paraphrase just a few key points:

• Building a society in which all are able to be healthy, cared-for and sustainable requires critical reflection on the possibilities and limitations of the nonprofit sector.

• The experience of working for non-profits and social change efforts needs, in many ways, to be reconstructed or reframed to become a more energizing rather than draining experience.

• To break out of the isolation often perpetuated by our dominant culture, we must move beyond care for the self and practice collective or community care.

• Community care is a collectively liberatory practice which can not only sustain our own involvement in social causes, but enable many more – across class, race, family and other social locations – to join us.

The earlier article “Communities of Care” similarly called for collective/shared care, which unlike self care interrupts and transforms systems on a broader level. Yashna Padamsee, a leader in Healing Justice, or HJ, movements, urges us look at the root causes of why we need care and healing – for example, to explore how ableism is operating in our communities and organizations, and creating unrealistic or unattainable expectations for our work.

The need for care and healing is crucial: according to the Southern Healing Justice Collective, social changemakers are at a particular risk of “spiritual and physical deprivation from trauma, stress and unrest in our movements” and “dying as a result”. “Communities of Care” reminds that just as injustices are interconnected and affect us all, so are and must be our efforts for healing and care. Disability Justice movements are leading the way in showing us that we don’t have to keep doing our work in the same way nor do we need to do it alone.

Organizing Upgrade put together an excellent “Roundup and Re-Frame of the Community Care Conversation” highlighting the large and diverse range of responses when “An End to Self Care” was published last fall. Two of the excellent points:

Rather than self-care, we need self-determined care:

“The messages we receive are that our lives don’t matter, that we don’t deserve love, or even to exist.” By loving and caring for ourselves we are fighting the system; “to choose instead to value ourselves, our health, and the health of our communities – all as one, not at odds with each other – is radical, it’s self-determination.” - Adrienne Maree Brown

Care is and must be at the core of changemaking:  

“True care, whether it is self-centered, community-centered or family-centered is something we should assume is part of change work...Whether people like the analogy or not, we are soldiers fighting a war for human dignity. The key to winning the war is, in part, knowing when to be soldiers and when to be parents, children, siblings, spouses/partners or just human. To learn how to be all of those things effectively requires all of us prioritizing care.” - Subhash Kateel

How have you – personally and professionally – experienced care, health, and sustainability (or lack thereof) as an individual? What about as part of a group or organization? What social factors, such as class, race, gender, and family role – have impacted those experiences? What is your vision of a better world, in which all are cared for – and how do we get there from here? What role can the nonprofit sector play in enacting that vision?

We plan to raise these questions and more throughout YNPN – via the blog, during next week’s national YNPN Leaders Conference, and in more ways to come. Tell us your own thoughts and reactions in the comment section below or on our Facebook, or Twitter, and join the conversation.

By Betty Jeanne Rueters-Ward, LaunchPad Fellow and National Talent Coordinator

Photo from Lifehealthpro.

by Lisa Thalacker Joyslin follow me on Twitter: @lisatjoyslin

You’re interested in developing your professional skills, but haven’t taken action. Why not? Chances are that you – or your nonprofit organization – are operating under a common professional development myth. I’ve outlined four of these myths below, including reasons they shouldn’t hold you back from developing your best professional self. Hopefully I can convince you and you can convince your organization to invest in professional development.

MYTH #1: It only benefits the individual

Some nonprofits are hesitant to invest time and funds in professional development because they believe it only benefits you, the individual. They worry their investment will walk out the door if you leave the organization. This viewpoint is short-sighted. Yes, the individual gains from professional development opportunities. But having a representative from your organization at conferences, seminars and events is a great opportunity to educate the nonprofit community about your organization’s mission and programs. Having a presence at these events also allows for new partnerships between organizations. Finally, the individual attending – you! – will bring new knowledge back to the organization that can then be applied to programs over the long term.

MYTH #2: It’s expensive

Sure, some professional development opportunities are expensive. But you can also find a number of low-cost or free events. YNPN-TC is a great place to start, offering monthly events at little or no cost. In addition, some more costly events offer scholarships or allow discounted rates for volunteers. If the cost is prohibitive, don’t be afraid to ask if opportunities exist to make the event more affordable.

MYTH #3: Networking doesn’t count

Talking one-on-one with someone over a drink can be just as valuable – or more so – than sitting through a lecture and PowerPoint. People meet and connect with colleagues in many ways, and networking events are one of those opportunities. There’s nothing wrong with having fun while you’re developing your network, as long as you keep it professional. Sometimes the best connections made are those one-off conversations that lead to a new partnership for your organization or a new opportunity for you personally.

MYTH #4: You can’t do it without your organization’s support

While it’s great when your organization supports professional development, this unfortunately isn’t always the case. Don’t let it hold you back. There are many professional development opportunities that take place outside work hours. Happy hour events or weekend conferences are not uncommon, and will allow you to pursue your professional development goals on your own time. Check out the low-cost Minnesota Rising Un/Conference – it’s held in annually in the fall; visit their website this summer for more info on 2013.

Next time you find yourself making an excuse instead of attending a professional development event, make sure one of these myths isn’t behind your reasoning. Take the time to convince your organization – and yourself – that professional development is worth the investment.
 
Have you run into these, or other, professional development myths? What have you done to overcome them?
Do you have a favorite low-cost professional development event or organization?

Photo by Robin Maben.

Written by Josh Dye, cross-posted from YNPN Twin Cities.

Time Flies When You Waste It

The old saying goes, “Time flies when you are having fun!” It’s true, but time goes at the speed of light when you waste it. There are many professional and personal examples of time-wasting: Ineffective meetings, constantly checking email/Facebook/Twitter/websites, having arguments and making complaints to get your point across, watching bad television, and more. Any of these activities can make a precious hour or two vanish in an instant—time you will never get back.

What's the solution? It’s not as simple as just stopping the activity. The ways we waste time are often habits and routines. Habits and routines are our default response to moments where we haven’t made a choice about what to do next. Habits are broken when we make conscious choices to spend our time on something more valuable.

For example, if we have not made a choice about how we will start our work day, we will likely check email, Facebook and Twitter, and then an hour later make some progress on our task (and then check email, Facebook, and Twitter again).

The key to making more effective use of our time is to intentionally interrupt our routines with something more meaningful or productive. The next time you are tempted to default to a time wasting routine, choose to do something more meaningful instead. Call and thank a partner. Reach out to someone and ask them to give to your organization or buy your product. Start your project. Have the difficult but necessary conversation you have been putting off.

Fortunately, there are a number of amazing resources to help us address some of the time wasters mentioned above. Here are a few:

Meetings

Effective-ize your meetings. We’ve all been in meetings that leave you wishing you could have your time back to work on something else. I strongly recommend Al Pittampalli’s Read This Before Our Next Meeting(2011). It’s only $5 on Kindle. Buy it. You will thank me later when you are working on an awesome project that will make a difference, instead of sitting in a meeting to plan the next meeting.

Email

Conquer your inbox. Organized Audrey, a consultant who focuses on organization, offers some excellent tips on increasing “email productivity” and how to tackle an overflowing inbox. She coined one of my favorite quotes, “Clutter (including email clutter) is the result of delayed decisions.” Her email advice changed my life—I no longer spend useful time wallowing in my inbox.

Facebook

Go on a Facebook fast. In May of 2012 I deactivated my Facebook account and didn’t reactivate it until January of 2013. Surprisingly, the greatest benefit I derived from this experience was mental. The impulse to check my News Feed every ten minutes? Gone. The interesting thoughts I had? They were pondered, deliberated, and personally discussed with others, instead of summarized while waiting for artificial affirmation (likes and comments). I more fully experienced each moment without the mental distraction of posting it online.

Twitter

Automate your tweets. If you are responsible to post status updates and tweets for your organization, use a service like Hoot Suite. My favorite feature of Hoot Suite is the option to schedule posts. In just 20 minutes I can take care of the next two weeks of posts. Now I can better focus on projects at hand without the distraction of writing my next tweet.

Have Difficult Conversations

Unlike meetings, email, and social media, this is not a time waster. Rather, it is necessary, scary, unpleasant, and incredibly powerful. Many have relationships (both personal and professional) that are sucking the life out of them, but fear having conversations to address the situation. I’m here to tell you from personal experience facing your fear is worth it and comes with great reward—fullness of life. If you need help mustering the courage to have difficult conversations or face any challenge, I highly recommend The Flinch by Julien Smith. It's free on the Kindle.

Often people make time fly by wasting it instead of investing it in fun, meaningful, productive, and life-improving activities. Time is life. Today, start making decisions that interrupt your habits. Make conscious choices that maximize fun, memories, and meaning. The fulfillment we get from our lives, work, organizations, and society depend on it.

How have you become more effective and not wasted time?