I love collaborations, and the opportunity to build a relationship with another organization or with other individuals serving our community.  Like any relationship, in a business alliance it’s so important to consider common goals and values to ensure a healthy, effective working relationship.  Some while ago I read a strong blog post from Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the subject of alliances, “How To Strike Effective Alliances and Partnerships.”  She wrote about both the benefits and the hazards of alliances, and identified eight factors she felt were essential to consider for a strong alliance.  One of these was Integrity.  Here’s a brief excerpt from Rosabeth’s writing:

Integrity. Trust is essential. Alliances fall apart in conflict and lawsuits when partners do not act ethically toward one another nor strive to contribute to the other’s success.

Alliances seem a way out for organizations that want to remain independent but need lower costs, greater scale, or broader market scope quickly. It seems easy, and yet execution is difficult. Before rushing into another company’s arms out of desperation, remember why strategic alliances are fragile, and think carefully.

I was struck by Rosabeth’s post, and shared a few thoughts of my own:

Rosabeth,

Thank you for this timely, and timeless article.

It’s very interesting that we often look at the business purpose to the alliance, which is essential. However, equally important is what you point out regarding Integrity.

Ensuring that you both share similar values, and, value similar things, is essential. Most people talk in general about integrity or values, but it’s important to really drill down into several areas:

• Short vs. Long-term Relationships–how one conducts business and values short versus long-term relationships. Are you here to close the deal quickly, or to establish a long-term relationship?

• Verbal vs. Written Communications–what one values in written and verbal communications. Do you believe that in-person or written communication is most essential for effective management?

• Priorities in Values–i.e., people might value efficiency, decorum, compassion — but in a different order. That could solidify or breakdown an important relationship.

Thank you for an insightful article.

Sincerely,
Pamela Hawley
Founder and CEO
UniversalGiving

Sylvia Ann Hewlett wrote an article titled “Increase Engagement by Allowing Employees to Volunteer “ which appeared on the Harvard Business Review website. The following is an excerpt:

Volunteering has always been viewed as good for your soul.  Now it        turns out that it’s also good for your health and your career.

Recent research conducted by Washington, D.C.-based Corporation for National & Community Service reveals that charitable work literally makes the heart grow stronger, as reported in my book Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down.   Individuals with coronary artery disease who participate in volunteer activities after suffering a heart attack report a reduction in despair and depression, driving down mortality and adding years to life.   It’s also true that those who volunteer have fewer incidents of heart disease in the first place…

Some of the best opportunities for volunteer work that benefits your karma and your career may come from your own company.   Research from the Center for Work-Life Policy shows that high-potential employees (mostly women, but also a significant percentage of men) are seriously motivated by a desire to give back to the world, and increasingly seek out employers that allow them to participate on company time.   Smart employers, in turn, are linking altruism and ambition.   By using community service partnerships to help valued employees fulfill their dreams and accelerate their careers, companies are betting that their A-team’s enthusiasm will pay off in renewed engagement and loyalty.

This article prompted me to share some insights about corporate volunteering.  I shared the following thoughts with Sylvia:

Thank you, Sylvia, for your wonderful blog post.

Volunteer work is definitely a win-win situation for everyone – the nonprofits, the volunteers and the companies for which they work.   For each group, however, there are some important points to keep in mind. The following tips are insights I have gathered in leading (as founder and CEO) the nonprofit) UniversalGiving, where we work with Fortune 500 companies on their international Corporate Social Responsibility programs.

We’ll start with the benefits of employee volunteering to the companies. Volunteering is a key part of any CSR program.   As such, it helps companies enhance their corporate brand image, improves employee attraction/retention as well as client attraction/retention, and establishes local buy-in, all of which helps a company’s bottom line while also serving the community.

One of the toughest issues companies face in implementing a top-quality CSR strategy is how they make decisions regarding their NGO Partners. Establishing and maintaining these partnerships should be made with care, and for the longterm. You can read more about Fortune 500 companies can protect themselves and their brand as they expand their international giving and volunteer programs worldwide in my blog post: “Top 4 International Insights for Fortune 500 Companies.

Employees, just like the companies they work for, must also be diligent about choosing the right nonprofit with which to work. In order to maximize the return on their volunteer experience, employees should look for a nonprofit whose mission addresses the issues about which they are most passionate. They need to make sure the leadership and organizational structure of that nonprofit allow them to make the biggest impact using their current skills while also providing them the opportunity to learn new skills. I recently wrote an article for TILE Financial’s Spend Grow Give program , and although it is directed at volunteers in their teens, it is nonetheless an excellent resource for volunteers of any age seeking the best possible volunteer experience.

Nonprofits, in turn, can benefit most from corporate volunteers by establishing clear communication channels with them, finding out how they want to grow and contribute, and then determining how that fits with the nonprofit’s mission and vision. Expectations should be very clear on both sides.   As in the corporate world, returns can be maximized for nonprofits.  The goal is to efficiently use a nonprofit organization’s assets, in this case, its volunteers.

— Pamela Hawley

As a social entrepreneur and founder of a nonprofit, I’m often considering and discussing the best models for organizations that want to do good.  Should they be nonprofit?  For-profit?  A blending of the two?  Should they focus on fundraising or revenue generation?

Lindsay Clinton recently raised these questions on Social Edge with her post, “The Social and Commercial Two-Step.”  Here was my contribution to the discussion:

A very interesting discussion and thank you for all the knowledge. 

As more nonprofits jump into the fray of generating revenue, we’ll need to figure out how to allow them to continue to do social good.

I think an important part is leadership in how you bring in funds.  Key items for CEOs and Executive Directors:

1- Do you feel donations are a part of your culture?
2- Do you enjoy fundraising?
3- Are you happy receiving revenue from services, from paying sources?
4- Do you enjoy the sales aspect of being paid for a service?

These are important questions to ask as per the legal structure and culture of your organization.

My ideal world is to:

*Have a pure brand with a focus on being a nonprofit. We exist to provide social good.
*Generate revenue from companies.  They foot the bill for our public service.

So ideally I’d like to be a nonprofit that primarily funds itself through corporate services. The companies actually allow us provide our service for free to the public.  I don’t think we have the proper legal structures ready for this type of mindset in abundance.

Sincerely,

Pamela Hawley

Founder and CEO

UniversalGiving

When people ask me what they should be prepared for when they decide to volunteer, they usually think I give a pretty strange answer:
 
 “Build Together.”
 
Volunteering is an amazing experience. These days you can volunteer with street children in the town of Recife in northeastern Brazil, build wheelchairs from recycled landmine parts in Cambodia, teach English to the Karen Hill tribe people in Thailand, or construct a health center in the Kikuyu community of Kenya.  You might be someone just out of school, a family seeking both travel and volunteer experience, or a professional who would like to donate their skills – how about serving as a dentist for three weeks in the Shechen Medical Clinic in Nepal!
 
In my first volunteer trip to Managua, Nicaragua, we were scheduled to build schools and dormitories.  At that time, 90% of students in the community were not currently attending school.  We jumped into the project with the villagers and finished the school — but ran out of materials for the dormitories.  First instincts as Americans were to brainstorm every possible way to get it done.  But access to resources was severely limited.  As our Nicaraguan leader stated: “You Americans just want to complete things.  We want to create and nourish relationships.”  
 
As we let these words sink in, we truly began to connect and listen to this community.  We learned about their life.  We built relationships, played with their children, helped cook hundreds of tortillas over hot grills for hundreds of people in the community.  We embraced their daily life, and the more we did, the closer the bonds of understanding and joy grew.
 
It is wonderful to go to another country, complete a volunteer project, and feel that you really had an impact. But establishing a relationship with the local people is by far the most important  aspect of the volunteer trip.  Building true, lasting relationships results in the greatest benefit for our world:  less barriers are formed and increased understanding is achieved.  We are all a team working together to face and resolve the challenges in our world.
 
Here are some key tips when you ponder volunteering internationally:
 
1.  Practical Planning. Contact the organization a few months prior to leaving and find out if there are materials which are rare and hard to attain for the project.  Often what we consider plentiful here (such as nails or hammers) are in great need in other parts of the world.
 
2.  Do the Project Together, Not on Your Own.  You are a guest in their community. The most successful outcome is not that you built something and walked away, but that you and the community build something as a team. No one feels empowered when you do everything for them.  Share skills.  Build Together.
 
3. Be Flexible.  Not everything is going to go as planned.  Often the country doesn’t have the right tools, manpower, transportation or funds to get all the needed work done. In a word, they lack infrastructure.  You can either get frustrated by this, or pitch in and help in other ways.  Be flexible. Be creative! 
 
4. Connect to the People in the Community.   Often you will have “downtime” outside of the scope of the project. Rather than retreat to the group with whom you traveled, be sure to spend time with the people of the community.  Listen about their lives. If you can’t speak the language, smiles work wonders. And you’ll be surprised – you will find a way to communicate!
 
Volunteering is a special, life changing experience for everyone involved. Be prepared that the person who may be changed the most…. is you.  It’s a joyful, humbling, often rigorous experience which will encourage you to view yourself, your neighbors and your world quite differently. 
 
 I look forward to speaking with all of you this week as we celebrate the launch of UniversalGiving’s Weekly Volunteer Opportunities on socialedge.org.  Remember, too, that 2/3 of volunteers are more likely to give, so we have designed our service allowing you to give and volunteer in one fell swoop!   UniversalGiving efficiently provides both in one service, allowing you to maximize your giving of time and funds to exceptional organizations.
 
I hope you will join us in UniversalGiving’s vision to “make giving and volunteering a natural part of everyday life!”    I look forward to your comments!
 
All my best, Pamela

Barron’s recently published a list of the 25 best givers for 2009.  Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, writers of Philanthrocapitalism, picked up the theme by offering their top five suggestions of philanthrocapitalists who they felt should have been included on Barron’s list.  After reading their list, I offered a few thoughts, and one suggestion of my own.

Dear Matthew and Michael, thank you for being encouraging of our sector, and I think adding to Barron’s list. It’s very interesting criteria, some objective and subjective.

I’d add Bud Colligan to the list. Venture Capitalist at Accel who has given so much to the community — strategically — through Pacific Community Ventures. They support small businesses and they fundraise from investors who want to invest in their nonprofit, Pacific Community Ventures, which in turn supports these small businesses creating thousands of jobs. It’s smart philanthropy, marrying business and nonprofit.

To be honest — there are thousands of unsung philanthropic heroes, and thousands more to come. Some give from a gigantic pocketbook; other give of a tremendous heart. Both are important.

This world is becoming a circle of giving. We all crave that meaning and sincerity after such a tough year; my hope is this desire to serve continues with the flywheel effect, cascading down gushing water of philanthropic good for decades to come.

Pamela Hawley
Founder and CEO
UniversalGiving

Jeff Stibel recently wrote an article for Harvard Business Publishing about wisdom, knowledge and leaders, arguing that leaders who have wisdom will limit their knowledge.  “Why Wise Leaders Don’t Know Too Much” discusses the value of instinct and the danger of an overload of information.  Here’s a brief excerpt:

Wisdom can be shattered by too much information. Great scholars, for instance, tend to be great in very narrow disciplines. These scholars give ground on colloquial information so that they can digest more within their field. In many ways, we are all idiot savants: our expertise in certain areas necessitates weakness elsewhere.

Yet we still spend our days analyzing information and falling into traps. Decisions are destroyed by over-analysis. The brain is not intelligent because of the sheer volume of data it can ingest, but for the way it can quickly discern patterns — and then guess the rest. The more information you pile on, the less likely you are to make educated guesses. But educated guesses spring from wisdom: all of your past experiences, knowledge and knowhow, coupled with the most recent information and analysis. In other words, wisdom comes from your gut.

This led me to think about what we know, what we don’t know, and what we, as leaders, should take into consideration when making decisions.  Here are the thoughts I shared with Jeff:

Dear Jeff,

Thank you for an insightful article. I think what struck me from a macrolevel is that there is always going to be something we don’t know.

What do we know?

We can connect into timeless truths that can help us make the right decision, in almost every area. Doing the best research you can, coupled with the following, will help you be able to make the best decisions possible:

*sincere desire to move forward your partner’s interests as well as your own
*goal of creating long-term, mutually rewarding partnerships
*alignment of your personal values with your professional decisions, ensuring decisions you make in the workplace also coincide with your personal values. (This does not mean personal viewpoints or opinions; it means alignment with ethics and timeless principles of fairness)
*vision of a future that is positive and mutually beneficial for all parties involved in your decisions.

The above ramifications can help you make the best decisions in addition to the due diligence and knowledge you have prepared.

Jeff, I’d be curious to hear what you think of this viewpoint, in light of all your astute studies on intelligence. Thank you for sharing.

Sincerely, Pamela

If you ever have a spare minute, you can use it to volunteer.  Waiting at the bus stop, waiting in line, maybe while getting coffee…  There’s an exciting new movement in volunteering that will let you take those spare minutes and put them toward doing good.  The Extraordinaries is a San Francisco-based group that created an application for the iPhone to make microvolunteering easy.  Do translations, catalogue photos, map playgrounds…all you need is an iPhone or a computer, and it takes just a minute.

I recently had the opportunity to share about the Extraordinaries for a feature on ABC News.  Here’s an excerpt:

For Adam Griffiths and Pamela Hawley, it is the 1Sky campaign over coffee. They are volunteering to get the federal government to address climate change.

“You have the application in your pocket and you literally have the power to change the world in the palm of your hand,” Griffiths says.

“For me, it’s exciting,” Hawleys says. “Because I feel like I am the part of a greater movement.”

You can see the video and full text article on ABC’s website: SF Website Offers Opportunity to Micro-Volunteer.  Visit the Extraordinaries site, BeExtra.org to get started microvolunteering!

John Baldoni wrote an article for Fast Company earlier this month titled “Act with the Big Picture in Mind,” about three key elements to consider when pursuing a new idea for your company.  These elements are:

One, your idea must complement the strategic direction of your company.

Two, your idea must have a strong business case.

Three, your idea must be blessed by your boss, or at least by someone higher up.

You can view John’s article for further elaboration on each point.  I shared my thoughts in a comment, also shared below:

John, thank you for a very helpful post. It’s important that people feel they can get their creative ideas out, while also viewing their sector wholistically, from many different vantage points.

It helps to think how an idea, for example, would further connect or support the different business units. Even more powerful would be to build on an existing strategic idea that is not yet fully realized. It also shows you are listening to the CEO and want to help realize the vision more fully.

Working step by step to include others but also be proactive and move forward, is helpful. Thank you for a wise article about taking initiative, and, being receptive to feedback. A balance of both is needed in a healthy organization.

Sincerely, Pamela

Just the other day I read an article by Pat Olsen, on the Harvard Business website, titled “How to Survive in an Unhappy Workplace.”  The article offered valuable insights about interactions in the business world, about managing our lives, and about seeking joy, in work and outside of it.  I’d like to share with you the comment I made to the article:

Thank you for a very practical, insightful article. This is such a great approach, Pat, for most things in life are not black and white. Thank you for demonstrating life is a process, and how can we work towards greater good?

These are not easy things to feel — trying to feel more grateful, to see the positive, stay optimistic, if you don’t enjoy what you do. But life is about service, and part of utmost joy comes from serving others. For example, is there a manager that you truly enjoy working for? Can you make their day a bit easier? It’s not just about the project or providing a report. It’s about making people’s lives easier and smoother, spreading a certain kindness throughout the day. That can bring, joy, too.

The other warm way to build meaning is to think about what is going on behind the scenes. I had an employee say the other day ‘they were just doing a fax.’ I showed them what I was doing — sending a fax. Why was it important?

This fax allowed us to renew our contract with one of the top Fortune 500 companies.

Reconnect yourself, and your team, with the meaning behind the task. Nothing is ever just a fax…..

Having said that, we have a right to find what we love to do. Be grateful for the experience you have had; for right now; and for opportunities in the future. Keep expecting good. Keep exploring your passions. Bit by bit you’ll be centered more on them.

The key is to go from good to good.

Warmly,
Pamela Hawley

I recently read a powerful article by Marshall Goldsmith titled “Leadership Isn’t About You” discussing the importance of appreciating one’s team, the value they bring, and how crucial their contributions are to the success of your organization. This inspired some thoughts for me that I shared with Marshall, and that I’d like to share with you.

Dear Marshall,

Thank you for such an enriching post. Certainly, the best leaders are inspiring, coaching and impelling their team to higher levels of accomplishment and growth. They provide opportunities, and unleash the beautiful, unique capabilities of each team member. Then, too, your team members are inspired to contribute — and lead — impacting your business in so many, many fruitful ways.

I do see it as a partnership. People do appreciate firmness in direction from the leader. It’s what I would call the ‘humble confidence’ of defining a new, more positive future, and driving the team to help accomplish this vision. It isn’t forceful. But it is compelling, and includes everyone in that drive. People deserve and need to be inspired.

At the same time, it amazes me that entrepreneurs are seen as such solo beacons of light in starting an organization. Absolutely untrue. The amount of people who have helped; the right timing of your venture; the hardwork and diligence of so many, many team members is what got you to where you are today. We have to be cognizant of this. We built together.

We need leaders. And leaders exist at every level, and regardless of age. I do tell our team that everyone is a leader here at UniversalGiving. I think we need to expand our definition of concept of who is a leader….

Thank you again for a most enriching and needed dialogue!

Sincerely, Pamela