Three Steps to Real Change
FundRaising Success: If you were to leave World Vision U.S. now and go to another nonprofit organization, and that organization was bringing in funds and its programs were doing what they were supposed to do, but it felt somewhat static, what would you do? How would you turn that around?
Atul Tandon: I would find out in terms of the mission vision values — what are they? Is there a distinctiveness? What is the unique thing about this institution? How you go from not having a distinctiveness to creating a compelling mission vision would be job No. 1.
Job No. 2 would be energize the staff. I realized when I came to World Vision that World Vision is not money. World Vision is not fixing problems. World Vision is not an idea. What it is is people. It is a passion from the staff that comprises the value of World Vision.
The thing about getting the staff behind [the vision] in the for-profit world? You compensate people simply by having them participate in the profit-making enterprise, whether it’s monthly, yearly compensation, stock options, etc. In the nonprofit world, you don’t have that option. So you compensate people by telling them what effect they’re having on the mission of the institution.
The third job would be the implementation. Now that we’ve got clear mission vision values, we’ve got buy-in — and not just buy-in but compassion — from the staff; how do I now implement the strategy that we’ve developed?
I think that in the implementation part, there are a couple important things. Do you have good strategy for very strong, very focused implementation? Are you telling your staff individually to meet the goals of the institution? Are you telling your staff — each one of them, every day — how they are impacting the mission vision values of the institution?
