The WNBA has my ample attention. I grew up loving basketball – watching athletes rise to meet the moment and perform at levels far above normal folks. Now as an adult, I also watch team leadership make recruiting, trading, and waiving decisions, and ponder which of these decisions will lead to success in the playoffs. At its best, the WNBA gives rookies, veterans of multiple trades, and those who paid their dues playing overseas opportunities to prove their worth, and continues to support players when performance does not meet expectations.
These WNBA franchises have highly professional and extremely well-funded HR departments – something I could only dream about when I was a nonprofit executive director. Like many executive directors, while I was quite familiar with the cause, I was engaged in on-the-job training in how to run the actual nonprofit business, including managing staff. (In the first week of being an ED, I asked if there was a hotline number I could call – and was laughed at by my supposed peers for posing such a question.) And goodness knows that boards of directors are seldom interested in embracing the HR aspects of their nonprofits or knowing enough to support an ED who is new to managing employees.
Now as a consultant, I advise small nonprofits, especially ones with first-time executive directors or those moving from an all-volunteer group to paid staff, to outsource HR to a professional firm or consultant. It is worth it! Truthfully, I am unaware of an ED who has the time for, or enjoys, researching fair salary bands by field and region, comprehensive compensation packages, and relevant city, county, state, and federal employment laws that must be listed in staff orientation materials whether working onsite, hybrid, or remote. Like a WNBA coach, your ED was hired to focus on achieving programming deliverables.
There are so many great reasons to outsource your HR to a third party:
· The professional HR expert is aware of best practices that should be included in the personnel manual with relevant laws and regulations you have been hoping to update (write?).
· Your staff would appreciate an external professional’s take on organizational work culture and written policies, as well as objective feedback regarding challenges with co-workers or management, performance reviews, performance improvement plans, and/or plans to move on from the organization.
· Your executive director would benefit from expert advice on dealing with challenges with staff and/or board members, performance review and exit interview templates, and coaching on recruiting, hiring, onboarding, supporting, reviewing, suspending, and/or releasing staff.
· An HR professional can coach your board on how to best recruit, hire, onboard, support, review, and/or resolve conflicts with your ED.
· The HR expert knows how to respond to EEOC claims, FMLA issues, union organizing, layoffs, closures, and other matters that you may not have considered at the time you thought it was a promising idea to form or join a small nonprofit.
Bottom line: you do not have to figure out HR matters on your own. There are professionals in the HR world that are eager to help you and – I am betting – love, love, love your nonprofit mission. Some HR firms are built to provide comprehensive services, such as taking care of payroll responsibilities. There are also independent HR consultants who can do many of the items listed above, often at a lower cost. They can also advise you at key times through the various phases of your nonprofit, such as moving from handling QuickBooks on your own to employing a bookkeeper, determining which circumstances are best to secure the services of an employment law attorney, building out or reorganizing your staff, and/or implementing your strategic plan or recently approved DEIA objectives.
I highly recommend keeping a firm or consultant on retainer with the idea of building or reorganizing from the ground up – not just when there is an emergency. I once had the experience as a board chair of finding out that while we paid a monthly HR consultant, the ED only called on them when there were problems with staff members to address. Had we used those services from the beginning, the outcomes would have been more positive for all those involved, such as better recruitment and hiring of the people best suited for the positions to begin with.
But I know what it is like to be a first-time ED or an ED that has taken on relaunching a nonprofit - too afraid to tell anyone that I was underwater, or even years later, surprised that no one asked me when I was struggling whether I was open to receiving support. But that is a blog for another time.
Meanwhile, the WNBA utilizes a 7-day hardship contract which allows proven players to see if they might be a good fit for a team with an unexpected, shortened roster (renewable only twice) that might turn into a rest-of-the season contract. I really like that idea for nonprofits. Now - how can we make that happen?