Monday Morning Checklist:
What Will It Take To Get The Job Done?
The questions posed on this website aren’t the kind you ask, and answer, once and for all. On the contrary, the odds are that you’ll find yourself coming back to one or more of them at various points (and in various combinations) throughout your philanthropic journey. And yet, you can’t ask questions forever; sooner or later you must make decisions. So how can you tell whether you’ve wrestled with a question sufficiently to move on? In our experience, each of these questions has some relatively clear indicators of progress. If you can check many of these markers off your Monday morning to-do list, then you’re probably well on your way to giving smart!
- You’re confident that you have the right people, in the right jobs, to pursue your strategy; if not, you’re actively addressing the problem.
- You and your trustees and staff usually agree on important decisions; when you disagree, a candid discussion ensues, and people come together around the ultimate decision.
- Trustees and staff understand their roles and decision-making responsibilities.
- Trustees enjoy coming to board meetings, because they know their contributions are substantive and valued.
- Your grantees would say that you are realistic about the resources they need to execute their strategies.
- Your own organization has the resources it requires to execute your strategy.
- If you have been at this for a while, you’ve periodically reassessed whether you and your grantees have the capacity required to get the job done.
Sources Used For This Article:
Thomas J. Tierney and Joel L. Fleishman, Give Smart: Philanthropy That Gets Results, (Public Affairs, 2011).