Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 - (Page 30)

Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonproﬁt Sector BY ROY STRAUSS, MARTY ROSENHECK, KIRSTEN D’AURELIO AND JOHN ROSENHEIM Nonproﬁt organizations have been borrowing from corporate models for years. But when it comes to training and performance improvement, for-proﬁt companies can learn a lot from nonproﬁts. P DID YOU KNOW? According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are nearly 1.4 million nonproﬁt organizations in the United States. Source: Foundation Center art of Sarah Clark’s role as managing director of outreach and training at Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) is to enable people to perform their jobs effectively in support of the organization’s strategic goals. To accomplish this, she must take on seven daunting challenges: 1. Align learning with the organizational mission and goals. 2. Motivate people to learn and perform. 3. Develop effective leaders. 4. Provide measurable results. 5. Deploy the best mix of media and methods. 6. Focus on job role success. 7. Encourage diversity. Even though AIUSA — known for defending human rights worldwide — is a nonproﬁt organization, its counterparts in the for-proﬁt sector face the same challenges. We’ve observed that while nonproﬁt and for-proﬁt organizations differ in many ways, learning leaders in both types of organizations have many training issues in common — and can share solutions. Long-Term vs. Short-Term Training One key difference between nonproﬁts and for-profits is the focus of training. While both sectors aim to maximize the training function to enable their people to achieve organizational goals, nonproﬁts tend to have a long-term focus since they are not judged on a short-term quarterly proﬁt basis. As a result, nonproﬁts are practiced at dealing with issues that span years or even decades, giving them an opportunity to incorporate capacity-building initiatives. On the other hand, private companies must maximize their proﬁts in the near term, and this can lead to a myopic approach to training. Interestingly, though, this trend is starting to reverse, as nonproﬁts increasingly are being held accountable to funders for short-term results, and more successful companies are focusing on the long term. Consequently, the implication for training is that it must support both longterm capacity building and short-term results. Staff For-proﬁt corporations generally train paid staff, whereas many nonproﬁts rely heavily on volunteers and must train them in addition to staff. While for-proﬁts can 30 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • October 2008 • www.clomedia.com http://www.clomedia.com

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Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team? Hampton Hotels CLO Profile Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonprofit Sector Developing Leaders at Amnesty International Learning Measurements: It’s Time to Align Aligning Measurement to Business Success Training Employees With Special Needs How to Reach Disabled Learners Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning Who Owns Informal Learning? Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

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