Five Lessons Learned From Non-Profit Management That Apply to Tech Management
A non-profit pushes to the extreme the challenges in management. Learn the tips I applied from this experience in tech management.
Introduction
Aside from being a data team lead, I am the proud founder and chair of the board at Hydrocephalus Israel Non-profit. I believe this experience helped me become a better tech manager and in this blog post I hope you can learn from my experience as well.
So let me tell you a bit about our non-profit. Hydrocephalus is a chronic condition in which the body has difficulty draining excess cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the brain ventricles and spine. This condition, which can occur for several reasons, is common among millions around the world, including thousands of Israelis. We are here to promote research, manage a supportive community, promote rights and raise awareness. You can read more about my personal connection to this condition here.
Similarities and Differences
Some concepts are very similar between managing a non-profit and managing tech, but other concepts are very different. A non-profit pushes to the extreme the challenges in management.
Managing a non-profit is very similar to managing a tech company.
- You have the organisation’s vision you want to fulfil.
- You need to get funding for your organisation activity.
- You want to manage your resources the most effective way.
- Employee retention is challenging.
- Your time is limited to do the work.
Managing a non-profit is very different than managing a tech company.
Imagine all your employees are very passionate about what your organisation’s goals, they have a unique story that unites them all and share the same vision as the company. Sounds perfect right? But, on the other hand, they have very limited resources. Sometimes they have high ambitions but lack the skills and need much training. In addition, they don’t get payed for their job, they all have other “main jobs”, they don’t sign any contract and often leave frequently. Maybe less perfect than you were thinking…
5 Lessons Learned
By now you should start to feel the similarities and differences between the management of tech companies and non-profits. Now I want to discuss five lessons I have learned from managing Hydrocephalus Israel that applied to my job as a data team lead.
1. Retention
We all know how hard it is to retain our employees in today’s high tech market. When it comes to non-profits the challenge is orders of magnitude larger. Volunteers usually have very limited time resources, they can be pickier with the tasks they want to work on, they are under no contract and in case of medical non-profit have personal issues of their own.
From my experience, when a volunteer feels meaningful to the organisation, that his/her opinion matters, that transparency exists in the organisation goals and decisions are well communicated this helps preserve the volunteers. Personal connection and connection to the team is also very important in the volunteer experience.
In addition, matching the project to the volunteer strength or places where they want to grow into is very important in order to retain the volunteer.
Finally, recognition is such an easy, free and important tool. Always recognise the good work of the volunteers, make sure it’s known and give credit.
Can you see how this can easily be applied to tech management?
2. Delegation
One of the key challenges to management is managing “out of my scope” responsibilities. The solution here is to always keep learning and to build the best team that fills your “blind spots”. Founding a non-profit required me to understand in finance, legal, marketing, and more areas I have no expertise in. The first thing I did was to actively search for volunteers with those skills and surrounded myself with the best advisors. When having these experts you are more open to delegation.
All of us at the non-profit have other “day jobs”, this means we have very limited time to work. This requires from the management more delegation than you are probably used to. How can we do that? provide clear definitions of the task, trust employee more and allow flexibility in the result. The non-profit experience showed me ownership of the employee is one of the most important attributes that help the manager succeed and one of the powerful tools a manger can give to his/her employee.
3. Onboarding
The fact that in non-profit some of the volunteers are hard to retain can take much of the organisation time. In order to make the onboarding more efficient I found several techniques. First, if there are repetitive parts in your onboarding process make sure they are all documented or recorded - anything that will require the least amount of resources from your organisation to onboard a new member. Second, “natural selection”, you’ll be amazed how many people reach out saying they want to volunteer but when it comes to only even show up to a zoom meeting it doesn’t happen. In the non-profit world you have the privilege to test the commitment throughout work and dedicate minimal time before that, start small and later give larger tasks. In the tech world it’s not possible, but we have the interviewing process instead. I highly recommend adding some of the “natural selection” flavour to your interview process. For example, I am not a huge fan of “home assignment” as a part of the interview process, but they definitely help to assess the commitment of the candidate. Maybe you can find better ideas?
4. Project Management
Because of the nature of the volunteers and funding at a non-profit, the non-profit activity is usually managed as multiple projects. Working in a multiple-project setup puts a lot of emphasis on project management. Therefore, defining clear goals, timeline, priorities and KPIs for your projects is essential. We have discussed the importance of project assignment in the employee retention part.
Much like tech companies, you need to always prioritise between your projects and sometimes even say no to certain funding/projects if they do not align with your main goals.
Collaborations are very helpful to non-profit growth. When you find another non-profit that have similar interests. Try to find collaborations within your organisation (different teams) and maybe even outside.
Another small tip, is that having in the backlog projects at different scales can really help you achieve the best execution and can be a tool for you for employee growth. You need to always have small project such as “support this family over the phone” and larger ongoing ones “organisation’s website”.
5. Open Feedback Culture
When founding the non-profit I had a clear vision of the goals and path to achieve them. Little did I know about the actual needs, challenges and diversity of people I was going to help. Listening to medical experts, to patients, to other similar non-profits are keys to our growth. If I apply this to the tech world, getting feedback from your employees, your clients and your peers is very important for your growth. In order to achieve that, you need to build a culture where people feel comfortable and have the platform to disagree, suggest new ideas, and so on. Also, you should aim to build a diverse team of people with different skills, background and opinions.
Conclusion
To sum up, a non-profit in some ways pushes to the extreme the challenges in management. These extremities opened up my eyes to new solutions or emphasised to me existing methods. I hope you like this blog post and that the tools I suggested will help you in your career.
