October 10, 2016 Conference

Seven ways to get the most out of attending a conference

Coming to the Not-For-Profit People Conference in November? Or perhaps you’ve got another NFP conference coming up? Conferences can be hyper-rich opportunities to learn new ideas, make new connections, gain perspective on your job, have important conversations with colleagues and develop as an NFP professional.

But doing all this at the same time isn’t a simple task – it can be easy for a conference to become a blur of presentations, faces and cocktails. Why not develop a plan of attack well before you set foot in the conference centre?

October 5, 2016 Change Management, Health & Wellbeing, Human Resources, Organisational Strategy

Six steps to ensure your staff are ready when natural disasters strike

Just this week, we’ve had floods in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania and cyclonic storms in South Australia. Natural disasters – whether floods, droughts, heatwaves or bushfires – are rarely far from the headlines in Australia. Which makes it all the more shocking that 25 percent of community organisations say they might need to close permanently after an extreme weather event, while half think they’d be out of action for at least a week.

That’s why the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) suggests that community organisations are generally ill-prepared for disasters and emergencies. To help address this, ACOSS has developed a toolkit to help community organisations measure and improve their resilience in such circumstances.

September 26, 2016 Human Resources, Managing People Well, Organisational Strategy

Five ways that Facebook works to stop office politics

Office Politics: in most organisations they’re probably unavoidable. But when manoeuvring for power or influence becomes more important to staff or volunteers than your NFP’s purpose or mission, then organisational dysfunction is probably just around the corner.

When a group of people come together in a work context, the strategies and schemes they might employ to their own advantage can be difficult to stamp out. So what can you do as an NFP leader or HR professional to stop office politics taking hold?

With almost 15,000 employees, Facebook has some serious experience with office politics – and they’ve come up with five tactics that they’ve found useful in preventing politics taking hold and keeping their organisational culture healthy.

September 21, 2016 Leadership, Volunteer Management

What does it mean to be a values-driven leader? The Pyjama Foundation’s founder and CEO Bronwyn Sheehan shares what she’s learned

Bronwyn Sheehan is the founder and CEO of the Pyjama Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that transforms the lives of children in foster care through education. Since the Foundation’s inception in 2004, they’ve trained 4,000 volunteers with the values-driven leadership Bronwyn has worked to embed in the organisation and its staff.

For her work, Bronwyn was awarded Qld Australian of the Year in 2009, and was a national finalist in the 2008 Telstra Business Women’s Awards. In the lead-up to her presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, we spoke to Bronwyn about her journey, and how she’s managed to establish an organisation with such a committed volunteer workforce, from the ground up.

September 19, 2016 Recruitment, Remuneration

Why you should (almost) always disclose salary range in your NFP’s job ads

When recruiting for your NFP, developing a great job ad is critical to attracting the best candidates for almost any role. But have you ever considered how the presence of a salary range – or lack thereof – could be affecting your applicants? According to one estimate, just 19 percent of Australian employers disclose salary in their job advertisements – and yet jobs that do disclose a salary range are more likely to be clicked on. Here’s what you need to consider.

September 14, 2016 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Legal Issues, Making Decisions, Recruitment

Six things you just can’t discuss when assessing candidates for your next job

Up until 1975, employers could take almost anything into consideration when recruiting staff. But the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act – passed by the Whitlam Government – started a legislative trend towards protecting a variety of people from employment discrimination. And that means there are now some things you just can’t discuss when you’re making a decision about who to hire.

September 12, 2016 Recruitment, Volunteer Management

Does your NFP recruit volunteers differently from paid staff? Starlight Foundation’s Kerry Shields explains why that needs to change

Kerry Shields is the National Volunteer Manager at Starlight Children’s Foundation, a not-for-profit that seeks to improve the lives of children and teens who are seriously ill or in hospital. Kerry’s team is responsible for attracting, recruiting, engaging and retaining more than 3,000 volunteers, whose contribution of more than 55,000 hours equated to over $1.6 million in value to the organisation in 2015.

Ahead of her presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, we spoke to Kerry about the value of approaching volunteer recruitment in the same way as paid staff.

September 7, 2016 Interviewing, Recruitment

The best way to rate candidate interviews at your NFP

So you’ve advertised a job, shortlisted candidates and done your interviews. Now which candidate should you hire?

How do you differentiate between good candidates who might have different skillsets, experience and personalities?

August 24, 2016 Leadership, Making Decisions, Organisational Strategy

Who holds power in your NFP? Your answer might help explain how effective and engaged your staff and volunteers are

It’s difficult to talk about power. Mentioning power can conjure up memories of encounters with parents, teachers, bosses, the law, family or partners who have exercised power over over us in negative ways.

But power relationships are woven throughout our lives, and throughout our workplaces. And being clear about who holds power – particularly the power to make decisions – in your organisation, as well as ensuring that structure reflects your organisation’s shared values – will mean that staff and volunteers understand how and why power works as it does. And that can mean the difference between an empowered staff member, and a disempowered, disengaged one.

August 17, 2016 Managing People Well

The keys to building high-performing teams – Climate Council COO Katrina Porteus shares her experience

Ahead of her talk about high-performing teams at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, the Climate Council’s Chief Operating Officer Katrina Porteus has given us a sneak peek of how the independent climate change organisation built a team that delivers real impact despite its small size.

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