by Dr. Kevin Dean, President & CEO, Tennessee Nonprofit Network
In our last chapter, everything almost fell apart. The four-headed monster of a coalition that got us through the pandemic—Venture Forward, Center for Nonprofit Management, Momentum Nonprofit Partners, and Alliance for Better Nonprofits—had a plan for a statewide association, but the day before our big meeting, the wheels fell off. Venture Forward was sunsetting, Tari was leaving CNM, and Alliance for Better Nonprofits was merging with their local United Way. The coalition had seemingly dissolved, and we were crestfallen. But then, an unlikely hero emerged: Abby Garrison, who urged us to take a leap of faith and transition Momentum Nonprofit Partners into the state association. We knew it was a huge risk, but it felt like the only way forward. Our new mission? Convince our board that this was the answer.
I’ve been in this rodeo before. I’m an agent of change, and I’ve seen firsthand how hard it can be for people to embrace it. I completed a massive turnaround of Literacy Mid-South and, more recently, helped morph Alliance for Nonprofit Excellence into Momentum Nonprofit Partners. I’m used to the pushback, the fear, and the desperate attempts to cling to the status quo. I know change can ruffle feathers, and I knew this wouldn’t be easy. Thankfully, I’ve been a believer in and a user of Kotter’s 8 Steps to Organizational Change for years, and I knew it was the perfect framework to guide us.
Kotter’s 8 Steps: The Roadmap to Our Future
Our first step would be to create a sense of urgency. We would help our board and staff understand the critical need for increased public policy support. No matter who was going to be the next President of the United State, we would face different kinds of challenges, especially with the world becoming more and more polarized and political. And no one was representing all nonprofits at the state level. We knew that if we weren’t at the table, we could easily be on the menu, or left out of important decision-making that impacted the sector. Nonpartisan public policy work was urgently needed on the state and federal level. Additionally, we would address our concern about the sustainability of Momentum Nonprofit Partners. Regional nonprofit associations have struggled in the last decade to remain relevant and sustainable, and many—as we saw with Alliance for Better Nonprofits and Venture Forward—were sunsetting, and not necessarily due to a lack of impact or relevance. It’s just difficult to fund an intermediary. Individual funders and corporations often wanted to fund social safety net programs, not necessarily the support organizations that help them.
Next, we would build a guiding coalition. We knew we would need our board and staff to be champions for this. We couldn’t be the lone voice. It takes a village to create something great, and we would need them to see themselves as the architects of this new future. Also, people don’t show up to things they don’t help build.
We would also form a strategic vision and initiatives. While we had an idea of what the state association would look like, we knew we didn’t have all the answers. Tennessee is a huge state with many different cultures and differences across its geography. What worked for Memphis might not work for Knoxville. We would need more information so we would set out on a road trip to gather data to create a truly statewide vision.
Our next step would be to enlist a volunteer army—or as we saw it, communicate the vision. We would need to get people excited and committed to the change. To do this, we would develop an Advisory Council (now called our Community Action Council, which is 45 members strong!) in each part of the state to provide on-the-ground feedback and serve as our ambassadors. This was about giving them ownership and a seat at the table.
To enable action by removing barriers, we would need to make some serious changes to how we operated. We would upgrade our member portal and CRM, create more online tools, and lean into other ways of communicating. We would double down on other means of communication like our podcast, which was gaining traction and followers outside of Memphis, and increase our blog output. We also knew that one-time trainings can rarely prove effective so we would lean into more cohort-based learning.
Of course, to build morale and prove this effort was worth the investment, we would need to generate short-term wins. We would celebrate everything in those early days! We would even create a Slack channel called #tnnwins that highlighted small victories along the way. These little moments of success would be fuel for the fire.
Our seventh step would be to sustain acceleration and build on that momentum. We would continue to communicate with stakeholders across the state, using our short-term wins as proof of concept. The goal would be to build on the changes until the vision became a reality.
Finally, we would have to institute change by anchoring our new approach in the culture. The strategic plan we would create from all the data and feedback we received would be our roadmap. This plan would help us solidify the changes we were making and make sure they stick.
But I couldn’t do would approach the board of directors, hoping to convince them of our next steps. But that, my friends, is a story for the next chapter.