Over the last 5 years, I’ve had the unique opportunity to train, consult with or speak to hundreds of nonprofit organizations around the world. Over this time I’ve come to realize that the problems most nonprofit organizations have are not unique.  You may feel your organization has challenges with systems and processes that no one else has but you’re wrong.

Let me be the first to tell you, you’re not special.  No matter who I speak with, where they are in the world, or what database or systems they are using the problems are the same. So why do these same problems keep coming up?  If we’re all having the same problems shouldn’t we be able to fix them by now? Well in most cases it’s that organizations feel overwhelmed by the challenges they have and resort to workarounds to problems to just “get the job done.”

Therein lies the problem.  The workaround is a short-term solution that leads to long-term problems.  I would even continue on to say this is also a reason why the average tenure for a fundraiser at an organization is a little under 3 years. I’ve literally come into organizations and after a little digging been able to narrow down the problem happening to the most recent staff member who left the organization. They realized their workarounds had caught up to them and left the organization before it blew up in their face.

I encourage you to fight the urge to find a workaround to your challenges.  With the vast majority of these challenges, there are solutions if you pause, take a look and think through your workflows and data decisions to root out the cause of the headaches.

Stop the workarounds, and find solutions to your challenges.