Ops Insights #048 Use History When You Have No Mentor
August 31, 2024 | Read Time: 5 minutes | Written by Jenny Kleintop
You are doing amazing! The work you do day in and day out matters and I very much appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for tuning in.
This edition is for my ops peeps, the ones who are put in situations with no one to tell them how things are done. The ones who have very little, if any, documentation to say how things have been done in the past. Or the ones left to sink or swim on their own.
You are never truly alone unless you choose to be. In the nonprofit sector, there are tons of people who are willing to help. Find a mentor outside of your org if you need to. Find a group, a community, or a tribe to go through the journey with. You should never be alone and there are so many options out there today to lean into.
I am going to walk you through an example of how I took hold of a situation when there was no one to guide me, how I leaned in, and how I succeeded in hopes it can guide you in your journey.
– The Gift Entry Catch-up Initiative –
This summer I took on an initiative to help a leader catch up on their gift entry. She was down two team members in development operations (which was her entire dev ops team) and 3 months behind in gift entry. The angst of being behind was keeping her up at 3 am.
The first thing we did was prioritize. We laid out everything that was behind, anything anyone was asking for, and what needed to be done. Then, we listed them in order of priority to tackle the absolute must-be-done by August 31st items first, as we had to be caught up by then. That was the fiscal year end.
I was to work three days a week to catch them up, recommend adjustments to align with best practices and mentor two new dev ops team members she would hire as replacements for those who left. “I’ve got you,” and I dove right in.
Here’s how I went about diving in:
I conducted discovery by talking with all the remaining team members, the leader, the front-end folks, finance, marketing/communications, and even the head of strategy. I wanted to hear from each of them what they had experienced in the past, what they are in need of today, and where they see needs as we head into a new fiscal year. That was a lot of learning in a short period of time, which I call necessary discovery.
I reviewed the fundraising database and reviewed all the known ways gifts were coming in. I say known because at the time we knew of 4 of the platforms. Then as I dove into gift processing, we learned of the 25 various ways gifts were coming in.
I reviewed their historic gift processing efforts by pulling the gifts entered over the past year to see what fields were used, what coding was added, and what records the gifts were entered on.
Then I dove in and started to enter their gifts. There was no one there to say this is how it was done and little documentation to review, but it wasn’t uncommon territory to me. I taught myself what was done historically to enter the gifts to adhere to existing processes while noting what to adjust to align with best practices.
As the new team members started, I taught and mentored them while doing double time in the background to catch them up. I was going to ensure they made the deadline.
I am happy to say we did it. It took me 6 days to do the first month as I went slower to learn the historical way while tweaking processes to make future entries less burdensome. Then 19 days to do the rest while teaching, training, and mentoring the two new team members.
All in all, four months of work was completed in 25 days, the back-logged 3 months, and the real-time live month. We considered this a huge success as it would have taken her past team members 80 days to get all that done.
Take Action
When you are put in a situation where there is no one to guide you, use history to guide yourself. Take a minute to say, “I’ve got this,” and then lean in and go.
Here are insights I gleaned to pass on to you:
Let history guide you when you have no one to guide you. No dev ops team members were there to say this is how we process these gifts or those gifts, but with any gift I entered, I looked at the existing records to see how the coding was added on prior gifts. I let that guide me.
Learning while doing is acceptable. You do not have to know everything in dev ops, you just have to be willing to learn what you don’t know. Fundrazr, Greater Giving, PledgeReg, BikeReg, RunReg - who knew there were so many pledge platforms - were all platforms I learned how to log into, download gifts, and create import profiles to get them into the fundraising database.
Document, document, document. I know, we hear this often, and I’ve done way too many documents to last a lifetime, but it’s still necessary. Document how things were done historically and if you change things, not only how to do something, but why it is being done that way.
You’ve got this!
👋 See you next time,
Jenny
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