Social Current, in partnership with the Hathaway Center for Excellence, is proud to offer the first in a series of APA and CAMFT continuing education eligible courses for practitioners working in and with the child welfare and therapeutic systems. The course is now available for on-demand registration and completion: Working with LGBTQ Youth and Young Adults.

This self-guided course is designed for front-line staff who are working with LGBTQ youth and young adults in community or residential settings. It focuses on how to:

• Intervene and reduce barriers to improve health outcomes
• Understand coming out experiences and the impact of rejecting and accepting behaviors

The course is eligible for 1 CE, as the Hathaway Center for Excellence is a continuing education vendor of the American Psychological Association (APA), or 1 CE, as the Hathaway Center for Excellence is a continuing education vendor of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. Course participants receive their CE after completing all quizzes, post-tests, and evaluations associated with the course.

The cost is $75 per person. Organizations who are interested in sending five or more staff to this training should contact the Social Current Organizational Learning Team.

Enroll in this course online, or browse the Social Current learning catalog.

About the Hathaway Center for Excellence

The Hathaway Center for Excellence (HCFE) is the esteemed research and training program of Sycamores. HCFE enables Sycamores to collect and share evidence-based research discoveries to clinical professionals across the U.S. and beyond, ensuring findings help to inspire informed care to all consumers in the therapeutic field.

Contact HCFE with questions about the content of this course.

About the Social Current Learning Exchange

Organizations that have developed courses related to social sector topics can gain exposure and revenue by sharing them through the Social Current Learning Exchange.

Social Current can assist you in converting your training to an online, on-demand course and offer it publicly through our learning catalog. We also can assist in promoting your course to our national network of social sector professionals.

If your organization is interested in making learning available via the Social Current Learning Exchange, contact the Social Current Organizational Learning Team.

As we welcome the new year, and the 22nd month of the pandemic, a critical question likely keeps many leaders awake at night: How do we continue to adapt to the ever-changing landscape and strive to thrive in the face of unrelenting challenges? One answer stands out to me: Partner with staff to build workforce resilience.

Our workforce, the most precious organizational resource, has suffered greatly from COVID-19’s impact, which has only added to existing pressures and difficulties that often affect human services professionals. Despite increased efforts to support staff since March 2020, evidence reveals staff morale and satisfaction have suffered. The O.C. Tanner Institute Global Culture Report indicates a decline in their annual core measurements of workplace culture, including a 14% decrease in sense of purpose and a 15% decrease in sense of appreciation. Health care and human service workers have also experienced a sharp increase in burnout, and workforce shortages are impacting delivery of services.

The good news is we are learning how to respond to these alarming trends. Living and working during a global pandemic has taught us to move from pre-pandemic, top-down employee recognition and self-care initiatives to partnerships with staff that promote brain-based interventions, psychological safety, positive workforce culture, and increased connections.

How to Build Workforce Resilience

Advance Understanding of a Brain Aware Perspective and How to Stay Regulated

To be well at work, we need to know about basic brain functioning. Our brain mediates our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Dr. Bruce Perry, principal of the Neurosequential Network and senior fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, notes, “A brain aware perspective helps me when I’m trying to understand people,” (in What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing). With this knowledge, we can prevent and mitigate the impact of toxic stress on our brains and bodies. We can embrace regulation—the basic strategy for calming our lower brain—and integrate it into everyday work. Dr. Perry’s sequence of engagement: regulate, relate, reason (3 R’s) is grounded in brain science and applicable in every human interaction. It readies us for effective interpersonal communication. Achieving the workforce outcomes we strive for, like increased trust, stronger relationships, candid conversations, and more accountability, all depend on practicing brain-based interventions such as the 3 R’s.

Foster Psychological Safety

Popularized by Amy Edmonson in her book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, psychological safety is the belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. It leads to authentic conversations that are critical to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives. It promotes problem solving, innovation, connection, and growth. This practice is built into the culture over time and requires leaders to respond to staff challenges by modeling authenticity, accountability, and compassion, and by creating space for sharing and listening. Google’s Project Aristotle, a two-year study on what makes effective teams, found that the thing that most predicted success in their company is psychological safety.

Increase Connection

Recent research from the O.C. Tanner Institute notes that 45% of employees say the number of individuals they regularly interact with at work has decreased significantly over the past year, and one in three employees feel disconnected from their supervisor. They also report an organization is 12 times more likely to thrive when employees feel connected. Practices such as having frequent check-ins, supporting peer mentorship, normalizing discussions around mental health and EDI, and finding shared purpose all build meaningful connections, even in our virtual and hybrid settings.

Prioritize Positive Workplace Culture

Resilience at work is highly dependent on a positive culture that reflects the organization’s stated values and beliefs. A resilient organization has a shared agreement with its employees that we collectively bring to life our stated values by realizing them in our behaviors, customs, and practices. Together we build increased equity and connection for all staff. Together we create realistic and healthy boundaries and expectations. And together we learn to ask for help, hold ourselves and others accountable, achieve excellence, and celebrate successes.

Create a 2022 Action Plan

Social Current is committed to partnering with leaders at any level to advance these practices, most of which are not fast and easy, but all of which are doable and highly merit the investment of time and resources. Our experts on trauma-informed, resilient-oriented approaches and leadership excellence can share the latest findings around understanding and responding to stress, distress, and trauma in the workforce.

Learn more about our approach to workforce resilience with the Feb. 3 webinar, Building Workforce Resilience to Thrive During Challenging Times. And stay tuned for opportunities to dig deeper through our Spring 2022 offerings: Workforce Resilience SPARK Exchange and Workforce Resilience Learning Collaborative. An overview of our SPARK Exchanges and sneak peak at our Social Current Hub online portal will be held during a Feb. 8 webinar.

Renew the commitment to your staff in the new year through concrete strategies for increasing emotional regulation, self-compassion, and interpersonal connection, as well as accountability and effective communication. Don’t miss the opportunity to explore the cornerstone concepts for building a resilient workforce that can adapt and thrive in times of change and challenge.

Together, we can strengthen our most valuable resource in 2022!

Upcoming Learning Opportunities

Great Resignation and Human Services: Combating Workforce Shortages in Public and Nonprofit Agencies
Webinar, Jan. 31, 2022, 2-3 p.m. ET

Join this webinar hosted by Social Current and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) to hear from public and nonprofit human services leaders about the collective workforce challenges, as well as promising approaches that, through partnerships, build organizational capacity to achieve our shared mission of supporting the well-being of people and communities.

Building Workforce Resilience to Thrive During Challenging Times
Webinar, Feb. 3, 2022, 2-3 p.m. ET

Kick off 2022 by exploring concepts and strategies that are foundational to building a workforce that can stay well and healthy. A positive organizational culture is critical for supporting staff as they partner authentically with community members who often experience complex challenges, systemic inequities, and personal trauma. This webinar will explore how to advance positive workforce goals such as managing conflict, nurturing relationships, embracing equity, and achieving excellence.

About the Change in Mind Institute
Learn the key strategies for infusing brain science into your organization’s culture, programs, and practices through a collaborative experience where participating organizations determine their own paths for creating the transformation best suited to their unique needs. The process of embedding brain science principles will lead to improved outcomes for children and families. In addition, it will further enhance their organizational cultures and leadership ability to work collaboratively with partners to build better service systems and policies.

The Institute is led by Karen Johnson, who brings knowledge of the advancing science around resilience, brain development, adversity, toxic stress, equity, and trauma-informed approaches to the complex challenges we face. This expertise, coupled with her 27 years of experience in child welfare, behavioral health, and community services, enables her to successfully partner with leaders, staff, community members, and participants across numerous settings to promote individual and organizational resilience. Johnson is a licensed clinical social worker certified in Dr. Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead and Daring Way and trained in Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics.

Learn more and consult with us on creating a transformational plan for your organization.

Social Current and Unite Us Collaborate to Address Health and Social Disparities in Communities

New York and Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2021–

Social Current, formally the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, and the Council on Accreditation, today announced its collaboration with Unite Us, the nation’s leading technology company connecting health and social care services, to advance health equity and improve health and social outcomes through innovation and technology. This relationship will enable Social Current and Unite Us to work collaboratively to make positive change in communities across the country.

Social Current, a national advocate that ignites change for an equitable society where all people can thrive, is a newly formed organization with roots in the nonprofit and social sectors dating back more than a century. Unite Us, an outcome-focused technology company that builds coordinated care networks of health and social service providers, is building a sustainable infrastructure for social services to not only survive, but thrive. Unite Us’ end-to-end solution, specifically Unite Us Payments, can support organizations in Social Current’s network by providing the technology infrastructure to permit those organizations to be paid by the private sector for the services they are providing to their communities.

Many community-based organizations across the country don’t have the capacity they need to meet local needs because social care has been historically underfunded. Unite Us Payments provides the infrastructure for funding entities and community-based organizations to collaborate seamlessly—from streamlining the documentation, reporting, and billing processes, to tying social care services back to health outcomes. By demonstrating the value of social care investments, Unite Us Payments makes it easier for community-based organizations to access funding, provide social care at scale, and ensure the sustainability of social care services in the community.

Together, Social Current and Unite Us will highlight ways community-based organizations can use Unite Us Payments to sustainably increase their capacity and measurably impact health outcomes, supporting the case for value-based payment arrangements.

“Community-based organizations have extensive experience and expertise in improving the health and well-being of communities by addressing a variety of social and environmental factors. Through our collaboration with Unite Us, we will work together, leveraging technology, to accelerate the impact of community-based organizations and ensure they are compensated for the value they bring,” said Michelle Hinton-Ford, Director of Practice Excellence for Health and Mental Well-being at Social Current.

“Unite Us is incredibly excited about our collaboration with Social Current. Social Current is a leading voice for change in the social sector, one that can amplify the need to enable social care funding at scale. Through our work together, we look forward to challenging the current paradigm of reactive, clinically-focused systems of care by promoting payment solutions for investment in the foundations of whole-person care,” said Adrienne Sherk, Senior Director, Community-based Organization Partnerships, Unite Us.

Social Current is hosting a webinar presented by Unite Us Feb. 10 from noon-1 p.m. ET on maximizing investments in community-based services. Register now to learn how technology can play a critical role in increasingly bringing together funding streams to sustainably fund the services needed to improve community health and well-being.

About Social Current
Social Current activates the power of the social sector by bringing together a dynamic network of human/social service organizations and partners. Leveraging the collective experience of the field and research, we energize and activate the sector and drive continuous evolution and improvement. Together with our network, Social Current amplifies the work of the social sector through collaboration, innovation, policy, and practice excellence. We offer access to intellectual capital of thousands of professionals within our network through peer groups, learning opportunities, collective advocacy, individualized consultation, tools, and resources that address the sector’s most critical challenges. Together, we will fuel each other’s knowledge, expertise, and experience to spark a real and lasting impact.

About Unite Us
Unite Us is a technology company that builds coordinated care networks of health and social service providers. With Unite Us, providers across sectors can send and receive secure electronic referrals, track every person’s total health journey, and report on tangible outcomes across a full range of services in a centralized, cohesive, and collaborative ecosystem. Unite Us’ dedicated team builds authentic, lasting partnerships with local organizations to ensure their networks have a solid foundation, launch successfully, and continue to grow and thrive. This HITRUST certified social care infrastructure helps communities transform their ability to work together and measure impact at scale. Follow Unite Us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

On Nov. 4, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a new federal rule mandating COVID-19 vaccinations or a minimum of weekly testing for workers at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees (see the OSHA webinar recording: COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard). The Biden administration also released a new rule through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that requires workers at health care facilities participating in Medicare or Medicaid to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022. However, most home- and community-based organizations are excluded from the definition of a “covered entity,” as the rule provides an exemption for certain services. For additional details, see our Nov. 8 federal update.

Leaders of community-based organizations are finding themselves needing to determine their organizations’ paths for creating and upholding vaccine policies, a topic that was covered in the Dec. 1 webinar, Critical Conversation: The State of Vaccine Mandates and Community-Based Organizations. Leaders are also finding that their community partnerships are a powerful resource for support and guidance around vaccine hesitancy that could be present in their staff and community, particularly when it comes to health equity in underserved communities.

To help community-based organizations navigate this complex issue, this list of resources breaks down key considerations and includes tools and tips to meet compliance requirements and address vaccine polarization present in many workforce environments and communities.

OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS)

COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing ETS Landing Page
United States. Dept. of Labor
Includes links to the full Federal Register rule, webinar overview, fact sheets, FAQ, social media toolkit, and sample policy templates.

CMS Emergency Regulation

Biden-Harris Administration Issues Emergency Regulation Requiring COVID-19 Vaccination for Health Care Workers
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Press release with links to the interim final rule and list of FAQs

Employer Compliance Tips

OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard: COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Requirements for Larger Employers
National Council of Nonprofits
Summary that answers most nonprofit questions and aids nonprofit employers seeking to determine coverage and comply with the standard. It includes compliance tips, how employees are counted, who is exempt, and what the requirement means in real terms.

CMS Announces New COVID-19 Vaccination Requirements for Health Care Facilities under Medicare and Medicaid Programs
National Association of Counties
Brief summary of the eligibility, requirements, and compliance deadlines under the interim final rule.

How to Comply with OSHA’s COVID-19 Vaccination Emergency Temporary Standard
SHRM
Step-by-step guide for determining employee vaccination status, testing logistics, paid time off, remote workers, written policies, communications, and reporting and record keeping.

5-Step Plan for Employers After President Biden Announces Workplace Vaccine Mandates
Fisher Phillips
Five-step action plan includes tips on developing a plan for handling accommodation requests, preparing for OSHA complaints and inspections, etc.

How Employers Can Handle Confidentiality and Privacy Concerns Related to Collecting COVID-19 Vaccine Information
Fisher Phillips
Important points to keep in mind when tracking, collecting, or disclosing an employee’s vaccination status in certain circumstances.

An Employer’s Guide to Navigating Third-Party Vaccine Mandates on Visitors, Vendors, and More
Fisher Phillips
Includes information about how to enforce your own COVID-19 policy on customers, contractors, and guests.

Equity

Social Current serves on the advisory board of the National Covid-19 Resiliency Network (NCRN), to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minority, rural, and socially vulnerable populations. Stay up to date with new resources about COVID-19 by joining the network and follow them on social media.

Emphasizing Equity in COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements
Made to Save
Includes many ways to focus on equity aligned with the principles of health and safety, lived experiences of those who are affected, and information and access.

Want People to Take the COVID-19 Vaccine? Confront Racism in Health Care
The Commonwealth Fund
Shanoor Seervai talks to Rhea Boyd, M.D., a pediatrician and public health advocate, about what it takes to dismantle the historic racism that has long prevented people of color from getting the health care they need.

COVID-19 Vaccine Equity
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Use these resources to engage with communities that have been affected by COVID-19. Many of the resources available can be tailored for racial and ethnic minority communities.

Vaccine Hesitancy

Vaccinate with Confidence
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Includes links to How to Build Healthcare Personnel’s Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccines, strategies for workplaces, and reports about the status of COVID-19 vaccine confidence.

Language that Works to Improve Vaccine Acceptance: Communications Cheat Sheet
de Beaumont
Recommendations derived from data in a nationwide survey of 1,400 registered voters with an oversample of 300 Black Americans and 300 Latinx Americans.

What Role Do Culture and Morale Play in Vaccine Mandates?
Starner
Insight on potential resistance from employees who are not in a protected category but refuse to be vaccinated, as well as fears of the impact of a mandate on company culture and employee morale.

Testing

Three Steps to Smart Covid-19 Testing: A Guide for Employers
Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy
This guide is designed to help businesses and other organizations develop appropriate Covid-19 testing plans to enable safe operations during the pandemic.

The Weekly Testing Option in Biden’s COVID-19 Mandate: Prepare Now for a Fast Start
Gartner
Covers what tests to accept, whether your company must pay for the tests, where to have employees tested, how to verify test results, and how to deal with non-compliance.

Do We Have to Pay for That? Part 1—COVID-19 Vaccination, Testing, and Screening Activities
National Law Review
Looks at vaccination, testing, and screening considerations during and outside of working hours.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.  — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (more…)

A big thank you to Peer Reviewer and Executive Director of Champions for Children, Inc. Amy Haile for this guest post!

Few nonprofit organizations are prepared for the transition of executive leadership that is coming and the impact it will have on their mission. 

Every time a nonprofit has a transition at the CEO level, this shift in leadership impacts the organization’s financial stability, strategic direction, and employee engagement. But a 2017 survey found that only 27% of nonprofit organizations have a succession plan. Knowing the impact of executive transition on the ability of the organization to maintain a focus on delivering services to meet its mission, the Council on Accreditation (COA) requires a succession plan as evidence for its Governance 5.04 Standard: to ensure continuity during transitions in leadership, the organization maintains succession planning procedures and a succession plan. 

As an Executive Director, COA Peer Reviewer, and a doctorate student of public health, I set out on a journey to seek solutions that would help nonprofit organizations bridge the gap to create and sustain their succession planning process.  For this study I interviewed 18 community-based nonprofit organization chief executives to gather insights into the barriers and solutions to succession planning.  

CEO interview results

One of the first observations emerging from the interviews was the shared belief that a nonprofit organization’s current CEO has a responsibility of putting the greater good of the organization and its mission in front of the needs of the individual. For example, there was conversation regarding the need for a resigning CEO to provide extended notice of no less than six months, with a year preferable and two years ideal. It was opined that this length of notice was required to sufficiently prepare the organization for the transition and not believed to be burdensome in the event of a CEO’s retirement. However, many interviewed CEOs noted this type of notice would be unlikely for a CEO seeking another position.  

There was universal agreement from the interviewed CEOs that succession planning is more than planning the replacement of the CEO position. It is about other key positions and building a leadership legacy with leader development within the organization. This theme is about being intentional and the CEO creating opportunities for new leaders to emerge within the organization as well as building external relationships beyond the CEO with the community of funders, partners, donors, as well as local, state, and national organizations. Leadership development comes outside the envelope of ‘management’ and ‘supervision.’ It is about creating and encouraging employees to accept stretch assignments. Several interviewed CEOs saw these types of project-based assignments as a mechanism to create bridges for more employees to be visible within the organization as emerging leaders and an opportunity to address equity. 

A guidebook for best practices

This study culminated in the creation of a ‘Guidebook to Succession Planning for Nonprofit Organizations: A quick start framework to start and sustain succession planning.’  This guidebook contains many of the suggested elements outlined in Governance 5.04, such as: 

1. Identifying the critical positions within the organization and their key leadership and management functions. 
2. Describing under what conditions interim authority can be delegated for those positions, including unexpected leadership disruptions and planned departures, and the limitations of that authority. 
3. Outlining to whom various leadership and management functions will be delegated. 
4. Delineating the governing body and staff responsibilities as they relate to transition planning. 
5. Creating a plan for how succession planning and leadership transitions will be communicated to the governing body, staff, and other relevant stakeholders; and 
6. Implementing mechanics that assess readiness to assume leadership positions and for providing training, mentorship, and other leadership development opportunities to support readiness. 

Reviewed by nonprofit leaders, this Guidebook describes succession planning as an iterative process and for leaders to expect the plan to mature with reflection and use. To help begin a pathway forward, the guidebook establishes a three-phase approach: start with emergency planning, adopt a framework for leader development, and establish regular conversations regarding succession planning with organization leadership- including the concept of ‘legacy planning’.

The Guidebook provides a brief background with succession planning based on a thorough literature review, guiding principles based on the themes from this research project, and strategies on how to make the plan work. Woven throughout the guidebook are links and titles of other tools, further learning opportunities, and templates to ease the journey. Finally, the guidebook concludes with a sample plan.

Through a partnership with the Nonprofit Leadership Center (nlctb.org), this Guidebook is included in their Resource page and is available via a PDF downloaded file here.

Amy Haile

Amy Haile is the Executive Director of Champions for Children, Inc., the Tampa Bay region’s leading agency focused on the prevention of child abuse and neglect, which is accomplished through evidence-based family education programs that promote positive parenting and child development. Amy blends 30 years of private and public service experience and is completing a Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of South Florida, where she has focused her research on succession planning in nonprofit organizations. Her role as a Peer Reviewer allows her to witness how other family-serving organizations are innovating and implementing best practices across the country.

In 2016, COA began our 2020 strategic planning process. We talked with and surveyed our network on their reasons for seeking COA accreditation and how we could provide even more value to their experience. One recurring theme was the need for data. Our organizations employ sophisticated quality improvement systems to manage their success, but respondents noted a lack of quality external benchmark data to complement their internal data.

History

COA’s pilot benchmarking program launched in the summer of 2016 as part of COA’s Maintenance of Accreditation (MOA) process. It was based on two years of research and replaced our old, narrative-driven MOA process. In the old process, organizations would write an extensive overview of their PQI activities in the past 12 months, and COA would review these narratives and provide feedback. It was a time- and resource-intensive process, and at the end of the day provided little value to COA or our accredited organizations.

We wanted to create a system which had 360-degree value for our network, and this idea was the genesis of the pilot benchmarking program. By collecting, aggregating, and sharing data, we created a system which provided value to all parties:

1. COA can better understand our network;
2. Organizations are monitoring basic key performance indicators to understand their performance; and
3. Our network, as a whole, is enriched with comparative benchmark data.

We started with five measures of organizational health and sustainability: days cash on hand, staff retention rate, management retention rate, average staff tenure, and rate of substantiated grievances. Organizations resoundingly preferred this system and, based on feedback from our network, it surfaced again and again as a priority for us during our strategic planning process for 2020. Based on feedback from our network, we’re enhancing this system to collect and share back even more benchmark performance data.

Goals

We had three primary goals for refining our benchmarking program:

1. Universal measures: COA accredits over 60 services and works with a plethora of organizations within the human and social services space. When selecting new measures for this program, we stuck with measures of organization health and sustainability because these are applicable to human and social service organizations of any size or purpose.
2. Unlike any other benchmarking services available to our network: we knew we needed a unique benchmarking program which provided:
   • Multifaceted measures which gave a holistic view of an organization’s performance          
   • Segmentation logic. Much of the benchmark data available to our sector is not specific to human and social service organizations. Many times, data is collected from all tax-exempt entities. But, it’s just not valuable for our network to be compared to animal welfare organizations, arts nonprofits, and similar entities. Our program is focused solely on human and social service organizations. In addition, we’re using all of our data to create very narrow segments or clusters of organization for even more valuable comparisons. In future iterations, we hope to roll out custom segmentation for our end-users.
3. Improved data collection methodology: as a part of the new MOA process, we’re collecting benchmark data from our network annually and associating it with a discrete fiscal year. This ensures we have a consistent and reliable flow of data to share back with our network.

New Benchmarking Program

Starting in 2020, all organizations accredited under COA’s Private and Canadian organization accreditation will provide data via an Annual Report. This report is due 60 days after the start of your fiscal year and collects data on your prior fiscal year. It is part of our Maintenance of Accreditation process, and organizations must complete this report to maintain their accredited status. Here’s how the process will work:

1. COA will notify your organization’s primary contact 60 days before the Annual Report is due. This should land around the first day of your new fiscal year.
   • Once this notification is received, organizations can access their Annual Report cycle via their MyCOA Portal.
   • The MyCOA Portal has step-by-step instructions for gathering and inputting the requested data.

Step-by-step guide to completing the Annual Report

Around the start of your fiscal year, your organization’s primary contact will receive an email inviting you to complete your Annual Report. It will list the due date and steps for completing the report.

Next, log in to your MyCOA Portal. Use the Pick a Cycle link to navigate to the correct cycle. In this example, the organization’s Annual Report is currently due. In addition, the organization has 2 Maintenance Fee cycles in 2020 and 2021; for these cycles, only the Maintenance Fee is due. To complete the Annual Report, select “2020 Annual Report.”

On this page, the timeline will show when the Annual Report is due – in this case, on 12/31/2020. Select “Continue.”

This page gives a step-by-step overview of how to complete the Annual Report.

Step 1

If you’d like, you can review the Annual Report requirements and FAQs using the links in Step 1.

Step 2

COA understands that, oftentimes, only one or two staff have access to the MyCOA Portal. So, we created the Annual Report Prep Tool to help you gather your data before inputting it into the MyCOA Portal. Click the DOWNLOAD button in step 2; COA will merge any data we may already have into this document so you’re not doing duplicative work. Share the Prep Tool with relevant staff to gather your data. Please note the completion of the Prep Tool is optional. The Prep Tool is for internal records only and does not need to be submitted to COA.

Step 3

In order to complete the Annual Report, all data must be submitted electronically in your MyCOA portal. Hover over the MAINTENANCE tab in the top toolbar, and select “Annual Report from the dropdown menu.

This will open the Annual Report electronic submission form.

If you used the Prep Tool, copy the information from the Prep Tool into this form. You’ll notice that the questions are in the exact same order as in the Prep Tool. You can save at any time by click the “Save my progress and resume later” checkbox in the top right corner and then the Save button.

Once all information is entered, click the Submit button at the bottom of the form.

On the following page, confirm the accuracy of your data. Then, click Confirm to fully submit your data. At this point, you can also select “Print this page” to print a copy of your report for your records.

Once the data is submitted, the card on your Milestone Timeline will indicate the completion date and you are done with your submission! Please note: If you would like to make any changes to your submission, please submit a Support Ticket in the MyCOA portal.

The Benchmark Report – available Q1 2021

Once COA receives all data from accredited organizations for a particular fiscal year, we’ll unlock the benchmark report and allow you to access it from within your MyCOA Portal. Download a sample benchmark report here.

Segmentation Logic

The benchmark report uses segmentation logic to create a comparison group of organizations like yours; we then use this group to calculate your benchmark figures. We use data on your business type (nonprofit or for–profit), services provided, revenue, and geographic location to construct this group and ensure an apples-to-apples comparison. We want to provide you with data which has the utmost “comparison integrity” so you can be confident the benchmarks are meaningful to you.

The cover page indicates the fiscal year to which the report pertains, describes the group of organizations against which your organization is compared, and lists the publication date – the date on which the report was generated.

The characteristics of your organization are used to generate the comparison group. The sample organization receiving this report is a nonprofit organization accredited under COA’s Private Organization Accreditation program and provides foster care services with a revenue between $5-10M. When generating your benchmark data, then, we pulled data only from organizations which fit these characteristics. This ensures the comparisons made in this document are valuable to the sample organization.

The following pages organize all benchmark metrics into their domains. First, we have the FINANCIAL HEALTH BENCHMARKS: each metric is given a title, a description of what it is and why it is important, and a chart comparing the sample organization’s data to the average value of its comparison group. In this top metric, Months of Liquid Unrestricted Net Assets or LUNA, the sample organization and its comparison group had 6 months of LUNA, so the sample organization can be confident that its liquidity – as measured by LUNA – is within normal range for their type of organization.

Each subsequent page lists measures belonging to a particular performance domain, and follows the same structure: title, description, and a chart comparing your data against your comparison group.

Scrolling down, the ADDITIONAL DATA page shows all of the sample organization’s data and the comparison figures in one view. We also provide the Percent Rank for each metric. The Percent Rank locates your organization within the comparison dataset. For example, the sample organization’s Months of Liquid Unrestricted Net Assets has a percent rank of 33.3%. This means that the organization’s Months of LUNA was higher than a third of organizations but lower than two-thirds of organizations in the comparison dataset. Percent rank is just another way of showing you how you compare to similar organizations.

The final page lists some FAQs. As your questions come in, we’ll update this page with more information for reading and understanding your benchmark report.

Additional information

We have created a custom website with further information about COA’s benchmarking program at www.coameasures.org.

If you missed our benchmarking webinars, please feel free to view the recording here.

If you have any further questions about changes to the maintenance of accreditation process, please feel free to contact Ingrid Zamudio, Data Science Manager. For questions specific to your organization, please submit a support ticket in your MyCOA portal.

As we head into winter with the pandemic still raging, we wish our entire COA community health and safety. We know that many of our organizations provide essential services and have quickly implemented practices to reduce the spread of COVID-19. On behalf of the staff and board of COA, thank you for your continued service to your communities. We are inspired by your dedication and flexibility in this extremely difficult and ever-changing environment.

As organizations shift into and out of in-person work, the decision to move one way or the other is made even more challenging by conflicting guidance, mandates that vary across communities, and the unique challenges posed by virtual service delivery.  Our hope is that this roundup of guidance from the field will help you make better informed decisions about how or if to return to conducting in-person work. We also hope that you’ll add your feedback and tips in the comments section to share your experiences and help our readers continue to adapt to this challenging time.

US Government Resources

Website of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OHSA)

From overview information to daily tips and updates, OHSA has an enormous amount of information about in-person work in the time of COVID-19. Find the latest guidance on hazard recognition, COVID-19 standards, medical information, and tips on control and prevention, as well as a number of other resources. Some materials are available in Spanish as well as English.

Visit the site here.

Website of OHSA’s Whistleblower Protection Program

This is the place to go to report unsafe working conditions, including unsafe conditions as they relate to COVID-19. You can also find information on the applicable law, COVID-19, how to create an anti-retaliation environment at your organization, and what to expect during a whistleblower investigation.

Visit the site here.

US Department of Labor COVID-19 Webpage

This site hosts a number of practical, nuts-and-bolts resources around workplace safety; wages, hours, and leave; unemployment insurance; and more, all as they relate to COVID-19. You will also find guidance on preventing the coronavirus at work, how to return to work during the pandemic, and how to keep the workplace safe until we can get a vaccine.

Workplace safety information is available in a number of languages, including Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Burmese, Chin, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Croatian, French, French Creole, Hmong, Korean, Kunama, Nepali, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Visit the site here.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Website

This site is especially useful as a resource for everything PPE, or Personal Protective Equipment. They have general tips on keeping staff safe, as well as information on the status of PPE supplies, what respirators are testing best, and crisis strategies on what to do if PPE runs low–a situation we saw at the beginning of the pandemic. There is also specific advice and strategies around navigating COVID-19 in schools, as well as how to reduce the risk of violence when having to confront clients who refuse to wear a mask or practice social distancing.

Visit the site here.

Center for Disease Control (CDC) Coronavirus Website

Of course, no government resource list would be complete without including all of the information available from the CDC. Here you will find helpful tips about wearing masks and which kinds of masks are most useful; the latest on COVID-19 symptoms and testing; the latest data and trends on cases; guidelines around quarantining and travel; and business-specific guidance and communication resources. Assistance in multiple languages is here as well.

Visit the site here.

Other resources

Returning to a Pre-Pandemic Workplace Resource Roundup from the Council on Nonprofits

The Council on Nonprofits walks through the factors an organization must weigh before returning to in-person work, and then provides their own list of resources for helping you with that decision. Some of our favorites include:

• Considerations for Community-Based Organizations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which offers specific advice for human and social service-type organizations looking to reduce community spread.
• Going Forward: Best Practices and Considerations for Nonprofit Re-engagement from the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits, which guides organizations through guiding principles of engagement as they navigate the challenges of COVID-19.
• Reopening the Workplace: A Preliminary Guide for US Employers from Morgan Lewis LLP, which highlights key considerations around reopening or expanding operations and offers practical implementation steps.
• Take 10: Resume and Thrive Strategies from the Nonprofit Risk Management Center, which offers tips on cultivating the mental health and expectations of your workforce to foster a more successful future for everyone. 
• Return to Work Resource Library from ThinkHR, which contains a number of videos, tip sheets, and more to help with all of the various challenges a team might encounter as a result of the pandemic.

Find their full list of resources here.

Reopening our Workspaces: A Playbook from Leading Edge

This playbook from the Leading Edge Alliance for Excellence in Jewish Leadership also takes on the considerations around returning to in-person work (or not) from a philosophical point of view. It walks through the many things an organization must weigh, including what impact their decisions will have on diversity, equity, and inclusion; team culture; organization values; and the opportunity that COVID-19 provides us all to “re-dream” what we could be doing.

The playbook contains decision trees to help leadership teams make careful, informed decisions about next steps in the face of the pandemic, as well as a wealth of practical tips and considerations on transitioning back to in-person work. The back half includes day-by-day checklists to help ease that transition.

Find the PDF of the playbook here.

HR Forms and Blog Posts from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

SHRM tackles the thorny HR issues that COVID-19 can surface and that staff may experience as they come into and out of the workplace. Their Coronavirus Resource page hosts back-to-work checklists, screening and notice forms, FAQs, COVID-19 culture quizzes, and more. Their blog posts offer troubleshooting advice on an array of issues such as social distancing, contact-tracing, and payroll. They also have articles that will help keep you up-to-date on what other companies’ HR departments are doing, providing inspiration and insight that might help your own organization.

Visit their Resource Page here. For more from SHRM, check out their helpful list of other reliable resources for workplace issues related to the coronavirus.

COVID-19 Return to Work Playbook from Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente’s all-in-one, clickable playbook offers tips on everything from the details of modifying workplace safety plans and COVID-19 screening to big-picture concerns such as the impact of the virus on the social drivers of health and emotional well-being. It even includes a section on specific guidelines for those who work in public services, which will be of special interest to the COA community.

Visit the playbook here.

What other resources have you seen or used that have been helpful? What re-opening tips and experiences would be helpful to other organizations like yours? Please share them in the comments below! Remember that you can always keep up-to-date on COA’s operational status during the pandemic on our COVID-19 Resources Page here

A big thank you to Whitney Claire Thomey from the Nonprofit Risk Management Center for this guest post!

Certain aspects of the risk management discipline are more compelling than others. It’s easy to see how Enterprise Risk Management harnesses the power of your organization’s strategic initiatives and bolsters the opportunity for your mission to grow and succeed. Having candid conversations about daily risks can become a simple standard practice that helps keep preventable risks in check. And annual reviews of insurance policies are necessary and routine to protect the mission from liabilities.

However, business continuity planning (BCP) often feels like a burden and is an uncomfortable, time-consuming topic to discuss thoroughly. Therefore, it rarely receives the attention that it deserves. Instead of focusing on the negative implications that disruptions cause to your organization and your mission—which often leaves BCP stuck on the backburner—realize how having a clear plan to deal with business interruptions empowers and protects the vital work that your organization does to serve your community and constituents.

Why is BCP important?

The first step in moving your organization’s business continuity plan to the front and center is establishing its value to the organization. So, why is business continuity planning so vital to a mission-driven organization?

Know in advance the critical operations

From a power outage to a pandemic, disruptions never occur on a predictable schedule. Business continuity planning shifts your organization from a defensive state to an offensive one, making sure that nonprofit leaders won’t have to scramble to respond rapidly and improvise when unexpected outages pop up. Being able to pivot quickly can make or break stakeholder trust. A primary function of your business continuity plan is to establish which operations are mission-critical, which services and processes you can do without for a finite period, and which activities can be wound down or halted indefinitely.

When a disruption does occur, response time is crucial to ensure that indispensable services are available, allowing your mission to continue with minimal downside impact. Ideally, business continuity plans are created far in advance, under low-stress conditions, making it possible for cool heads to prevail during the disruption.

One-stop-shop for contingency information

Your business continuity plan collects all kinds of essential, necessary information that make it possible for vital operations to continue in the face of any type of disruption. And it’s likely that your organization already has many of the answers! However, it’s the potency of collation that makes a BCP so powerful. By taking the time to collect and catalog procedures, processes, and points-of-contact, you remove the stress associated with being able to quickly access required resources while also dealing with a crisis in real-time.

The hidden benefit

We have established that contingency planning helps identify in advance the operations and services that are mission-critical to your organization. You’ve seen that it can be leveraged as a one-stop-shop for essential resources and points of contact for your vendors and services. But did you know that there’s an inherent hidden benefit to contingency planning?

You might be surprised to learn that the true benefit of contingency planning lies not in quickly selecting Plan B or Plan C when a disruption occurs. The actual advantage lies in the process. When teams come together to execute planning exercises to brainstorm what disruptions might happen, how they will affect the organization, and what can be done to mitigate the damages they build resilience. Essentially, it flexes the muscles needed to make thinking on your feet a salient and normalized practice. Therefore, it’s not just the final plan but also the time spent discussing and preparing a business continuity plan that helps prepare your nonprofit.

Driven by diversity

If you’ve begun drafting a business continuity plan for your organization and watched it die on the vine or get back-burnered for a more pressing project, the temptation to go it alone is enticing. However alluring it might seem to sit down and hammer out all the details without the organizational drag of a committee, this is a suboptimal approach.

A practical business continuity plan examines the organization with a holistic view. No one department or managerial level has all the answers. BCP cannot be solely focused on information technology any more than it can only consider boots on the ground operations. As organizations move through business impact analysis exercises and begin identifying the crucial areas of service that must not be interrupted, diverse perspectives make all the difference. Establishing a team of individuals representing a variety of functional groups and with differing levels of responsibility will ensure that no stone is left unturned.

Getting buy-in

It might seem like an insurmountable task to find team members who will want to hunker down and run the marathon of creating a business continuity plan. However, don’t assume that your colleagues won’t be interested! Start by asking for volunteers. It’s human nature to worry, and uncertainty causes stress and anxiety. Being involved in an effort to establish plans for combatting risk has the potential to ease anxiety and make people feel better.

People decide whether to buy-in to things when they have a stake in the investment. Consider how accomplished you feel after completing a big DIY project! This is the concept of the “IKEA Effect.” Even if you only assemble something, you immediately have a sense of ownership and accomplishment. Asking staff members to help shape the plan allows their voices and concerns to be heard and safeguards responsibilities, programs, and services that are important to them.

Break the glass! Don’t keep your BCP a secret. There is a tendency to think of continuity planning, crisis management, and succession planning as organizational secrets. Nothing in your BCP should be embarrassing or contain information staff shouldn’t know. Making the plans public among your internal stakeholders will give them comfort and empowerment to be part of the process.

Get the word out

Knowing that the organization is prepared to weather difficult times can be comforting to staff, stakeholders (your board and funders), and the community you serve. An important piece of the business continuity planning process is sharing your plans with a broad audience. With that in mind, your communications should be targeted accordingly; the message that you send to staff about the plan and decisions for enacting it won’t be the same as what you share with your community funders.

When preparing messaging about your BCP, consider creating some criteria to help you group stakeholders to ensure that the right information gets to each person. You might ask questions such as:

• Does this person play an active role in our contingency plans?
• Will this person be directly, indirectly, or not at all impacted by a disruption to our organization?
• Is this person someone we would call on for temporary support during a disruption?

Insiders – Board, Management, Staff

Some staff and management may already be somewhat aware of your organization’s business continuity plan since they likely participated in the process on some level. However, everyone inside your organization should know that the plan exists, where it exists (whether there’s a hard copy or where the digital files can be found), and the steps for activating it when an event occurs. The final step is critical, as not every incident may warrant a deviation from “business as usual.” As we mentioned before, the plan shouldn’t be a secret; it’s an invaluable asset!

External – Community, Public

The people you serve and those who support your mission will take comfort knowing that the organization has a plan to sustain and continue mission-critical activities when the going gets tough. However, there’s no need to mire them down in the nitty-gritty details of how you will shift to Plan B when the need arises. A simple one-page document with clear contact information is what the public needs to know about your response. Start with messaging you have developed for any recent disruption and tweak it to be easily customized for other situations.

If a mid to wide-spread impact occurs that causes the nonprofit to radically alter services to your community or necessitates a fundraising campaign to help support during the time of need, you’ll need to communicate requirements and changes to this stakeholder group clearly. Consider distributing your message through a variety of sources, making it easily accessible to many people.  Consider these possibilities:

• Official press releases
• Banners or tickers on your homepage with important updates
• A dedicated page or collection of pages on your website to aggregate information related to your organization’s response to the disruption and any relevant outside resources
• Special editions of your email newsletter
• Social media posts

Vendors

Maintaining an open flow of communication with your essential vendors will ensure that expectations and obligations are met even when you can’t do business like you usually would. Involving your vendors in your BCP plans will make sure that services you rely on them for will be available and operating without impact during the disruption. Points of contact may change, or the types of services that your partners can provide could be altered. Therefore, an essential step in a good vendor relationship is to have clear, open communication!

Test the waters

Having a plan isn’t enough. BCPs should be rigorously and regularly tested. As with many risk management tactics, business continuity planning isn’t a linear “one time” event. It’s a cycle that should be refined and revisited repeatedly.

The best-laid plans…

Testing is a powerful step in the BCP cycle. It is during this phase that you breathe life into the pages of your contingency plans. Executing simulations strengthens the plans that you captured by verifying that they are functional and appropriate. Your tests allow you to calmly and systematically identify any weaknesses or gaps, confirm that the objectives are met, and improve upon the drafted systems and processes. Each time your BCP is put through rigors is an opportunity to update and improve as your organization evolves and adapts. Each time trials are conducted, team members can evaluate the response and develop proficiency for the contingency. The real beauty of testing comes in being able to deliver the developed response under ideal, no-stress situations.

You say tomato, I say tomahto

Options for testing your plans are as varied as there are missions and organizations. The variety of testing options and methods means that it’s easy to find a right-sized approach for your organization, team members, and plan. Finding the best fit makes testing a reality for all organizations and eliminates excuses.

You may choose one testing method or several so long as the approach ensures that objectives mentioned above—identifying weaknesses and strengthening processes, to name a few—are met. At a minimum, consider a plan review with team members outside of the initial drafting committee. Receiving feedback from staff who weren’t a part of the planning process will shed light on any areas that were omitted or misunderstood.

Executing more complete simulations through tabletop exercises, walkthrough drills, and full functional recovery tests will provide an added layer of credibility to the plans you’ve drafted. Tabletop exercises could be completed during team meetings for your organization’s functional groups, and simulation testing can a specially scheduled all-hands meeting. The amount of time needed for each of these different methods varies greatly, and therefore gives staff and volunteers an opportunity to thoroughly vet the processes and procedures in your organization’s BCP.

Lather, rinse, repeat

Analysis, evaluation, planning, and testing must occur on a regular schedule to be genuinely useful. Making testing and training routine will ensure that when a disruption occurs, your organization will be prepared to respond as seamlessly as possible.

Testing timelines, just like your plans, must be built to suit. Some factors that will impact how often testing should occur are the size of your organization, availability of personnel (paid staff and volunteers), resources at your disposal, and the maturity level of the business continuity plan itself. What’s right for an organization in your sector might not be right for your organization! Build a testing program that makes sense for you and you increase the likelihood of its success.

Consider various employment milestones as touchpoints for your testing process. Employee and volunteer onboarding are excellent times to communicate and train new stakeholders on the plan. Their unique perspectives may offer a fresh look at methods, so incorporating this feedback will help strengthen organizational resilience. Some organizations find it helpful to set aside time quarterly, annually, and bi-annually to conduct larger-scale run-throughs. Putting these on an organizational calendar will allow departments and staff to plan and secure needed time for these intense practice sessions.

Another way to test and review your plan is to examine the contingency operations any time a significant change is made to a process or system. The plan can be reviewed and tested in smaller, digestible chunks by examining points-of-contact, lists, and procedures when changes are made. If your organization goes through an annual vendor review, take that time to ensure all contact information in your plan is current and correct.

If you have outside vendors that provide mission-critical services, consider including them in your testing protocols. For example, if your nonprofit is a human services agency that contracts with a bus company to transport clients, this outside partner provides a critical service that should be part of your exercises. At a minimum, make sure you know they have a BCP and who your points of contact will be if there’s a disruption.

Don’t let this valuable organizational resource simmer forgotten on the stove. Bring the discussion to a full boil with staff, management, and your board. The powerful resource that results will ensure the protection and safety of your organization’s mission.

What a deeper dive into BCP? Download The Business Continuity Planning issue of Risk Management Essentials, here.

The views, information and opinions expressed herein are those of the author; they do not necessarily reflect those of the Council on Accreditation (COA). COA invites guest authors to contribute to the COA blog due to COA’s confidence in their knowledge on the subject matter and their expertise in their chosen field.

Whitney Claire Thomey

Whitney Thomey serves as Project Manager at the Nonprofit Risk Management Center (NRMC). Whitney’s diverse professional experience includes project management duties in local government, legal services, web & content development, human resources, and bicycle mechanics and tour operations. Her background in Anthropology and Ethnology brings a refreshing perspective to examining internal operations and processes. Whitney earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of William and Mary.

The most vulnerable members of society have also been the hardest hit by the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work of nonprofit organizations serving those populations continued largely uninterrupted over the past several months—despite sparse protective gear for staff, thinly-stretched funds, and minimal to no national guidance about how to safely proceed.

Behavioral health centers, foster care services, homeless and women’s shelters, and many other human and social services organizations have not shut down. They have been navigating urgent and rapidly changing issues on the fly to keep their essential staff safe as they deliver critical services.

The Council on Accreditation (COA) discussed the changes and challenges of recent months with eight of our Sponsoring Organizations, which are nonprofit membership bodies comprised of organizations that provide human and social services (many of whom are accredited by COA).  Sponsoring Organizations serve as critical advisors to the COA, helping us understand the accreditation needs of provider agencies, industry trends, and environmental challenges within the human and social service landscape. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have played a central role in helping their member agencies figure out how to safely continue operating in unfamiliar terrain.

We wanted to take a moment to recognize their work and highlight the innovation and creativity that emerged during this difficult time. Their stories illustrate best practices in “continuous evolution” and “resilience” that help organizations push through difficult times.

Shifting priorities

High levels of uncertainty have been a constant since March. Every organization has had to re-evaluate priorities and re-direct resources accordingly.

“One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from the past few months is the concept of truly listening to members. Never has that been more critical,” said Mohini Venkatesh, Vice President of Business Strategy at the National Council for Behavioral Health (National Council). “We had to figure out how to represent the full continuum of experience of our members —from those serving wealthy communities to the underserved—in an environment where everyone’s experience was highly variant and changing fast.”

High-frequency membership surveys and town hall meetings facilitated by the CEO of  National Council helped them keep the biggest challenges facing members front and center. Members’ inability to access to personal protective equipment (PPE) surfaced as a high priority early on. A survey of its members found that nearly 83% of behavioral health organizations did not have enough PPE for two months of operations.

When National Council put out a mass call to its members about PPE, it received requests for roughly 2 million masks within 48 hours. Although completely outside of its normal focus, National Council moved quickly to find a manufacturer and contractor that could fulfill and distribute its’ members PPE order.

The Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies (NJHSA) also went into action to provide PPE for its members after hearing safety concerns from agencies that interact with high-risk senior populations and hospice patients. It collaborated with several other organizations to do a group bulk purchase of PPE.

Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA)who serves millions of people per year, has distributed $6.1 million to agencies for COVID-19-related disaster grants and helped providing PPE, delivering almost 2 million face masks, 650 gallons of hand sanitizer, and gloves, masks, shields, and gowns.  Across their network of facilities, they have seen a 50%-70% increase in clients seeking assistance including a broader demographic than low-income and poor households that traditionally walk through their doors including an increase in middle-class families who lost their jobs as the pandemic surged.

Rapid coalition-building

Collaboration was also central to the work of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), a nonprofit financial counseling organization, as states started to lockdown. With many Americans facing sudden unemployment or a dramatic reduction in work hours, financial stresses were running high – people needed short-term relief from paying credit card bills, mortgages, and other debts.

NFCC recognized that consumers needed an immediate short-term solution, regardless of where they sought counseling. They took a lead role in collaborating with other nonprofit credit counseling agencies, credit card issuers, lenders, and regulators to develop a national emergency payment relief program. The program allowed consumers to skip payments without penalties or damage to their credit rating.

“We experienced five years-worth of progress in a period of five weeks,” said Bruce McClary, Vice President of Marketing for NFCC. “It would have been an impossible goal to achieve if we had not already built strong relationships with key industry stakeholders and developed a solid communication framework.”

Facilitating communication and problem-solving

One of the top priorities for nearly every organization we interviewed was facilitating communications between its members to problem-solve.

The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities (Alliance), which is comprised of a variety of nonprofit human services organizations and state associations, initiated regular pulse surveys to assess members’ most immediate needs. The lack of guidance about how to deal with rapidly changing COVID-19 developments was a major stress point.

“Being nimble and taking risks with our communication strategies was crucial,” said Lenore Schell, Senior Vice President of Strategic Business Innovation at the Alliance. “Our guiding principal was to act as the facilitators, not the experts. We launched webinars in the early stages of the pandemic knowing we had few answers to provide, but it created an environment of trust for dialogue with and between members.”

The Association of Children’s Residential Centers (ACRC) also positioned itself as a communications hub for its members, which are residential centers for children. They couldn’t close down services and had to quickly figure out how to keep residents and staff safe in a setting where it is nearly impossible to social distance.

“Meeting the needs of behaviorally challenged young people is already tough work. And the COVID-19 pandemic created additional complexity at every level,” said Kari Sisson, Executive Director of the ACRC. “We quickly realized that the field needed a way to safely exchange information to develop policies, procedures, and best practices – and learn from others’ experiences.”

Affinity groups that were created before the pandemic served as a critical information-exchange for members. An affinity group that served kids with autism and severe brain injuries was able to learn a great deal from an agency in Massachusetts that was hit hard by COVID-19 – it helped peers think through how to plan for adjustments to family visit polices, establishing isolation units, and other safety issues.

Providing opportunities for peer collaboration became an immediate focal point for the Child Welfare League of America as well; it is comprised of agencies that serve vulnerable children and families. In the early stages of the pandemic, they gathered a small group of agencies from the hardest-hit states including New York and Washington to discuss challenges and lessons learned. CWLA also initiated “open mic” weekly conversations to let all member agencies voice their struggles and exchange information about what was working.

“We became a funnel for information for the industry, helping members navigate how to put new policies and protocols into place,” said Julie Collins, Vice President of Practice Excellence for CWLA. “We are still receiving daily inquiries from agencies about how others are dealing with specific issues.”

CWLA shared the intelligence from its various forums with its entire network of members via webinars and best practice newsletters. Topics spanned a wide range of issues from helping foster parents manage e-learning to guidance on recruiting and training staff virtually to establishing protocols for an employee that tests positive for COVID-19. They also arranged for Congressional representatives to hear directly from small agencies about their concerns.

Advocating change 

As the COVID-19 lockdown hit different parts of the U.S., health and human service agencies had to abruptly transition as much as possible to virtual mode, often with little warning. Telehealth services suddenly became the norm instead of the exception.

“Initially, the government and insurance providers were only allowing telehealth services that used both video and audio capabilities. We had to help our agencies fight for allowing telephone-only services,” said Reuben Rotman, CEO and President of Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies (NJHSA). “There are big segments of the population that don’t have access to a computer or the internet, or they simply don’t know how to use it.”

For example, one of the agencies under NJHSA was working with a patient suffering from agoraphobia who had not left her house for nearly a year. Her therapist was able to counsel her via Zoom sessions – a more relaxing environment for the patient – and actively workshop steps that reduced her anxiety about getting into her car.

Although shifting to telehealth so quickly presented numerous challenges, it is also brought to light the effectiveness of alternative approaches.

“Telehealth is helping agencies live the true value of person-centered care – delivering treatment remotely to those who prefer that option,” said Venkatesh of National Council. “While many questions linger, the rapid deregulation of telehealth opened the flood gates. It’s clear that virtual services have great value, and we’ll need to help regulators understand the need for a hybrid model moving forward.”

Nancy Ronquillo, CEO of Children’s Home Society of America, the oldest network of child-welfare agencies in the U.S., said that their members expressed similar sentiments about shifting to virtual visits and counseling with families. “For some families, doing a 15-minute phone call a few times per week instead of a one-hour home visit with an agency worked much better,” said Ronquillo. “When agencies were freed from their traditional boundaries, it helped them test and realize how alternative strategies can work better for some kids and families.”

Acting quickly

Health and human service agencies were overwhelmed with the logistics of managing day-to-day operations, leaving little room for them to process new developments. Many of the organizations we interviewed took on this “processing” role, serving as a source of clarity on fast-moving critical issues.

When the U.S. Small Business Administration announced details about the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, Children’s Home Society of America provided immediate guidance to its members so they could quickly plug into the application process. They also facilitated one-on-one calls between CEOs of its member agencies to troubleshoot the nuts and bolts of working with banks on the loans.

At (CCUSA), they have continued to push throughout the pandemic for the availability of stimulus funds and increased funding for programs like the Emergency Food and Shelter Program to support the most vulnerable of populations. 

The Alliance sent communications about PPP almost daily, highlighting key details about eligibility, deadlines, and how the process worked. Many of the Alliance’s members said that without those communications, they would have missed out on the PPP loans.

Looking ahead

Uncertainty continues to linger for the foreseeable future. Short-term changes are putting long-running challenges into sharp focus, giving nonprofit organizations a chance to think more creatively about how they deliver value to those they serve. We are inspired by the spirit of collaboration and resilience within the nonprofit world to continue to serve while tackling unforeseen challenges.

COA’s President and CEO, Jody Levison-Johnson recognizes that COVID-19 has been and will continue to be a game changing experience. “COA is continuing to evolve to ensure that our standards and processes provide the greatest impact on the people and communities served by human and social service organizations.  We thank the entire COA community for all of the work being done during these challenging times to ensure the continuity and quality of service delivery to the most vulnerable of populations.” 

If we can be of any assistance, please let us know how we can help.