Curriculum
The Consortium for Social Enterprise Effectiveness program uses a two-pronged approach to develop stronger nonprofit leaders. Morning class sessions are traditionally geared toward becoming a better leader by focusing on topics such as effective communications, motivating employees and volunteers, having constructive tough conversations, employing different styles of leadership influence and actively engaging employees. Afternoon sessions focus on teaching students about strategic organizational assessment and big picture thinking, guiding students to take a more deliberate approach toward mission assessment, mission creep, nonduplication of services, and working in collaboration across organizations to achieve greater results.
CSEE faculty use case studies, scholarly articles, and leadership articles to augment their sessions and facilitate classroom engagement. The course allows many opportunities for CSEE students to work in groups or teams on classroom assignments. CSEE students not only receive executive level education, but students report that the peer to peer learning and sharing is invaluable to their experience and developing long term relationships outside of class.
Before each residency weekend, student receives a packet of readings with some broad instructions and assignments to prompt student engagement and interaction once students arrive for class.
CSEE Weekend 1
Management sessions
First, we will explore sources and types of leadership power and influence in the context of organizations and the external environment. You then will apply your new understanding of leadership power and influence on a case study to observe how power and influence work. You will also discover and become familiar with your personal leadership style and explore creating trust in leadership. We’ll finish by discussing your own leadership legacy.
We will discuss how to recognize when organizations may be on the verge of failure, and then analyze causes and assess damage control efforts. We also will cover handling difficult employees, volunteers and board members who are contributing to the derailments.
Strategy sessions
In these sessions, you will learn how to build strong strategic plans to align purpose and prevent mission creep and failure. You also will review a framework for strategic planning and various methods you can apply to your enterprise. Further, we will explore how to successfully use strategic plans to maintain order and mission alignment.
CSEE Weekend 2
Management sessions
You will focus on understanding the fundamentals of positive psychology and how you can use it to enhance your culture and work in these sessions. We’ll discuss resilience, authenticity, optimism and justice in your leadership work and your organization’s culture. Using this paradigm, we will talk about performance feedback and motivating employees and volunteers to create high-functioning teams capable of executing your institution’s mission and goals.
Financial sessions
How is your enterprise’s financial health? We’ll guide you through an analysis of your organization’s financial state and ensure that you understand your financial statements. This will assist you in making healthy financial decisions for your organization in an informed, business-like manner. We will finish by exploring ways that nonprofits are susceptible to theft – it happens more often than you suspect – and how to implement theft prevention measures.
Strategy sessions
What happens when your board no longer works for you and the organization? After exploring ways that boards inhibit an institution’s progress and growth, you will review methods to manage and/or mitigate board issues and problems that adversely affect your employees and your organization. We will explore what a healthy board looks like for your unique institution and how to incorporate strong board management skills into your leadership and influence toolbox.
CSEE Weekend 3
Management sessions
These sessions examine the concept of institutional culture and how to create a strong, healthy culture in which to operate. You will discover how your organization’s culture was created – by design or accident – and if your culture correctly represents who you are, where you’ve been and where you are going. We will ask if your particular culture is sustainable and healthy or if change is necessary. After assessing the state of your organization, you will learn how to use your culture as a tool for organizational and change management.
Financial sessions
In this session, you will cover the elements of fundraising for your organization – what is going well, what’s not and what you might add to or take away from your fundraising strategy. With our assistance, you will approach fundraising from various perspectives within your organization – e.g., development staff, (do you have one, should you have one, how you hire one) relationship fundraising (to build long-term support, you will learn a specific approach to use based on your donors) and your membership and board. You also will review fundraiser types and lifecycles, donor databases and your long-term fundraising opportunities and goals. Finally, we will discuss how your fundraising efforts contribute to your budget and bottom-line financials: How are you collecting data (properly) and how are you reporting it?
Strategy sessions
We will explore the strategy levels in your organization that should be considered in your overall organizational strategy. How do you balance needs and demands with limited resources? What methodology do you use to scale your efforts and how do you report your impact?
CSEE Weekend 4
Management sessions
Students are invited to bring “living” case studies to this session – you bring the human resource challenge, organizational change issue or general dilemma to the table for class discussion. You can disguise the names/places/events of your case study to prevent repercussions.
We will also cover ways in which you can protect your time and energy and manage well-being in both your professional and personal life.
Financial sessions
We will cover building the case for capital campaigns, scoping the project, conducting a feasibility study, building a capital campaign committee, identifying donors and executing the campaign. We will also review the elements of grant making – where to find grants, how to strategically choose the best grant for your organization and doing the hard work of writing grants.
Strategy sessions
In the final sessions, we will discuss the importance of reporting your outcomes correctly to create proper and accurate messaging to your board, donors, employees and the public. This session will also cover increasing engagement and driving gains. You will explore how your fundraising efforts contribute to reporting outcomes, and we will work with you to examine new ways for your organization to fundraise.