If it’s important, it’s worth repeating.
Marketers, communicators, and fundraisers know that if you want a donor, supporter or volunteer to remember your mission, you have to repeat your key messaging over and over again.
Exactly what the optimal number of times that a message needs to be shared before action is taken is called the effective frequency. Some claim that a message needs to be repeated seven times before action is taken. Others imply a higher number.
If it’s important, it’s worth repeating.
When I think about the times that an internal process or policy was developed and shared with a team, it was a one and done event. Shared once, with the hope and expectation that staff will remember.
Do you have a similar experience?
While I don’t think seven or more times are necessary to repeat policies and processes, I also don’t think once is enough.
If it’s important, it’s worth repeating.
Your organization’s policies and processes deserve to be shared more than once, especially if you expect consistent compliance.
Here are three #tinygains you can do that will help your team remember and follow your policies and processes:
Schedule your sharing
Build a standard sharing schedule where your key processes and policies are shared with the team. At a minimum, share annually. I like to share at the beginning of a new fiscal year.
Alternatively, the schedule could be guided by when the policy or process would most likely be referenced. For example, most gifts of securities are made in December so sharing the gift of securities policy and procedure in November to the team makes sense.Host a Policy Pop Quiz
Hold a semi-annual or annual policy pop quiz in a team meeting. I will admit this can be an anxiety inducing #tinygain, but nothing gets folks reading policies and processes more carefully than the thought of a quiz.Explore a Case Study
Less anxiety inducing, but equally effectively is having the team explore a scenario or review a case study that requires the application of a policy or process. This could be done quarterly at a team meeting or retreat. It’s also a great learning opportunity to help folks consider how they would handle a particular situation or scenario.
For policies and processes, it’s not so much about memorizing the details, but about knowing that a policy or procedure exists, where to access it, and what it contains at a high level. To support that, it requires repetition.
If you desire stability and consistency in your fundraising operations, sharing your processes and policies on a schedule is going to help you get there.
