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We might think of accountability in one of three ways.
A politician speaks before ravenous reporters and promises that "going forward there will be greater accountability." We like the idea, and our community's anger may be somewhat mollified, but deep down we're really not sure if anything will come of it.
A church member, incredibly frustrated at the repeated failure of the pastor and budget chair to provide information, enters the committee meeting with dread. She knows that accountability is needed, but these are people she cherishes, and holding them accountable is painfully regrettable, to be done only in the most extreme circumstances.
Augustine writes in chapter 10 of his Confessions, "A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves [i.e. holds me accountable], he is loving me." Here, accountability is an integral, indeed necessary part of the Christian life for communities and individuals.
Churches often think about accountability in one of the first two ways - either as a word to be thrown around to appease immediate sentiments, or as an anguished last resort, deployed only when there are no other options. Augustine's recognition of a love that underlies accountability seems rarely shared.
Churches may have a hard time with accountability for a number of different reasons:
- church members feel it's not their responsibility or within their competency to question what the pastor does
- holding a committee chair accountable might mean needing to find another chair (or losing him and his stewardship pledge to a neighboring church)
- to speak up is to risk losing friends or starting a conflict, and Christians don't get into conflicts
- Christians believe Jesus wants us to forgive, not judge
- a pastor's ego may be so fragile that no one wants to risk saying anything negative
- a pastor's ego may be so colossal that no one believes raising any questions would do any good
In contrast with these attitudes stand biblical views of accountability, discipline, and Christian flourishing.
Proverbs 15:10 declares that, "He who hates correction will die" (NKJV). Listening to the wisdom and guidance of others is a life-and-death matter! Jesus' inspiring declaration that "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them" (Matthew 18:20, NRSV) occurs in the midst of His instructions on how to deal with problems in the community. Jesus is not abiding in the group that doesn't make a fuss; rather He promises to be in the congregation that works through mistakes and reconciles brothers and sisters.
Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, reminds us that "Each of us will be accountable to God," (Romans 14:12, NRSV). The term translated here (and elsewhere in the New Testament) as "accountable" is logos. This critical word also means reason, inner logic, word, and ultimately the Word, Jesus Christ. So when Christians practice accountability in the congregation, they are, in some sense, abiding in the reason-for-being of the congregation, the inner and ultimate ordering of a community that follows the incarnate Logos. This is no small matter. In some sense we should all rejoice in this blessing, not run away from it.
Given such biblical principles, it is hardly surprising that the authors of the Scots Confession connected accountability to the integrity of a church.
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A genuine church includes “true preaching . . . the right administration of the sacraments . . . and . . . ecclesiastical discipline uprightly administered, as God’s Word prescribes, whereby vice is repressed and virtue nourished.” Christ promises to be in the midst of such a community (see chapter 18).
Indeed, practicing accountability is one way congregants and pastors become more Christ-like. Thinking back on times when I’ve been held accountable, I realize that these difficult moments helped me to be a better pastor and a better Christian. I developed the capacity to listen to congregants, respecting the awkwardness they might have felt or accepting the presence of anger in their voice. I learned how to be more faithful to our community, and my relationships with congregants improved.
The times when accountability broke down remain painful. What could I – what should I – have done differently? How could other members of our community have been helpful so that tensions would not have developed into conflicts and resignations? How did we miss opportunities to serve Jesus and strengthen our community, not weaken it?
If indeed holding each other accountable for the good of the church is essential for living out God’s call, how can we develop the habits necessary for this? Many churches have an annual review process for staff and/or committees, and these remain an important part of accountability. But the kind of accountability that develops a community and allows it to pursue its mission is the gentle, week-in, week-out process of helping each other to improve. How can we develop this?
Such habits develop much more readily when we Christians regularly confess our sins together and hear the good news of forgiveness. Good news! None of us are perfect! But God is, and God desires to sanctify us and perfect us through our liturgical community. When we allow such worship to shape us, we develop the recognition that we need one another’s critical eye in order to be more faithful.
We often imagine that the community of Hebrews 12’s “great cloud of witnesses” includes all the tender Christians who affirmed us with loving kindness, but Hebrews 12 also reminds us that love includes accountability. Evoking Proverbs 13:24 (“Those who love them [their children] are diligent to discipline them,” NRSV), Hebrews 12:6, 10-11 states, “The Lord disciplines those whom He loves. . . . He disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share His holiness. Now discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Discipline (accountability) is required for the formation of disciplines.
Thus, holding someone accountable is one way of loving someone deeply. When I failed to hold a church member accountable, was this because I did not love the person enough? Did I prefer my comfort, my own personal desire to avoid an unpleasant conversation, to this person’s (and our church’s) well-being? Augustine, Proverbs, and Hebrews all suggest that the failure to hold one another accountable is a failure of love.
How do we think about accountability? That’s another way of asking, How much do we love each other?
David Keck is the Chaplain at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. A Presbyterian minister, he is the author of Healthy Churches, Faithful Pastors: Covenant Expectations for Thriving Together (Rowman and Littlefield). Accountability is one of the central principles of this book. |
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Everyone wants to thrive together, but so often we get stuck. This clear and engaging guide from Dr. David Keck helps pastors and congregations bridge communication gaps and set mutual goals and expectations.
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Barbara Blodgett believes excellence is a matter of doing simple things with care and consistency. Ministers who commit themselves to excellence will grow and flourish, and even become happier in ministry.
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The United Methodist Bishop of the Texas Annual Conference, Janice Riggle Huie, has made the cultivation of excellence a priority in her leadership. Read how this focus has transformed the culture of the conference and lead to greater effectiveness.
By restructuring its organization around “excellence,” the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church has increased its effectiveness and transformed its culture.
The Rev. B.T. Williamson had seen the problem before, but now it seemed worse than ever. It was the 2006 appointment season, a time when the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church adjusted clergy assignments. Too many clergy were in “must-move situations,” Williamson said.
“We had disproportionately high numbers” of clergy who couldn’t stay in their positions for a variety of reasons, he said.
But rather than shuffle the pastors around as they always had, conference leaders decided that business as usual was no longer sufficient.
The conference, comprising 700 congregations in East Texas, was in the midst of a sea change that had brought a new mission and vision and a very public commitment to a new standard: excellence. And to Williamson, who was then the conference’s director of ministerial services, an assignment system driven by “must-moves” didn’t sound like a formula for excellence. They needed a new way.
The impulse to apply fresh thinking to old issues was prompted by a new bishop, Janice Riggle Huie, who had been assigned to the conference in 2004 and had begun shaking things up.
"While [the term ‘excellence’] is also being used in business, it's a word that belongs in the Christian faith,” Huie said. “We needed to reclaim it for the purpose of reaching the mission field and making disciples for Jesus.”
In 2006, the new mission and vision took root when the conference changed its organizational and budget models. The restructuring, leaders hoped, would sharpen its focus on the new mission and vision, increase its effectiveness and transform its culture.
“We’re really talking about sanctification, growing deeply in the knowledge of what we do,” Williamson said. “It’s not about us but the challenge of making disciples and forming the world.”
Transforming a culture
At the heart of the organizational changes was a reorganization of the conference’s structure in 2006. Conference leaders created three new centers of excellence – the centers for Clergy Excellence, Congregational Excellence and Missional Excellence -- and placed a new emphasis on accountability and data. The centers’ directors also became nonvoting members of the conference’s leadership team, giving them a critical voice in the conference’s strategic direction.
The effect has been a shift in focus away from the sort of reactive problem-solving Williamson had routinely faced and toward mission-based decision-making.
Questions to consider:
The Texas Conference faced a significant adaptive challenge that led to its focus on “excellence.” What adaptive challenges do you face? What can this story teach you about responding faithfully and effectively?
How does the structure of your leadership team reflect your institutional priorities?
Are your individual performance expectations linked to institutional goals? How do your performance review practices connect with the strategic vision of your organization?
Gail Ford Smith mentions the importance of support and accountability in moving clergy toward “excellence.” What do you do to provide both?
The Alban Institute consultant raised some questions about the conference’s approach and offered constructive feedback to the leadership. How do you receive feedback about the effectiveness of strategic initiatives? What do you do with the feedback offered?
Including the word “excellence” in the names of the centers signaled the importance of the goal.
“That’s as public as you can get,” said the Rev. Cynthia Fierro Harvey, the first director of the Center for Missional Excellence and now deputy general secretary at the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), the denomination’s global humanitarian aid organization. “When you tell people you’re going to be excellent, that’s the expectation you set.”
The effect, she said, was clearer priorities and “a laserlike focus. … You’re making appointments where you’re putting the right people in the right places for the right purpose.”
Case in point: clergy assignments. As Huie wrote in a 2009 monograph, an appointment process “largely driven by must-moves” was “a significant deterrent to ‘vibrant, growing congregations changing lives and re-shaping futures for Jesus Christ’” -- the language of the new vision.
Focusing on excellence gave the leadership what Huie called “one of those ‘a-ha’ moments. We realized that [when making clergy assignments] our client was neither the pastor nor the congregation, but rather the field mission.”
The conference revised its appointment-making practices to identify pastors with strong records of excellence or the potential for it, as well as strategic and high-potential congregations, and focused on better matching them. “Must-moves” would be considered later.
Excellence as fruitfulness
To reward excellence, you must first define it. Conference leaders did so by focusing more on what they call “fruitfulness,” or measurable data that are both quantitative and qualitative. Conference-wide, they focused on four “evidence of fruitfulness” measures: professions of faith, worship attendance, active involvement in mission and generosity.
“The whole purpose is to create an environment of support and accountability,” said the Rev. Gail Ford Smith, current director of the Center for Clergy Excellence. “We are helping move clergy toward an end result that is faithful and fruitful for congregations and missions.”
Reorganizing for faithfulness and fruitfulness “set a standard of expectations for excellence,” said the Rev. Dr. L. James “Jim” Bankston, senior minister at St. Paul’s UMC in Houston. “Business as usual was not working for us and is not who we’re called to be.”
The shift also prompted leaders to allocate resources based on strategic priorities.
The Center for Missional Excellence, for example, identified collaborative, mission-based opportunities with the Ivory Coast UMC conference, and from that followed education support, funding for a program distributing insecticide-coated nets, the establishment of a radio station and other spirit-led initiatives.
Along similar lines, the Texas conference took a renewed look at its own back yard. Its committee on Hispanic ministries, part of the Center for Missional Excellence, identified churches with potential for more fruitfulness in Hispanic outreach.
Some churches were already doing social justice programs aimed at Hispanics, such as ESL classes, academic tutoring and food pantries, but “what we often lack is putting the spiritual piece of the ministry in place,” said the Rev. Arturo Cadar, associate pastor at Friendswood UMC and chair of the conference’s Hispanic committee.
“We want to offer the people who benefit from our programs a place to worship and grow spiritually,” he said. “We want a measurable difference in the lives of Hispanics in the communities we serve.”
They are having success. In March 2011, the committee reported that there were 10 active Hispanic congregations and 16 churches with the potential to start ministries.
The committee also found that “there are an additional 25 to 30 churches that could be ministering to their local Hispanic communities and, currently, are not.”
It identified the main obstacles for why they already do not as too few clergy and lay ministers generally and too few in the seminary and licensing school pipelines with Spanish fluency and understanding of Hispanic culture. The committee has begun work on a plan to fill that pipeline.
“If we are serious about Hispanic ministries, we have to invest in Hispanic ministries,” Cadar said.
Young clergy, wellness and spiritual renewal
In the Center for Clergy Excellence, there was a strategic emphasis -- backed up with budget allocations -- on recruiting young clergy, said Williamson, who became the center’s first director and is now assistant to the bishop. “We’re looking at a tsunami of retirement. In the next 12 years, half of our clergy will retire, so we have to be ready to have competent clergy to replace them.”
The conference instituted a pastoral internship program for college students , a mentorship program, cohorts and financial aid to alleviate economic barriers to entering seminary. With funding from Lilly Endowment Inc., it launched Advancing Pastoral Leadership, a five-year program that targets young clergy for leadership development.
These programs have nearly doubled the percentage of clergy under the age of 35 in the conference, moving it from 4.6 percent to 8.5 percent, Williamson said. Those additional young clergy bring fresh vitality, a commitment to the hard work of social justice ministries and the promise of future leadership as the expected retirements hit.
Another piece targeted mid-career clergy by addressing their biggest needs. One, it turned out, was health. Obesity and stress were making clergy among the unhealthiest segments of the population, which not only diminished their effectiveness but drove up the conference’s health care costs. It instituted wellness education and financial incentives for improved health that have resulted in flat medical expenses for the last several years.
The conference also identified a need for increased investment in interim clergy to provide more short sabbaticals that allow clergy time for their own spiritual renewal. It set up peer groups to reduce isolation, added continuing education events and instituted ongoing assessment structures and early intervention models.
The results “are reflected in the fruit [clergy] bear in the churches where they serve,” Ford Smith of the Center for Clergy Excellence said. “We see it in healthier, more spiritually diverse clergy who live that out in longer pastorships.”
The commitment to “excellence” makes the work of the centers ultimately aspirational and affirming, said the Rev. Taylor Meador Fuerst, associate director of the Center for Clergy Excellence.
“This helps you push yourself. I think about the verb form of it, excel,” she said. “My hope is for pastors to excel in what they’re doing. That means they’re thriving and making a difference in the communities where they are. That’s powerful to think I want them to excel in this. What can we do to help them excel? What can we provide to help them live into this calling in a more effective way?”
Adjusting to change
But effecting this kind of large-scale change wasn’t always easy.
“With every step forward, there’s had to be a giving up and a letting go. We’ve felt the pain of letting go,” Huie said. “With every resurrection there has to be a death, and we've had the experience of both death and resurrection. But at the end of the day, the resurrection wins.”
The shift was not only organizational but cultural, and it raised “the uneasiness all of us have with the term ‘excellence,’” Meador Fuerst said.
“Is this a corporate term? A how-many-billable-hours-are-you-putting-in kind of thing?” she said. “All of us agree none of this can come down to numbers. Numbers are important. But there are also things you just can’t measure, stories of life changes and spiritual development. It’s messy.”
Modeling its commitment to accountability, the conference hired a consultant from The Alban Institute in 2008 to assess the progress and fruitfulness of its efforts.
In her report, available on the conference’s website, the consultant observed that “this model is seen as being initiated and imposed from the bishop downward. The local congregation does not see itself as a decision partner in the leadership equation.”
She also noted that the measures of fruitfulness were “almost purely quantitative at the congregation level and purely qualitative at the conference staff level.”
The expectation of “excellence” doesn’t mean “that people are perfect,” Ford Smith said. “What’s important is that we are as effective as possible in making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We want to reflect as best as possible who Jesus calls us to be.”
The conference formed a task force to examine the report and consider how its work could be more faithful and fruitful, and it shared at its 2010 conference recommendations that included improved communications, new models for best practices, and the creation of a new youth/young adult director in the Center for Congregational Excellence.
“All of us want to see more United Methodists in mission, becoming disciples, real disciples, real churches,” read the report in the conference’s 2010 annual journal, “We are heading in the right direction and learning as we go.”
In her work at UMCOR, Fierro Harvey finds herself repeatedly drawing on the lessons she learned going through the “spade work” of prayer, discernment, committee work and strategic reorganization.
“Creating a new culture, that takes time, but then the fruit is really sweet because you’ve taken the time to do that spade work,” she said. “Not everyone is going to be happy, but it’s not about that. ... When you’re no longer being fruitful, there’s a problem.”
Donors want to know where their money is going
A tax-deduction thank-you letter is no longer enough. Donors today want to know more, so transparency and accountability are critical to a nonprofit's success, says Missy Sherburne, an executive with DonorsChoose.org.
Missy Sherburne: Donors want to know where their money is going
A tax-deduction thank-you letter is no longer enough. Donors today want to know more, so transparency and accountability are critical to a nonprofit's success, says an executive with DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding website for public school teachers.
 Thirteen years ago, Charles Best, a teacher in the Bronx, came up with a simple idea for how he and other public school teachers could raise money to fund classroom projects. He created a website where teachers could post their requests and donors could contribute money to fund them.
Since then, DonorsChoose.org has raised more than $174 million from individuals, corporations and foundations for classroom projects all across the nation. Recognized by Fast Company magazine as one of the 50 most innovative companies in the world, DonorsChoose.org has lessons to offer all nonprofits and other organizations.
 Missy Sherburne
Two of the most important, said Missy Sherburne, chief partnerships officer for DonorsChoose.org, are transparency and accountability. Donors today want their giving to be targeted, and they want to see results right away, she said.
“Typically, nonprofits say they’ve got X campaign coming up and ask people to give X hundreds or thousands of dollars, or tens of dollars, and later you hear how successful the campaign is,” she said. “That’s probably attractive to certain donors, but I think it’s probably less attractive to a lot of younger donors, who, because of the crowdsourcing initiative, want to know now.”
Nonprofits should think about how to package what they do in a way that people can understand and how to forge connections that build ongoing relationships.
“Transparency and accountability are really, really critical,” Sherburne said.
As chief partnerships officer, Sherburne leads a staff responsible for raising money from corporations and foundations. She served previously as the executive director of DonorsChoose.org North Carolina and South Carolina, and before that was the North Carolina executive director of Teach For America.
Sherburne spoke with Faith & Leadership while at Duke recently for a conference on sustainable business and social impact at the Fuqua School of Business. Paul Sansone of Better World Books also was a speaker. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: What do you do at DonorsChoose.org?
DonorsChoose.org is a website where public school teachers post projects they want to do, and then individuals, corporations and foundations fund them.
We have two revenue streams. One is individuals who come to the site and say, “I want to give $5 to this class project to take kids to China, or for a classroom rug for a kindergarten class.”
Then there are corporations and foundations that want to support projects either in a geographic region or in an area or subject that matters to them, such as technology or the arts.
The team that I work with builds those partnerships with corporations and foundations. We make up about 60 percent of the organization’s funding, and individuals who fund projects through the website account for about 40 percent.
We’re a twelve-person team, and we’re charged with building partnerships with corporations and foundations all across the United States, ranging from Starbucks to Kia to Sonic Drive-In.
Q: DonorsChoose started as one person’s small idea and grew exponentially. How important were these corporate partnerships in growing the organization, in bringing it to scale?
They were absolutely critical. One fuels the other.
For instance, in a partnership with Facebook, they give a DonorsChoose.org gift card to their clients and partners every holiday season, like a gift card you’d get to Amazon or The Gap or any retail store.
What does that do for DonorsChoose.org? It introduces thousands of people who wouldn’t have necessarily known about DonorsChoose.org to the site. The two -- partnerships and growth -- are absolutely inextricably linked. We couldn’t do one without the other.
In our partnership with Starbucks, for example, when you go into a Starbucks and you’re logging onto their network, you will see local DonorsChoose.org projects that are in the vicinity of that Starbucks store. That fuels people coming to the site, saying, “Oh wow, I didn’t know about this,” and being introduced to DonorsChoose.org.
One fuels the other. They go hand in hand. Our growth plan is very much based on both of those revenue streams growing -- growing the individuals but also growing the corporate and foundation partners at the same time. So they’ve absolutely played a critical part.
Q: How is DonorsChoose.org itself funded?
When someone goes to the site to fund a project, they have a choice at the checkout to dedicate a portion of their donation -- generally, 15 percent -- to help fund our operations. Over 90 percent of donors choose to do that, which we’re really proud of.
Ever since Charles Best, our founder and CEO, started the organization, we’ve been transparent about our cost structure. That optional donation to support our operations is what has enabled us to go to companies and not ask for help keeping the lights on but to say, “Our partnerships are all about how you, Kia, or you, Chase, can have a direct impact in your community by supporting local projects.”
Q: Do the corporate partners also donate toward the organization’s expenses?
The individuals have a choice. When a company partners with us, beginning at the $10,000 level and up, it’s not optional, and we make that clear to them. We absolutely need that donation, because we have staff members who work really closely with them.
Q: DonorsChoose.org is based on a brilliant, simple concept, but lots of organizations have brilliant, simple concepts that never flourish. Beyond a great idea, what’s the key to the success of DonorsChoose.org?
Obviously, the great idea plays a huge role. But beyond that, I think it’s ultimately the leadership and getting the right people in the organization to make sure that you drive that big idea beyond that startup phase.
I attribute a lot of that to Charles, but I also attribute it to us being really thoughtful about who we are as we’ve grown -- who we are and what kind of person is going to be successful at our organization, regarding both the skills and work environment they need to do their best. Someone might be phenomenal at another organization and look great on paper but might not be the right fit for us.
Charles operates with a tremendous sense of humility, which is woven throughout the fabric of our organization. But it’s also a place where people can take risks, and I think that’s unique, particularly for a nonprofit. It has helped position us to be where we are today.
Q: What are the key lessons that other organizations can learn from DonorsChoose.org?
I absolutely think there are things that others can apply. The importance of transparency and making sure that donors understand where dollars are going and packaging it in a way that makes sense.
Typically, nonprofits say they’ve got X campaign coming up and ask people to give X hundreds or thousands of dollars or tens of dollars and later you hear how successful the campaign is. That’s probably attractive to certain donors, but I think it’s probably less attractive to a lot of younger donors who, because of the crowd sourcing initiative, want to know now.
I encourage organizations to think about how to package what they do in a way that folks understand. What has allowed us to be successful is the partnership piece. We absolutely build a partnership that’s based on having a relationship and understanding the value of that relationship.
Our individual donors hear from us immediately after they’ve made an online transaction. It’s hearing back from the teacher, it’s getting pictures, it’s forging all of our connections online.
What often happens in a traditional nonprofit is you write a $100 check, you might get a nice tax -deduction letter saying, “Thank you so much for your gift.” Whereas at DonorsChoose.org, if you make a $100 contribution, you feel like you’re getting so much.
I would encourage nonprofits to think about how they can forge that type of connection in a way that isn’t too labor -intensive. I think at DonorsChoose.org, you feel valuable if you’re giving, hearing back from us and from the teacher, or getting pictures or thank-you notes and seeing those online from the teacher.
Transparency and accountability are really, really critical.
Q: As the organization has grown, has it ever been tempted to expand beyond that core mission?
Since we launched in 2000 and expanded in 2003, plenty of organizations and people have come to us and asked, “Will you expand to X or Y or Z?” And a couple of years ago, we really explored whether we should be expanding the model either internationally or to another nonprofit sector outside of public schools. But as an organization, we made the decision that until we were serving 100 percent of high-poverty schools in the U.S., we had not accomplished what we had needed to accomplish.
We made a decision to let other sectors and folks know that we were not expanding our model. We will graciously and generously talk to folks who want to learn about DonorsChoose.org. We’re happy to share insights we’ve learned along the way, but we’re focused on making an impact on 100 percent of high-poverty schools in the U.S. and getting to the day where we’re delivering, in any given school year, $100 million worth of resources and experiences to those schools.
This year our goal is to deliver close to $50 million, so we’ve got a ways to go before we hit this big, hairy, audacious goal of $100 million.
Q: What impact has the growth of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding had on DonorsChoose.org?
We have a “more the merrier” perspective. We share a lot with other organizations, and we were founded as a transparent and open organization. We were a pioneer in this movement, and so being a pioneer, the key is to stay ahead of the curve and always try to think about what’s next.
At the same time, we want the field to grow bigger. We don’t see the pie as being a certain size and we have to make sure we have our piece. We want to see that the pie grows bigger and that more and more people want their giving to be transparent and targeted. I think we can play a role in that, and it will come back to benefit us and other organizations.
Q: How important has innovation been in your success, and what have been the biggest innovations?
In terms of innovations, I would say our gift card, which we launched back in 2006, 2007. That was a game changer for us, because it gave us a way to partner with corporations and foundations that wasn’t just asking them to fund projects.
It gave us a tool that companies could use to engage customers and employees. That was really our first foray into being able to engage with companies in a way that was outside of traditional philanthropy. We could actually start working with a marketing department versus a traditional foundation arm or a corporate community relations department.
Another innovation that was really instrumental was the development of our API, or Advanced Programming Interface, which allows us to integrate with other websites. It allowed for things like the Starbucks digital network our partnership with Sonic Drive-In in which they created their own website, Limeades for Learning, that pulls in DonorsChoose.org.
It allows a company to have their own “skin,” their own exterior, to our site.
Those kinds of things give companies a ton of flexibility to develop what they want in partnership with us, branded in a way that works for them but also allows us to fund lots of projects in whatever area is important to them.
One thing that we’ve done a good job on is being thoughtful about our different revenue streams and about having diverse offerings for companies. If gift cards are their thing, that’s great. If they want to use our API, that’s there for them. If they want to do one of our matching products, that’s there for them. We keep it diversely spread.
Q: How did the gift card idea come about? Was it a collective “aha” moment?
I think it was a staff member who thought we should really be doing this -- “Like, why couldn’t we give the gift of giving?” Gift cards were increasing in prominence, and we thought we should be tapping into that. But that was the genesis -- an employee who felt really passionate and helped drive it.
Leadership 360
Priests and lay leaders are benefiting from a new assessment tool customized for the Catholic Church. Adapted from the business world, the tool can increase self-awareness, identify strengths, and help shape a broader, more collaborative understanding of leadership.
Leadership 360
Priests and lay leaders are benefitting from a new assessment tool customized for the Catholic Church. by Bob Wells
The Rev. Jason Makos had an idyllic start as a priest. After ordination and theological studies in Rome, he spent four years as an associate pastor at a parish in the Archdiocese of Boston, immersed in ministry. He said Mass. Visited the sick. Delivered homilies. Celebrated the sacraments.
“It was great,” Makos said. “It was almost 100 percent priestly, pastoral work. Each day, I enjoyed the priesthood more and more.”
But in October 2010, Makos, then 33, was appointed pastor at the Church of the Holy Ghost in Whitman, Mass. Considered a medium-sized parish in heavily Catholic Boston, the church serves 2,400 families and draws more than 1,100 people to six weekend Masses. The parish’s only priest, Makos oversees an 11-person lay staff, from business manager to custodian.
It was as though overnight he became the CEO of a small business, with more on his plate than just next Sunday’s homily.
“It was an eye-opener,” Makos said.
In making the transition to pastor, Makos has been able to take advantage of a new resource: a 360-degree leadership-development feedback tool customized for use by Catholic clergy and lay leaders.
Makos is one of 15 recently ordained pastors in the Boston Archdiocese who are using Catholic Leadership 360 as part of a new initiative launched by the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management. The feedback tool focuses not on religious or spiritual matters but on broader leadership skills, especially in managing the temporal affairs of the church.
“It’s been a good experience,” Makos said. “It sheds light on who you are as a person and a priest and how you interact with others. It gives you a window on your strengths and how you can build on those, and pinpoints areas you need to work on.”
Questions to consider:
The Rev. Jason Makos found a 360-degree assessment valuable in making a transition to being a parish priest. Has something changed in your work as a lay leader or pastor that would make a feedback tool valuable for you?
How open would you be to having such an instrument completed for you? Do you have any concerns or fears?
When it comes to leadership, the line between the spiritual and secular is not always clear. In what ways do you use essentially secular skills in spiritual ways?
Do you have individuals that serve as informal 360 feedback givers? If not, would you consider inviting a few people to do so?
It is easy to forget that people want feedback -- indeed, it can be a gift. Do you take the time to give people positive feedback for things they are doing well and developmental feedback to help them improve?
Adapted from the business world, the feedback tool can even be life-changing, both for clergy and for those they lead, increasing self-awareness, identifying strengths, and helping shape a broader, more collaborative understanding of leadership.
Ultimately, in a church that has been rocked by crisis, Leadership 360 is about helping clergy and lay ministers “become the best they can be,” said Cathy Rongione, a Boston human resources professional who served as project manager for the Catholic Leadership 360 customization.
Reaching that goal may require more than pastoral skills alone, as Makos discovered.
“When you’re pastor, you are responsible for every aspect of parish life, not just the Mass and baptism but also the finances and supervising a staff and making sure everything is working properly,” Makos said. “You see how important the temporal aspects are, that the roof is in good shape and the walls are painted and the rectory is upgraded.”
The making of a Catholic 360
A nonprofit organization of Catholic laity and clergy, the Roundtable was established in 2005 to help bring modern management and administrative practices to the Catholic Church. Drawing on the expertise of prominent Catholics in business, finance, government and industry, the Roundtable has developed and made available to the church a portfolio of programs.
“The reality is that the church has been through turmoil the last several years and is facing huge, challenging issues,” Rongione said.
Clergy sexual abuse and financial mismanagement scandals have shaken the faithful. With declining vocations and an aging priesthood, clergy are in short supply. Like Makos, many are placed in positions of great responsibility as full pastors far sooner than they would have been a generation or two ago. To fill the void, lay leaders now serve in positions once held by priests in such areas as finance and religious education.
“What all this means is that priests need to really take on the role of leadership above and beyond,” Rongione said.
Priests have always had administrative responsibilities for leading local parishes, but the demands today are greater, said Michael Brough, director of planning and programs for the Roundtable. In addition to their pastoral duties, priests today are expected to manage a professional staff, lead fundraising campaigns, be communication experts, set strategic direction, empower others, oversee building projects, understand finances and human resources, and essentially run what are often multimillion-dollar organizations.
“Usually, people have technical capacity,” Rongione said. “The head of finance knows how to balance a balance sheet. What trips people up and causes them to not be as successful as they could be are leadership behaviors, how they engage and treat other people.”
As the name suggests, a 360-degree review gathers and provides feedback from people in various positions surrounding a given individual, including supervisors, peers, direct reports and others, and compares those assessments with the subject’s own self-assessment. The reviews have long been used in the corporate world, though experts disagree over their proper use.
Some organizations use 360 reviews as a performance assessment measure that factors into decisions on pay and promotions, but many in the field consider such use inappropriate. More often, the tools are used solely for professional growth and development, sometimes as part of an executive coaching or training program, to help build leadership skills.
Preferring the latter approach, the Roundtable turned to the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C. A pioneer in the use of 360-degree assessments for growth and development, the center processes nearly 27,000 participant assessments a year and only offers the development 360 reviews. Over the years it has created a list of 94 research-based leadership competencies -- such as managing conflict, inspiring commitment and communicating effectively -- which can be drawn upon to create custom 360-degree surveys, depending upon a particular organization’s needs.
For Catholic Leadership 360, the Roundtable looked for guidance to several church documents on pastoral formation and lay leadership, from the Vatican and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Over several months, the Roundtable, the National Association of Church Personnel Administrators and the National Federation of Priests’ Councils worked with the center to identify the leadership traits they wished to cultivate and map those to the leadership competencies in the center’s database.
From that, two tools emerged: a clergy survey, with 99 questions across 14 leadership competencies, and a lay leader survey that contains 81 questions across 15 competencies.
At first glance, the competencies seem remarkably secular: communicating information, inspiring commitment, leading staff, bringing out the best in people and forging synergy, to name a few. But it takes little imagination to see how they would be essential skills for any priest, Brough said.
“We didn’t pull these out of thin air,” he said. “This is what the church has said a priest is called to do.”
Is leadership spiritual?
The focus is on leadership skills, not the spiritual side of being a priest, Rongione said, but that distinction is not always easy to make. The two are intertwined.
“One supports the other,” she said. “As important as it is to make the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal, it is also important to make the connections.”
In keeping with Center for Creative Leadership guidelines, the Catholic Leadership 360 tools are rigorously administered. In addition to completing their own self-assessment, subjects ask at least eight to 10 people -- superior, a supervisor, at least three peers, three direct reports and others -- to fill out the assessment online. From that, the center generates a 30-page report, showing the responses to all the questions across the leadership competencies.
The feedback process is critically important. Only two copies of the report are generated, one for the participant and the other for a trained one-on-one facilitator certified by the Center for Creative Leadership. Nobody else has access to the report, underscoring that the tool is not for performance assessment.
“The reason for that is that you are dealing with human emotion,” Rongione said. “This can be a very challenging process to go through. Hopefully, if the information is positioned and received the right way, then people will be honest and candid in how they respond and how they become more self-aware and grow.”
“It opens people’s eyes, but it does that in a very affirming way that people embrace,” Brough said. Almost always, participants discover that they are valued by others in ways they had never realized.
Although Catholic Leadership 360 has been used in only three dioceses so far, it has already shown great promise. In Pittsburgh and Metuchen, N.J., where the tool was piloted, 88 percent of participants said it was valuable to their ongoing development, and 96 percent would recommend it to others.
Putting feedback into practice
Makos, for example, said he was surprised to find that others consistently rated him higher in virtually every category than he rated himself. “It’s confirming to see how people view you as a priest and a leader,” he said.
The survey confirmed for him that he is good at communicating ideas and information to others. It’s a strength that he can build upon.
One area he needs to work on is “courage,” which refers generally to a willingness and ability to tackle difficult problems and take the lead on unpopular but necessary actions. It wasn’t a surprise, Makos said.
“I tend to be shy,” he said. “I was born innately diplomatic, never wanting to offend anybody. So this has allowed me to think about what I’m saying and how I’m saying it and the need to be clear, concise and direct.”
Makos has already been able to use this new insight. For years, Holy Ghost has had Mass every weekday in addition to the six weekend Masses. Under archdiocese policy, though, all priests are supposed to have a day off. With Makos as the parish’s only priest, that meant one of the weekday Masses would have to go.
“To get a day off, it meant we would have to drop the Thursday Mass,” he said. “Before, I probably would have said, ‘OK, we’ll still have the Mass and I’ll make up my day off elsewhere.’ But this allowed me to say, ‘No, this has to be done. We have to drop the Thursday Mass.’”
John Flaherty, secretary for parish life and lay leadership in the Archdiocese of Pittsburgh, also gained practical insights when he took the Catholic Leadership 360 survey for lay leaders during the pilot there. An archdiocese employee for more than 25 years, Flaherty said he discovered that he was perceived by some as having a “closed-ended” rather than “open-ended” communication style -- that people assumed from his position he was not open to further discussion.
“It was very helpful to me to find that out,” he said. “I realized that I wasn’t accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish. For the first time, it gave me a deeper appreciation for the perspective of newer staff people.”
Developing effective collaboration
Currently, Makos and the other 14 Boston priests who took the 360 survey are completing written plans for how they will use the results in their ongoing formation. This fall they will meet again to see how well they are doing in putting their new insights into practice.
It’s exactly what the Rev. Michael Medas, director of the office for clergy personnel for the Archdiocese of Boston, was hoping for when he approached the Roundtable about using Leadership 360 with a cohort of new priests.
“I wanted a tool that could help us do formation better,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that the time we ask them to invest in continuing formation was really meeting their specific needs.”
In turn, that view of leadership can ripple outward, throughout a parish. The task of making Christ present is not the priest’s alone but that of the entire parish, Medas said.
“These kinds of leadership skills empower the priest to help people take ownership and become more effective collaborators,” he said. “Leadership 360 helps priests practice leadership at its best, because it is about leading through empowerment and not just leading through a priest’s vision imposed on a parish.”
As the group in Boston prepares their plans, the Roundtable continues to talk with other dioceses about Leadership 360. New priests aren’t the only ones who can use it. More experienced clergy who are looking for ways to stay engaged and motivated midcareer can also benefit from Leadership 360.
With support from individual donors and foundations, the Roundtable has been able to hold the costs of the program to $750 to $1,000 per participant, depending on the size of the cohort. That cost includes three workshops -- orientation, feedback and development -- the customized report, a feedback session and support materials.
“In comparison with other leadership development programs, this has proven to be affordable to our dioceses,” Brough said. “It is also recognized as an investment that has multiple benefits.”
For at least one priest, Catholic Leadership 360 has already made a difference. Balancing the spiritual and temporal demands of his new post is a constant challenge, Makos said, “but I can still say I love being a priest more each day.”
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