Frank Adams has had a transformational impact on the A.G. Gaston Boys & Girls Club, an affiliate of the Boys & Girls Club of America based in Birmingham, Alabama. Appointed CEO of the organization in 2012, Adams raised club membership from 500 to 1,700 and grew its operational budget from $1.3 million to $1.6 million in only three years. In recognition of his leadership, Adams was selected by his organization to attend the Performance Measurement for Effective Management of Nonprofit Organizations (PMNO) program at Harvard Business School Executive Education. Here, he describes how the program has equipped him to make a greater impact as a CEO.
Over the last few years, Boys & Girls Club of America has selected various CEOs within the movement to attend the PMNO program. I was selected with two other peers to participate in this year's program, which was a huge honor and big surprise for me. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to work with other nonprofit leaders as well as individuals who have specific insight into the world we live in.
It really enhanced the learning experience. There was a high level of engagement between the professors and my peers, and I felt like my time was valued. As someone who has very little time to engage beyond what we're working on currently, it was very refreshing to be surrounded by peers who experience some of the same challenges that we've experienced as well as some of the opportunities that we've experienced in growth and development.
The program was very timely. Measurement is an area that is important to us. It's essential to what we do when we're working with young people because there are so many levers we pull to impact them. We need to know that what we're doing is impactful in the way that we intended. So, the topic itself was very important to me. In addition, the program was designed in a very intuitive way. It presented the right amount of information that was related to the challenges and opportunities that we face in a nonprofit organization, specifically working with youth.
The discussions on the topic of organizational mission were very useful. We discussed the theory of change, which was very important for me in terms of conceptualizing and understanding how our mission can be altered inadvertently. We discussed how sometimes you have to step back and look at your mission and see if it's applicable to what you actually do every day. That was very revealing. Your vision is not something that's static. It is actually something that evolves over time as you move through your mission and achieve the goals that are essential as an organization.
We also discussed the challenge of articulating what you accomplish as an organization. Everyone understands what they do day-to-day to execute their mission, but it's difficult to give a synopsis of how you do it and why it's important to your success. For me personally, it was helpful to understand that a lot of different elements go into what I do, but it's important to have a common theme that everyone can talk about and articulate.
I thought that Professor [and Faculty Cochair Herman B.] Leonard's insight around capacity, value, and support were critically important to understanding all the elements that contribute towards executing a mission. It made me look at the activities in our organization and ask these questions: Are those things mission-centric? Are those things that we have capacity for, that we have support for? Do we value it as an organization? It was very impactful in understanding what we do, why we do it, and how we do it.
Professor [and Faculty Cochair Julie Boatright] Wilson's in-depth discussion about the theory of change, the logic model, inputs, process, output, and outcomes was very important to me as well. It gave me an opportunity to break down the different elements within our organization—everything from personnel to stakeholders to parents to kids—and think about how all of those elements are linked through your mission and through your activity. It was very helpful for me to understand how one area affected the other.
I thought that Professor [John Jong-Hyun] Kim's insight into how to truly communicate with your stakeholders was very important. I found it very helpful to explore how creating a culture of accountability is important to the health and well-being of your organization and also how you communicate with your stakeholders.
The program forced me to pause, step out of the box for a bit, and just look at my organization. There's a long lead time in terms of what we do in our organization to produce a result; because of this, it's difficult to gauge how we're impacting a child since we don't work with them as an adult. There are a lot of different variables that we control and some that we don't. So, through the case studies and through dialogue, the program helped me understand that there are small wins and small measurements along the way that add up to the impact that you desire in your organization.
I know that we're having an immediate impact on children by our very existence as being a safe place for them to be in the afternoon as well as when school is out. The magic that we actually create in our organization is when we're having one-on-one discussions or small group discussions with our young people about who they are, what they want to be, and how we can help them get to that position of achievement.
A lot of our communities—like most communities around the country—are populated with kids who don't see a vision for their own future. The only thing that separates those kids from people like you and me is that someone sat them down and said, "Hey. What do you want to do, and how do I help you do that?" So, that is primarily our role at the Boys & Girls Club: giving them a safe space to think through what they would like their lives to be in the future and, more importantly, helping them access the tools, resources, and exposure they need to go and do it. That's what is truly rewarding in my role. I help facilitate that dialogue by strengthening the organization operationally, financially, and from a mission perspective.
The PMNO program helped open my eyes to the fact that, even if you're very engaged in your mission and organizational goals, you are only scratching the surface if you don't understand your impact. Once you understand how to measure the impact that you’re having, you can have different conversations with your stakeholders about how to do even more.
That starts with asking questions about whether an activity or engagement is part of your mission. Is it something that we value as an organization? If it is, then it's something we clearly need to do. Do we have the capacity to do it? Do we have the talent? Do we have the resources? Do we have the ability to execute this now and into the future?
Having these discussions over the week regarding different elements and overlaying areas across our organization has helped me take a different look at what we do, why we do it, and how much of it we do. That's important because leaders in our organization have to understand sustainability; we have to make sure that the organization doesn't quick burn or become less viable tomorrow than it is today. That really requires understanding who you are today and what you want to be. You can't answer that if you don't have data about your impact or outputs, or if you don't understand the things that make you a higher performing organization that people understand, value, and want to support.
I highly recommend the program to any nonprofit leader, board member, or stakeholder who's interested in moving their organization to a higher level of performance. I think it's absolutely essential to have a program like PMNO that gives you a moment to understand your organization's performance and how you articulate that performance to the general public and to those who find value in your organization.
I thought that the level of insight from the professors was transformational. Their work experience and ability to quantify and clarify very complex organizational issues was second to none. It's probably the best professional development opportunity that I've had in my career.
