The $14,560 Newsletter
Picture an organization where, every Thursday at 2 p.m. for the past five years, a staff member named Carol has sent the weekly email newsletter.
Carol spends about eight hours a week on it. Four program leaders each spend another hour and a half getting her their content. That is 14 hours a week, or 728 hours a year. At an average salary of $40,000, the newsletter costs the organization about $14,560 a year in staff time.
Now suppose the organization starts counting and finds that, on average, six people respond to it each week. Each response is costing about $46.
Is it worth it? Would you keep doing it?
I am not arguing against newsletters. I am pointing out that most leadership teams have never asked the question, because no one has put those two numbers side by side.
Engagement is something people do
“Engagement” comes up in nearly every leadership conversation, and each person in the room means something a little different by it.
My definition is simple: to participate or become involved. Engagement is a verb. Measuring it means looking past how many people showed up or watched online, to how people take part in the life of your organization.
As far as I know, there is no industry standard for engagement in the mission-driven world, and I do not think you need one. Your measures should come from your community, its work, and its needs. When serving the people in front of you is the priority, you can stop comparing yourself to what everyone else is doing and pay attention to what your own people are doing.
Why this belongs to senior leaders
When an organization is small, its leaders know everyone. You know who volunteers where, who comes to which program, and who has a family member in the hospital.
Growth changes that. It gets harder to know each person’s story, and easier for someone to go unseen. The one-on-one awareness that worked in a smaller community does not stretch as you grow.
That is when a shared definition of engagement, and a way to measure it, becomes a leadership responsibility. It tells you where to invest and where to pull back. It shows you who is drifting while there is still time to reach out.
A question for your leadership team
Ask each person on your team to write down what an engaged person looks like at your organization. Then compare answers. If the definitions differ, that conversation is worth more than any report.
Then pick one thing your staff does every week. Add up what it costs and ask what it produces. You are stewarding your team’s time as well as your people’s giving.
Have a question your team keeps coming back to? Bring it to us.
