• Sell to Private Equity Firm or Strategic Buyer
• Sell/Gift to Children
• Sell to the Management Team/ESOP
• Sell to an Existing Partner
• Hold as Investment, run by your Management Team
• Variations of each

Every business owner needs to keep the maximum number of options open for as long as possible. Why? The benefits of any one option vary over time, driven by such factors as the state of the economy, the competitive environment, the owner’s health and many others factors that could come up at any time. Unfortunately, when considering their options, owner’s expectations are largely established by anecdotal and incomplete information from other business owners, from magazine articles, sale pitches, etc.

The result is that it is difficult for you, the owner, to understand what it takes to achieve your expected outcome. This seminar is an educational event that will address each of the above Succession/Exit options. For each, we will provide:

• An understanding of what you should expect in terms of outcomes
• The conditions that have to be met
• How you need to prepare both yourself and your business
• The steps to take
• The time required

Decision Associates, in partnership with Evans and Associates, will present this Seminar in Hermitage, PA, and in partnership with Schaffner, Knight, Minnaugh in DuBois, PA.  They will also be available for discussion after the events.

To learn more about the presenters of these events, follow the links:
Decision Associates: www.decisionassociates.net
Evans and Associates: www.evansandassociates.net (Hermitage Presentation)
Schaffner, Knight, Minnaugh: www.skmco.com (DuBois Presentation)

To register for either event, contact the NWIRC at 814-456-6299 x100 or register online at www.NWIRC.org/events

In addition, Decision Associates and The Nonprofit Partnership have awarded a Sustaining Services Grant to the Multicultural Community Resource Center in the amount of $10,000. The grant was accepted by Joel Tuzynski, Executive Director at the MCRC.

A special thank you is extended to Mr. Wooler and his team for conducting the selection process for these awards. Congratulations to everyone!

The goals of social marketing are to influence target audiences to:

• Accept a new behavior
• Reject a potentially undesirable behavior
• Modify a current behavior
• Abandon an undesirable behavior

If you’re an organization looking to influence a change in behavior, you must begin with an effective research strategy. Only by understanding your target audience(s) can you establish realistic goals and objectives and then understand what it will take to then influence a change in behavior.

In the case of increasing seat belt usage, social marketers relied heavily on research to guide both their strategy and to ensure its success. Social marketing research was conducted in stages. It began with Formative Research to develop initial marketing strategies and then moved to Pretest Research to evaluate those strategies and tactics. This evaluation helped ensure messages were positioned in a way to most effectively influence target audiences. The result of research was the well-known campaign “Click It or Ticket.” Through research, marketers were able to conclude that audiences were not influenced for “safety” reasons, but rather by the threat of a ticket.

Why is research so important? It’s important because without research your organization is working on a hope and prayer that your strategies will even matter to your audience(s). If research was not conducted and the seatbelt campaign was developed around “safety,” it would not have been as successful. Time and money would have been wasted on a message that didn’t influence their audience to change.

It’s also important to understand that competitors are much different in social marketing. In the commercial sector, “competition” represents other organizations that offer similar products or services. In social marketing, the “competition” is the current or preferred behavior of the target audience, and any associated benefits with that behavior. Many would argue the competition in social marketing is much harder to tackle than in the commercial sector. This is yet another reason why research is so critical to developing a successful social marketing strategy.

To learn more about developing successful social marketing strategies contact Emily Wachter at 814.528.9407 or emilywachter@decisionassociates.net

• Thoroughly analyze the job. What are the duties? What are the skills necessary to be successful? What are the outcomes desired?
• Analyze the organization’s history and culture. Ensure you have identified the success factors for the position and what kind of individual will “fit” this culture. To do this, you need to:
  • Interview Board members and staff to get their input into the essential traits and characteristics they want in a new leader or senior staff member.
  • Interview constituent groups for their input.
  • Make sure you have the right questions to ask.
• Identify the Critical Dimensions of the job: things like analytical ability, decision making style, relationship building, judgment, communication skills, etc.
• Create behavioral interview guides that address the dimensions identified so the interview process is standardized. Not only does this help compare apples to apples, it also provides evidence of a systematic approach to the interviews in case you are challenged at some future point.
• Use state-of-the-art, fifth generation, assessment instruments to evaluate thinking and learning style, behavioral traits and occupational interests. Myers-Briggs and DiSC type instruments are not the ones to use according to the Society for Human Resource Management, the Department of Labor and the EEOC.
• Conduct thorough reference checks. Use social media to find out more about your final candidates that may not have been revealed in the interviews.
• Engage a third party background check service to explore the possible existence of prior criminal history, sex offender status, credit history and social security legitimacy.
• Establish and execute a consistent on-boarding process to help ensure assimilation and retention. This is critical over the long term to keep people who are happy, productive and committed to the organization.

Paying close attention to the kind of people you bring into your nonprofit will bring amazing results. The right people are the keys to success or failure in any organization. This is more so in the nonprofit community than anywhere. Decision Associates has a tried and true methodology to help you through this critical component of effective managing and leading your organization.

For more information, contact Jim Ryan at 814-528-9406 or jimryan@decisionassociates.net.