In 2006, Moya Gray was selected to participate in the Hawai’i Community Foundation’s PONO program, which she said was “an incredible experience” that has helped her to transition her organization, Volunteer Legal Services Hawai’i (VLSH), into a better performing organization for their clients.
“I can’t thank the Hawai’i Community Foundation and LaPiana Associates enough,” Gray said recently. Even though some of the participants represented competing organizations for each other, but not Gray, the program helped to create some good and deep relationships with other executive directors.
“Everyone understood what you were going through,” she said.
PONO, the acronym for Promoting Outstanding Nonprofit Organizations, is a 10-month, peer-centered, leadership development program for mid-career executive directors sponsored by the Hawai’i Community Foundation and led by consultants from the highly regarded LaPiana Associates of California. The program was designed to address a set of concerns about Hawai’i's nonprofit sector, particularly its instability due to executive turnover, a fear of losing long-standing leaders due to “burn out,” and the lack of opportunities leaders had to advance their skills and knowledge.
Since the start of the program in 2003, 65 nonprofit leaders have graduated from five PONO classes. The sixth PONO class began in early September with 15 nonprofit leaders representing, O’ahu, Kaua’i, Maui, and Hawai’i Island.
Gray, who became executive director of VLSH five years ago, notes that the plans she identified since starting are now reaching fruition. The rewards of her work come at a coincidental time when the uncertainties of a global economic crisis threaten a number of nonprofit organizations in our state, but Gray remains upbeat and optimistic.
“The environment created for PONO by the Hawai’i Community Foundation and LaPiana Associates was supportive for executive directors,” Gray said.
The warm and understanding environment was conducive to conversation that is impossible to get anyplace else. “To me, it was invaluable. Information from other organizations helps internally with your own organization. It’s a living case study.”
LaPiana’s approach to organizational capacity building is different from the norm but is spot on because every person and every organization is different. “Rather than the nuts and bolts (of an organization), LaPiana started from a leadership level, never defining leadership but instead teaching you to facilitate your own leadership,” Gray said.
Clarysse Kami Nunokawa, senior program officer for the Hawai’i Community Foundation, said PONO’s goals are to: create a network of empowered, innovative, and resilient executives, capable of navigating change and moving their organization towards social innovation with greater impact; strengthen a nonprofit organizations’ ability to deliver on their mission through improvements to governance, management, and leadership capacity; and increase the Hawai’i Community Foundation’s understanding of the role of leadership development as a capacity building strategy.
Gray’s PONO experience has helped VLSH become a better organization today by being more focused on performance and the process has helped everyone to focus on one or two rather than a multitude of things. Gray says VLSH today is poised to become a better organization because “we know what we need to do to become a better organization.”
As for the current economy, Gray says organizations have to be adaptable to anything that comes along. “The economy today is what it is, and we can’t change that,” she says, “You have to be adaptable to anything that comes along. Your (organizational) structure has to be adaptable.”
Even in a downturn economy, many nonprofit leaders like Gray see opportunities for their organizations. And that is precisely the kind of leadership and preparation that PONO strives to provide to Hawai’i's nonprofit leaders like Moya Gray.
About VLSH:
Originally known as Hawai’i Lawyers Care, Volunteer Legal Services Hawai’i provides free or low-cost legal help to low-income residents and the nonprofit organizations serving them in communities across Hawai’i with the help of volunteers who contribute pro bono service. VLSH began in 1981 with ten volunteers. Today, that number has grown to more than 850 and enables VLSH to offer a wide range of services. For more information about VLSH or to volunteer, visit www.vlsh.org on the web.
Applications for PONO 2009 are now being accepted. Deadline to apply is April 15, 2009. For more information on the Foundation’s PONO program, click here.