Unveiling the Veil: Debunking Myths and Uncovering Truths in Nonprofit HR Practice

Shelley Majors is an accomplished HR consultant with over 25 years of experience, including five years specializing in the nonprofit sector. As the founder of Boardwalk Human Resources Consulting, she strategically aligns human resources with corporate objectives to boost employee engagement and efficiency. Notably, Shelley developed a talent acquisition strategy that improved employee retention by 40% for a leading nonprofit, demonstrating her ability to translate strategic visions into tangible results.

HR is crucial for the success of any nonprofit, extending beyond recruitment to strategic partnership in achieving organizational goals. To nonprofit leaders and clergy, remember that HR professionals are pivotal in developing leadership, nurturing talent, and enhancing organizational culture. They align HR strategies with your objectives, fostering a productive work environment and driving initiatives that boost morale, efficiency, and retention. Investing in strong HR practices is investing in the foundation of your organization’s success, ensuring the right people are in place to effectively carry out your mission.

More information at – https://www.boardwalkhr.com/home  

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The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Greetings, this is Hugh Ballou, founder and president of SynerVision Leadership Foundation, where leaders build synergy because they’re very clear about the vision. No matter how clear you are with a vision, you need to build a team, build an organization, and it’s really important that you have somebody managing human relations, HR. It’s not just a myth, but we’re going to discuss some of the myths. Unveiling the Veil is the title, Debunking Myths and Uncovering Truths in Nonprofit HR Practice. My guest is Shelly Majors. Shelly, tell people a little bit about who you are and your background and your passion for this work.

Shelley Majors:
Hi Hugh, thank you for having me. My name is Shelly Majors and I am the owner of BoardWalk Human Resources Consulting. I have 25 years of HR experience, six years of nonprofit experience in the field of human resources.

Hugh Ballou:
And why do you do this?

Shelley Majors:
You know, for me, I’ve never been a person who I’ve always wanted to help. I’ve never been a person who would be a person to volunteer. And so being working with a nonprofit allows me to contribute while giving back.

Hugh Ballou:
So there’s a lot of myths. We’re going to see how many we can handle today. There’s way too many myths we can handle in a short interview, but we’re going to share your website and people can find you and explore. HR, we’re just a small nonprofit. We don’t need HR. That’s for big companies. Is that true or not?

Shelley Majors:
That is a myth. And the truth is that all organizations, small, medium, or large, need HR to ensure legal compliance and manage employee relations and foster a workplace culture.

Hugh Ballou:
to find some of the, what is a workplace culture? This is a nonprofit, it’s volunteers. It’s not a workplace, or is it?

Shelley Majors:
It is, it is a workplace. And even with volunteers, you need to make sure that the people that are working, whether employees or volunteers, abide by your mission and your vision for the organization and truly believe and stand behind what you’re offering, because that really helps you be able to feel like the people are doing good.

Hugh Ballou:
So, we’re talking about HR, human relations is what HR stands for, but we really, I’m sure that there are people that don’t really understand the function of HR, so give us a little snapshot of what’s the purpose of HR, and why should we care, and We’re talking to nonprofit leaders and clergy, so they’re managing charitable organizations and the work is philanthropy and transforming lives. But we need to pay attention to business. So talk about what is HR and why should we care?

Shelley Majors:
So HR is really, like you said, the human part of an organization. And at the end of the day, you need to make sure that your employees or volunteers are happy and engaged. But also, HR also helps with growing that culture. We also work with strategic planning and succession planning. So you have an executive director that’s going to retire soon. Who’s going to take their place? Someone within the organization? Someone outside of the organization?

Hugh Ballou:
That’s something most of us don’t think about, you know? I didn’t know that. I’m glad I asked the question. What else? That’s really important stuff. What else?

Shelley Majors:
One of the other things to think about, too, is that even though the myth is that nonprofits don’t have money and nonprofits aren’t successful, some of them are very successful, there are still things that you need to look at. You need to look at how the money is going, the proceeds are going towards the administration side of a nonprofit. 15% has to go towards payrolls, something along those lines. But also, there’s legal compliances that you don’t think about. You have an employee contract. Are your employees abiding by this contract? Is the contract legal? Because you could have LegalZoom write it for you, or you could have an attorney write it for you. But how do you enforce it?

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, it’s a piece of paper. We need to make sure that everybody’s read the piece of paper. But there’s a lot of things we think, oh, we’re just doing charitable work. We can skirt by. But if somebody has a beef against you, you might see him in court. So it’s really good to have your ducks in a row. So there’s a myth that HR is only for hiring and firing. Is that true?

Shelley Majors:
That is not true. You know, someone, someone asked me that the other day and I told them I said we do so much more, you know, on top of again caring for your employees. What we do is make sure that the organization is running smoothly. Everybody is in the roles that they need to be in. you know, we’re working with leaders, we’re coaching, we’re mentoring employees, managers, leadership on how to interact. You have a lot of leaders who are great leaders, but they don’t know how to interact with their employees. And everything goes from the top down. So you have to really work with those leaders to ensure that everything down here is running smoothly.

Hugh Ballou:
So The leaders are payroll staff, but they’re also volunteers and there’s contract personnel. So is there a different relationship with them? Are we trying to empower them and respect them and help them, all of them the same way?

Shelley Majors:
You know, it’s interesting throughout my years of working in HR, I’ve been a contractor, but I’ve also been an employee. And so as a contractor, I’ve always been treated differently. And at the end of the day, that’s very true. You know, contractors and volunteers and employees, they all have a different kind of status in the organization, you know, and the understanding is that you really have to nurture all of them. You have your contractors who are there to help. You can’t treat them as employees. You can’t offer them benefits and pay and PTO and all that other stuff. So you really have to make sure that you’re treating them in a way similar to the employees so that they remain engaged. You have to include them because you hired them for a reason. Contractors aren’t cheap.

Hugh Ballou:
But it’s not an expense as much as it is an investment in the things that are sometimes intangible, but are important.

Shelley Majors:
which are very important, that’s very true. You hire a contractor or the consultant with the best intention of them providing you the service that you need. And so as a volunteer and an employee, as a contractor, you’re hiring someone who has an expertise in the area that you need. And so you really need to lean on them to ensure that things are going smoothly, but you also have to make sure that they’re abiding by your legal requirements or your standards for your non-profit.

Hugh Ballou:
So thinking about the interface with the strategic planning, that’s something we ignore as well. It’s the roadmap for where you want to go. It’s also to get there you need to define the competencies and that’s a major place for HR to play. There’s other places. That’s a major place. So who are you going to get? What shoes will they fill? And then how do you write down the expectations? So you’ve seen people go into a job and then get dismissed because they didn’t make the mark, but nobody defined exactly what that mark was. And that’s a leadership problem, isn’t it?

Shelley Majors:
Yes, that’s a leadership problem. And it’s a whole organization problem. So in my opinion, Because one of the things that you need to look at is you need to define what this person is supposed to be doing. And so you will create your job description. on the specifics that you’re looking for for a person within this role. And hopefully, you hire someone that has those qualifications to be able to be successful. But also, meeting with them on a regular basis, ensuring that onboarding is going smoothly, they’re trained properly, they have all the tools. One of the things that I hear is that, oh, my computer didn’t work, IT wasn’t helpful. You need the tools to be able to do the job. And so that’s one of the main things, too, is do I have the tools? Do I have the training? Am I properly trained on this nonprofit if they use certain software? You know, all these things that you need to look at. So a thorough job description and a really good onboarding program for volunteers, contractors, employees is very important.

Hugh Ballou:
It’s essential. Somebody like you has the years of expertise, and you know where the potholes are in the wall, the hard stops, and you know where the problems could arise. I meet a lot of people who say, I just have this passion for helping people. I don’t know anything about running a business. Well, nonprofit Just want to reiterate, it is a business. We’re not focused on a profit, but we do have to maintain cash flow and profitability to be able to pay the bills to help more people. And part of helping more people are our healthy culture. And if we underestimate that value of a healthy culture, we’re limiting the amount of value we can provide the mission that we’re called to do. So Shelly, this is eye-opening for me. I’ve never interviewed an HR person in 400 interviews. So this is a treat. So you talked about contractors. So people say, oh, I can’t afford to hire an HR person. How do you respond to that?

Shelley Majors:
So when they say they can’t afford to hire an HR person, the question is, are you prepared possibly for a legal lawsuit? Because you may not necessarily, I’m not saying all nonprofits don’t do compliance, but there’s things that you need to think about when you have employees, you know, are you abiding by state laws, abiding by employment laws, abiding by payday laws. And is your employment contract solid so that if someone violates a portion of the employment contract, what does that look like for the company? You want to avoid an illegal lawsuit. So your choice, you hire HR, or you could potentially have a lawsuit, which could cost you, your organization, thousands, millions of dollars.

Hugh Ballou:
And maybe you personally, if you’ve been negligent.

Shelley Majors:
Yes, right. And you can’t just treat employees any old way you want to you know I mean, you throw the word hostile work environment out there. Everybody goes running in the organization because they’re trying to figure out what’s going on, why am I in a hostile work environment, you know, so.

Hugh Ballou:
You mentioned payroll. So there’s the W-2 employee that you specify what they do, but there’s also the 1099 employee. Now, if somebody is hiring you, for instance, they’re paying your company. So there’s not really a 1099 relationship. They’re hiring a company. It’s like they’re doing business with Amazon or something. They’re paying a company. But many times we hire an individual and that’s what we call a 1099 employee. They’re not payroll, we don’t pay payroll benefits, but sometimes we tell them everything to do so there’s not exactly clarity everywhere on whether they’re an employee that you have to take whole payroll tax and have benefits or not. Do you help advise people on that? Is there a slippery slope there?

Shelley Majors:
There is a slippery slope because technically a 1099 employee works on their own hours. So, when you start telling someone, you need to be available from nine to five, then you’re now telling them that you’re an employee of the company, where if you’re a 1099 I can say okay I’m going to work from five to nine tonight because that’s when I’m available. And so, so that’s one thing that you need to be very careful about. And you know, it’s, you’re right. It’s a slippery slope and a lot of people don’t think about it. And, and, you know, as a consultant, you want to do the best job that you can do. So if someone says, I need you available from nine to five, you’re like, okay, no problem. But then you’re telling me when I need to work. And so now I am an employee of your company.

Hugh Ballou:
And many people do not realize that. So the employee could complain and then you got to come up with the payroll tax that you didn’t withhold. And you’re part of that. And then there’s social security, and all the things, whatever you have to come up with. So being knowledgeable actually is good stewardship, because we’re managing other people’s money, because it’s donor money, mostly. And so this is all good stewardship. It’s just very, very, very good today. This is good stuff. You can take this to the bank, folks. So if they can’t afford one, You can either hire one on a staff or you can do a contract person. So what’s the difference there? Both of those work out.

Shelley Majors:
So if you hire someone on staff, then you have to pay them a certain wage every week by week. It depends on how you process your payroll. You can hire a consultant on an as needed basis or a project basis. or on a retainer basis. And so you can have the retainer 20 hours a month, you’re available. You can have, I have this project, I need you to work five hours on this. So there’s different ways of having a consultant that’s affordable for organizations and nonprofits.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, this is good stuff, Shelly. I’m glad you’re on the show today. that’s hiring an HR person or employing an HR person either way, doesn’t contribute to our bottom line profit, does it?

Shelley Majors:
Of course it does. Everyone says that HR doesn’t really make the money. But the question is, do we? We help you retain your employees. We recruit and find people for your organization. If there’s a legal issue, we’re familiar. Hopefully, the HR person you’ve hired is familiar with some legal abilities to be able to help. Or even HR is familiar with auditing, internal and external audits. So we ensure that there’s no issue. So we contribute to the bottom line. It’s just not a money contribution. At the end of the day, it’s a security contribution.

Hugh Ballou:
Well, and I can see that if employees are happier, and you’ve got the strategy and we’re focused on productivity, they’re also happier. There’s going to be a greater retention, but there’s also going to be a greater efficiency in how you use your money payroll. So, I think it indirectly could impact the bottom line, your cost, because if people are happy to get more done, and if people do what they’re supposed to do, which doesn’t always happen,

Shelley Majors:
That’s true. That’s true. That’s very true. You know, mental health is a big deal now for all organizations, all employees working remotely in office. And so you got to ensure that your employees are content. You can’t make everybody happy, but you got to do your best to make sure that everybody, that your employees are content.

Hugh Ballou:
Here’s another myth. We have volunteers. We don’t need an HR.

Shelley Majors:
Your volunteers may not be experienced enough in the area that you need them in, you know, and, and your volunteers are people that of course care about the mission. But if they don’t have the experience that you’re looking for, you’re not going to be able to help, you know. HR, they say, well, we can hire a volunteer to recruit, but you still need to make sure that your job posting is legal, you’re hiring with the correct parameters, you’re not talking about discrimination or anything along those lines. So you need to ensure, but you also want to make sure that someone works with the culture. I worked with a company that had a faith-based culture. And so we had to really look at finding someone who had a relationship with the Lord.

Hugh Ballou:
So nonprofits are too small to worry about compliance. What about that myth?

Shelley Majors:
everybody should worry about compliance. It doesn’t matter how small you are. I am a small business. I have to worry about ensuring compliance for my business and for the people that work with me, the 1099 contractors that work with me, the employees that work with me. I need to ensure compliance with them. And as you grow, there’s different employment and payday laws. So when you become an employee, a company that has 20 or more, it’s different. When you become a company that has 50 or more, you know, there are different things that you need to look at and consider as you grow as an organization.

Hugh Ballou:
And we’ve moved around, we’re talking about there’s two, maybe more, but at least two sides of HR. One is about the culture and the happiness, the culture and the empowering the culture and the strategy. The other one is about compliance. And both of these are important. And I see that you’re experienced and knowledgeable on both sides. So here’s another myth. Nonprofits are less formal, so they don’t need structured performance evaluations.

Shelley Majors:
Every organization needs a structured performance evaluation. Now, we go back and forth with, are performance evaluations necessary? Are they even effective? But as you go along, you need to let people know how they’re doing. Even your volunteers, even your 1099s, have those conversations with them so that they know, you know, I’m doing well or I’m not doing well. So they don’t get blindsided if you’re, oh, well, you know, we don’t want you as a volunteer anymore. Well, why? Or we don’t want you as a consultant anymore. Well, what did I do? I’m not aware of anything that I did wrong. So just those, even if you decide not to do a performance evaluation, informal conversations of checking in, how are people doing, you know, documenting it for the file if you need to, these conversations.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, here’s an interesting myth, which caught me when you were talking about when we started with the strategic planning. So there’s a myth and this was a wake up for me. So folks, I’ve been doing this for 35 years, here’s a wake up. So there’s new things to learn every day, Shelly, thanks for teaching me. HR, another myth, HR initiatives in nonprofits do not need to align with the strategic goals.

Shelley Majors:
Yes, they need to align with the strategic goals because that ensures organizational success. You can’t have someone over here who doesn’t share the mission and the vision or the strategic goal of the organization. It’s just not going to come together. You need to have the strategic goals. It’s vital for success. And it helps that resources are used effectively.

Hugh Ballou:
Let’s talk about the employee turnover. Non-profit myth is that non-profits don’t have to worry about it. And oh, somebody leaves, we just hire another person, but that’s not it, is it?

Shelley Majors:
No, that’s really not it. Because at the end of the day, most HR people know that there’s a cost to recruit someone, to hire someone, to onboard someone, to train someone. And so there’s a cost in all that. So if you lose someone who may have been great for the organization, you don’t know what you’re going to get. And I always tell people, and it’s me being the way that I am as a person, you know your organization’s crazy. You don’t know the crazy of another organization. So if there are issues within the organization, then you at least know how to work with those. And so really, at the end of the day, it’s so important.

Hugh Ballou:
It is crucial. And not to, you didn’t mention there’s a couple, there’s a lot more, it’s only a short interview, so we can’t do everything, but the amount of leadership time taking to search, do the interview, onboarding that person and training them. And then the loss productivity time for the employee that’s gone in for you.

Shelley Majors:
So the mental loss of losing your coworker that you’ve been working with for a short time or a long time, you have a really good relationship with.

Hugh Ballou:
So it costs a lot more than we really know to replace somebody. So the big piece here for me is, yes, it does impact the bottom line because it saves us money. We’re more productive. We get to retain people. And there’s just so many facets of how this is a really good investment. And oh, we don’t have the budget. Well, you know, there’s people in your organization that would support growing a healthy culture. So, here’s another one. We did employee turnover. You were pretty much the end of my list and we’re tracking good on time. So, nonprofits can rely mainly on passion. Oh, we don’t need incentives. We don’t need to motivate people. What’s that all about?

Shelley Majors:
Depending on the incentive, this is like an interesting point for me because sometimes for people, it’s not about the money. Sometimes for people, it’s about being part of something. the recognition, the, you know, ensuring that people are paid properly, just so they can maintain their lifestyle, maintain their household. And it just, it’s, it’s so hard for me to kind of speak on this, because it’s really important. You know, you need leadership that hears you, you know, you need leadership that understands you. you need leadership that’s willing to be there. Now, some organizations, leadership isn’t always present. And so that really, you have to make sure that benefits are, if you can afford them, are decent benefits for the employees. It’s just, I’ve seen a lot of organizations that don’t do that for employees, nonprofit and for-profit.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, this conversation is not limited to nonprofit. There’s probably a lot of, board members out there that have businesses, they’re thinking, golly, gee, I need to think about my business. Because, you know, we’re running a business. We think about the bottom line. We have to think about the bottom line if we’re going to be healthy. And so the big picture for me, Shelly, is if we have compliance and we have this culture upgrade, employees are going to stay longer. They’re going to be happier, more productive. That means less stress on the leader and probably higher performance. You’re going to attract higher donors.

Shelley Majors:
Yes, that’s very true. You’re ensuring that the leadership can focus on what they really need to focus on, like you said, which is growing the business or bringing in the money for the business or just focused on the mission of the business and not having to worry and getting, we say getting into the weeds of what is this person doing? Are they doing their job? Let me check in. Yeah, that’s fine, but go down, come back up, focus on the business.

Hugh Ballou:
and the business of nonprofit or the business of church. You can really say it’s stewardship, the business part of this. It’s the stewardship of it. So if you want to know more about Shelly and her business, it’s BoardWalk Human Consulting. And the link is BoardWalkHR. It’s all together, no dots or dashes, BoardWalkHR.com. So Shelly, when people go to BoardWalk.com, HR.com, excuse me, what will they find?

Shelley Majors:
Well, you know, hopefully they’ll find a little bit about the services that I offer. They’ll find about me and my team. And so, you know, basically you’ll find what you’re looking for.

Hugh Ballou:
And there’s a contact button if people contact you and have questions, and your email, boardwalkconsultingatoutlook. So there’s a contact number and a contact form. So people have questions, can they fill out the form and will you answer them?

Shelley Majors:
I will. I will. You can even call me. I will be willing to have conversations with anyone. It’s so important to be available for everybody. I can’t be available all the time.

Hugh Ballou:
I knew the answer to that question before I asked it. So Shelly, it’s been delightful having you on the show today. And I know I’ve learned a lot, and I’m sure other people have learned a lot. Before you give the closing thought or closing tip, you can find all these episodes of The Nonprofit Exchange at thethenonprofitexchange.org. and they’re all there with the latest one on top. You’ll find this one first. There’ll be also, you didn’t take notes, you missed something, there’s a transcript there. So you can find that part, it’s got the timeline. You can find that part and say, oh yeah, that’s about when she talked about it. So you can get those great sound bites and those tips that she offered along the way. TheNonprofitExchange.org and comment on it. We’d like to hear from you. Shelly, what do you wanna leave people with? What thought or challenge or tip?

Shelley Majors:
The thought or challenge that I have is really, you have this nonprofit, you have this nonprofit because it’s your passion. Are you doing everything you possibly can to ensure the success of your organization? We know most businesses fail within the first five years. And so you want to ensure success. So are you doing everything that you need to do to ensure success for your organization?

Hugh Ballou:
Shelly Majors, thank you so much for being our guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange.

Shelley Majors:
Thank you, Hugh.