Recently I wrote an article about the day in the life of our
shelter operations. I did this for a
number of reasons. Partly because
I thought some of the stories were fun and interesting but mainly I wanted to
show the community all we deal with on a daily or weekly basis. (http://lynchburghumane.blogspot.com/2013/06/reality-tv-here-we-come.html)
Why?
I have found, myself included, that people have become less
patient and quick to judge situations when they don’t go the way they expect
them to go. We tend to focus on what is
going wrong rather than all the things going right. A great example of how we have done that here
at LHS is about one of our vendors. I
won’t give details so we don’t embarrass them but we had a vendor we have used
for 4 years and they have 98% of the time done good work. They recently made a huge mistake and then
some minors ones to follow and that made me think, do I keep them? Or move on
to someone else? In a moment of anger
over the major problem I was ready to kick them to the curb. But you know what? We decided to talk to
them and let them know our frustration and see how we might fix this so it
doesn’t happen again. And then I was
reminded about the 4 years of very little problems and all the good they have
done to help us and have done for this community and I decided to forget about
the problem and start fresh. And we
haven’t had a single problem since.
So why am I bringing this up?
We recently sent out a list of our donors that have donated to our Annual
Fund. These are people who have given to our operational fund not the capital campaign. And we made some mistakes. Including one major one where we didn’t list a couple
of donors in the level they deserved to be listed and some other minor ones. We have had a number of negative,
critical comments and there are fears that people won’t give again because we made a mistake.
As a manager when problems arise I try not to get mad about
the mistake but think about how we fix it so it doesn’t happen again. I treat them as a learning opportunity, a
chance to help staff become better.
Customer service problems or issues we have had only make us
a stronger organization because we learn from them. Of course we can only learn from the ones we
know about. I am sure there are many problems that people are
upset about and talking about and we have no idea that we even made a mistake. This doesn’t help us or you get past the
problem so another person doesn’t experience a similar situation. We have to fall down in order to pick
ourselves back up and to make changes so that we can grow and flex with the
needs of the community.
Because one person, who
might work here, makes a mistake it should not cloud all the good this
organization does. The blind and
deaf dog we are taking care of would tell you that as well.
This organization is great because of the
board leadership, the leadership on the staff, the vision and help we give, the
supporters and all the people who are caring for these animals in need and
working tirelessly to fix the problem of pet overpopulation in our
community.
You have a right to
be mad if we mess up. We own our
mistakes because without owning them we wouldn’t know how to fix them. And I am not making excuses, but I want to give you a little
perspective. We are a growing
organization with a lot going on. We are
running a capital campaign for a new building, continuing our No Kill
operations, our spay/neuter clinic, regular fundraising which includes two
major events and still trying to affect some new programs and changes with
ordinances in the community. Compared to
many non-profits we do a lot with very few people. One person for example is in charge of the
fundraising/development events and programs, the volunteers, the offsite
adoption events and customer service issues.
One person. In most non-profits
this job is being done by at least 2 -3 people.
But until we get into the new building and we have the office space and
the operational funding we can’t split that job out.
Every person in this organization is wearing many many hats
and we have a minimal amount of management staff. So with so many of us being pulled in so many
directions…mistakes are bound to happen.
So if we have made a mistake with the donor list or in any
other area, please consider giving us a call and letting us know your
perspective so we can make some changes to fix the problem if a mistake has
been made. But we are asking you to be nice about it. Sometimes we didn’t make a
mistake and we can give you information to help you understand why something
was done a certain way. But the worst
thing that could happen would be for you to stop giving or stop volunteering or
stop being a part of helping the animals in need in our community.
.
We see some horrible things here and we see some wonderful
things here. Please try and understand
the environment we are working in and the situations we deal with on a daily or
weekly basis and in return we will strive to do better.
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