How To Build a 90-Day Onboarding Plan for Nonprofit Staff
This is a guest blog by NEXUS
Welcoming a new team member at your nonprofit doesn't end when a candidate accepts your employment offer. Their experience in their first few weeks affects how quickly they adjust to your organization’s culture and find success in their new job.
While it is important to welcome new hires with a simple orientation covering the basics of your nonprofit and its daily operations, you will also need an in-depth onboarding process to prepare new team members to become high performers in their specific roles. In this guide, we'll cover how to build a comprehensive 90-day onboarding plan for your nonprofit's new hires.
Send Prep Materials Ahead of Day One
Your new hire's first day will go more smoothly when they already know what to expect. Before their start date, send your new team member a welcome packet and necessary paperwork to give them context about your organization. That way, they can spend their first day meeting the rest of your team and learning about their role rather than filling out forms.
In your welcome packet, you might include a short note from your executive director, a team directory with photos, and a schedule for the first week. Your new hire can then read through these materials at their own pace and show up for their first day already knowing a few names and faces.
However, don’t give new hires too much homework before they begin their job. A good rule of thumb is to send introductory materials and easy administrative tasks ahead of time while saving forms and information that need additional explanation for the first week when you can walk through them together.
Split Your Onboarding Plan Into Phases
Your nonprofit’s team is likely juggling many priorities outside of welcoming new hires, which means it can be easy to let onboarding fall by the wayside. To keep your new team member on track to succeed, Niche Academy’s guide to employee onboarding recommends taking a structured approach. Dividing your onboarding plan into phases and assigning an owner for each onboarding activity can help you make the most of both your new hire's time and your existing team's time.
For example, your onboarding plan's different stages might look like:
Day 1-30: Overview. Use the first month to introduce new team members to the specifics of your mission and culture. This is also the time to show them around the technology and processes they will use every day, so your tools and policies feel familiar before their training gets more specific.
Day 31-60: Role-specific training. After the welcome phase, begin training new hires on the procedures and expertise needed for their specific role. At this stage, you may focus on hands-on practice and role-playing conversations with any stakeholders that your new hire will regularly encounter in their work, such as donors. For instance, a new development associate could rehearse a thank-you call with a colleague during onboarding before making a real one.
Day 61-90: Greater ownership. Your onboarding plan’s final phase should focus on helping new hires feel comfortable working independently. Use your remaining onboarding sessions to help them set goals and check in on their progress with their manager.
A structured plan also clarifies your expectations for your new hires. By understanding what they should accomplish in each phase of the onboarding process, your new team members can more easily reach those intended outcomes and begin thriving.
Keep Training Varied and Organized
Keep onboarding fresh by including a variety of formats in your training. Not only will you encourage higher engagement from your new team members throughout the onboarding process, but you can also take advantage of the strengths of each different delivery method.
Consider incorporating the following formats into your onboarding:
In-person sessions and shadowing. Some lessons work best when new hires can ask questions or learn by doing. For instance, sitting in on a donor call or watching a colleague manage a volunteer shift shows them what their work should look like in practice.
Downloadable resources and checklists. Even if you cover a certain process in an in-person session, your new team members will likely want to look it up again later, and a downloadable document or checklist lets them review the steps whenever they need to. For example, you might create a checklist for setting up a new donor profile in your CRM, so your new hire doesn't have to remember how to fill out every field from a one-time demonstration.
Online training modules. Interactive online resources let new hires work at their own pace and test their knowledge along the way. They can also revisit a module before trying a task on their own.
To keep everything organized, consider storing any downloadable resources and training modules in a dedicated nonprofit learning management system (LMS). With the right system, you can track new hires’ progress through each phase of your onboarding plan, give them one place to find everything they need, and create new training materials. An LMS can even benefit your organization beyond onboarding by making it easier to provide upskilling opportunities for existing team members.
Build In Peer Mentorship Opportunities
Your new hire should be able to find support across your organization to build deeper connections with your team. Before onboarding begins, identify a team member in a similar role who is willing to serve as their mentor. Choose someone who is enthusiastic about mentorship and has room for it in their schedule.
Certain topics can feel awkward to bring up with a supervisor, but are much easier to discuss with a peer. Mentoring gives new hires someone to turn to for questions outside their manager's scope, such as how your team handles busy seasons or the best way to approach speaking up in a meeting.
To fit peer mentoring into your team members’ schedules, begin by building short, casual conversations, such as a coffee chat or a video call, into your onboarding plan.
Then, allow mentors to take ownership of scheduling check-ins to continue building relationships with new hires that last well beyond their first 90 days.
Assess and Adjust as You Go
There's no way to predict how a new hire's onboarding will go until it begins. For example, one person might pick up on how to manage volunteers or navigate your accounting system in a week, while another could take a little longer. Throughout your 90-day onboarding period, periodically check in on both your plan and your new hire's progress to see where you might need to make changes.
Solicit feedback from your new team member along the way. Ask questions like "What's been most helpful so far?" and "What do you wish you had learned sooner?" to show them that you care about their experience. Gathering input from your new team member can also help you improve your onboarding process for future hires to support greater performance and retention.
A well-thought-out plan for the first 90 days provides a positive onboarding experience and gives your existing team members a clear path to follow. To begin building your onboarding plan, brainstorm a list of things that new team members should know after one month with your organization. From there, you can identify your top onboarding priorities and keep them in mind as you sketch out the remaining stages of your 90-day plan.
