Top 10 tips for engaging an Encore Fellow from the corporate sector

1. Make sure the match is right.
   Start by aligning the Encore Fellow’s skills and expertise with your needs,
   but go beyond to look for personality fit, flexibility, good listening and
   communication skills, willingness to learn, self-confidence, adaptability
   and commitment to your mission.
2. Focus on high-priority, high-impact work.
   Identify your top capacity-building needs and develop an initial scope of work,
   expected impact, qualifications, skill sets, timeframe and roles. Once the
   fellow has been selected, jointly create a detailed statement of work with
   clear milestones, tasks, and supervisory and team roles. Don’t underestimate
   what you can accomplish during the fellow’s term. A fellow can creatively
   drive significant changes in your organization if you encourage autonomy
   and identify a clear body of work.
3. Be open to new and unfamiliar approaches.
   Be flexible in using your fellow’s skills. Start with substantive, meaningful
   work which directly impacts your success, but allow room for exploration
   of new areas of contribution. Acknowledge that there may be tension from
   applying a business-like approach to your work, but look for ways to sharpen
   and complement your nonprofit approach.
4. Establish open and regular communications.
   Invest time up front, even before the fellowship begins, to get to know the
   fellow and develop familiarity with your organization. Be transparent about
   any issues. Reveal all (well beyond your own practiced image of your organization)
   in order for the fellow to get to know you and your organization, to assess
   your needs and help you get the results you want.
5. Prepare and engage your staff.
   Prepare your staff in advance to welcome the fellow, engage him or her in the
   work, be open to different approaches and actively learn from the experience.
   Make sure staff members support the need for a new team member and the fellow’s
   role delineation.
6. Accelerate the fellow’s route to productivity.
   Recognize that a fellow can have a “game changing” impact, but not without
   bringing the fellow up to speed on your mission and operations and building
   staff trust and buy-in. Develop an on-boarding process for the first couple
   of months and expect this period to be a time of transition. Once the fellow
   gets traction, anticipate high-level productivity due to high-level expertise.
   Revisit and realign the scope of work as the process unfolds. Take time to
   figure out how you will sustain the work after the fellow is gone.
7. Provide leadership to assimilate the fellow into your nonprofit.
   As director, establish a direct reporting relationship with your fellow, but
   also make sure you take steps to integrate the fellow into your overall organization
   – your board, staff and perhaps even your volunteers. Engage your fellow
   in hands-on work, not just strategic-level thinking. By embedding the fellow
   in your organization, you’ll gain a valuable “outside” perspective with “inside”
   understanding. Once assimilated, a fellow can become an adviser, mentor,
   designer, evaluator and more.
8. Take care of basics.
   Make sure the fellow has a desk, a computer, phone, email address and business
   cards in order to guarantee productivity and identity with your nonprofit.
9. Support and share in your fellow’s learning.
   Create a professional development plan for your fellow. Provide a thorough
   and formal agency orientation at the start. Participate in learning, share
   access and connections, and provide regular insights throughout the fellowship.
10. Think beyond the duration of the Encore Fellowship.
    By engaging an Encore Fellow, you not only get a great work result, you also
    develop a new leader for the nonprofit sector – either for your own organization
    or for another. Help facilitate the next steps in the encore career trajectory.