Ambassador Expectations

First and foremost, ambassadors “walk the talk” by demonstrating “performance matters” in your own work and actively encouraging others to do the same—in your own words, time, and way. The cornerstone expectation is that “As an ambassador, I will participate in some way.”

As an ambassador, I commit to my fellow ambassadors that I will:

• Serve as an ambassador of the community’s purpose in my own work, communities, and networks by:
  • Buying into the need to trigger a mindshift that mission and performance are inextricably linked
  • Inspiring, supporting, and convincing nonprofit and public-sector leaders (and their stakeholders) to accept that “performance matters”
  • Incorporating the community’s messaging—anchored in the definition of high performance and its seven disciplines—to deliver a consistent, ongoing, and unified message to the field
  • Representing the community’s purpose, products, and positions in speaking engagements, planning retreats, conferences, informal conversations, personal emails, and social media channels, when I can.
• Be a contributor, learner, and beneficiary of the community’s online forum by:
  • Being reasonably present in the online forum—asking and responding to requests for assistance or information, contributing to conversation prompts that help build relationships and the social fabric of the community. I will contribute if and when I want and in my own way, with the expectation that my participation in the online forum contributes to the community 70-20-10 rule of participation:
    • 70% observe—you read or observe but don’t contribute
    • 20% comment—you respond, question, exchange, share, or suggest in dialogue with others in the community
    • 10% create content—you are part of the community’s collaborative-development backbone.

(It doesn’t matter in which of these online participation levels you engage; you just need to be in one of them. Episodic observation counts, but no one should be completely dormant. To date, ambassador participation has been higher than the 70-20-10 ratio, noteworthy for a community of our size.)

• • Contributing to the collective IQ of the community by sharing specific knowledge and experience in building high-performance organizations, whether in leadership, management, program, financial health, culture, performance, evaluation, etc., when I can.
  • Communicating in a way that is respectful, culturally sensitive, and in line with our equity and inclusion efforts.

• Contribute to growing the community and the relationships on which it is built by:
  • Lending a hand to nominate ambassador candidates, invite those you know, participate with others in regional gatherings, make connections for other ambassadors and help build the social fabric of the community, when I can.
  • Sharing examples of my efforts in the field to promote the community’s messages of high performance, products, and positions to share with others
  • Responding to short queries, surveys, and requests for feedback to vet proposed candidates, review and critique new products, and gain insights on issues facing the community.
  • Keeping the community’s priority and diversity efforts in mind when I nominate. The priorities are:
    • People of color
    • Nonprofit service delivery leaders
    • Public sector leaders
    • Millennials