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4 Tips for Successful Nonprofit Performance Reviews

In nonprofit work, every team member’s efforts directly impact your mission and your ability to serve your beneficiaries, whether they’re in charge of planning your organization’s events or overseeing your development initiatives. 

Conducting regular performance reviews allows you to check in with each of your employees and evaluate how well-aligned they are with your organizational goals. A performance review is also an opportunity to provide feedback on performance, discuss opportunities for professional growth, set goals for the future, and encourage further engagement and productivity. 

Monitoring performance and growth is an ongoing part of nonprofit human resources management, so your organization must have an effective, well-defined performance management process. In this short guide, we’ll walk through four tips you can leverage for better performance reviews. 

The Value of a 360-Degree Performance Review Model 

Before we dive into the tips below, let’s first explore the 360-degree performance review model that these tips are based around. 

The 360-degree review model encourages organizations to conduct more comprehensive performance evaluations by collecting feedback on that employee’s performance from a variety of sources. These might include peers, managers, and even external stakeholders, if appropriate. 

This approach offers a variety of benefits to nonprofits and their employees, including: 

  • Increased self-awareness for employees: By receiving feedback from multiple sources, employees get a deeper understanding of how their day-to-day actions, behavior, and efforts affect others. This can help motivate individuals to improve in their roles. 
  • Stronger team dynamics: When employees know they’ll be providing feedback on their colleagues’ performance, they’ll feel more invested in each other’s success. This can result in a stronger culture of collaboration, communication, and encouragement within teams.  
  • More balanced evaluations: Multiple evaluations and sources of feedback mitigate any bias that may arise from just a single assessment. This helps make performance assessments more objective and fair. 
  • Enhanced decision-making: With a fuller understanding of employees’ performance, your nonprofit can make more informed decisions about things like promotions and succession planning. 

When you adopt a 360-degree performance review model, it’s a natural next step to also ask employees to provide feedback and suggestions for your organization during performance review season. Employees can take this opportunity to alert you to the need for new technology, let you know that your new employee recognition program is doing wonders for morale, and more. 

Now, let’s dive into our tips for better performance reviews! 

1. Provide clear notice and instructions. 

Performance reviews can be stressful for both employees and managers alike. Aim to give both parties plenty of advance notice so they can prepare adequately.

Beyond just giving notice, leadership or your HR team should provide details about the performance review process to both managers and direct reports. These details should cover:

  • Expectations: Ensure that everyone in your organization understands the purpose of performance reviews and the specific goals and objectives (likely determined during the last performance review season) that they are being assessed against. Also, let team members know what preparation they’ll need to complete, whether that means simply filling out a self-evaluation and providing feedback on peers’ performances or, for managers, assembling compensation review documents.
  • Timeframes: When will various parts of the performance review process take place? Provide deadlines for when evaluations should be turned in, when performance review meetings will take place, and when compensation changes (if applicable) will go into effect. 
  • Resources: What resources can you provide to managers and employees to ensure performance reviews run smoothly? This could include standardized evaluation forms and updated and accurate job descriptions.

In the weeks leading up to performance reviews, host meetings during which managers can ask questions and review expectations for the process.

If your organization does not have a standardized performance review process in place, consider working with specialized HR consultants who can provide guidance. Whether you are looking to build your process from scratch or improve your current practices, these professionals have the experience and expertise to help you develop fair, comprehensive review procedures. Research your options by exploring RealHR Solutions’ recommended HR consulting firms

2. Gather performance feedback. 

Once you’ve provided clear guidelines and expectations for performance reviews, it’s time to start gathering performance feedback for each employee. On top of getting an employee’s completed self-evaluation, you’ll also need to get feedback from people they work with or those who are affected by their day-to-day activities in their role. 

Let’s walk through an example of who this feedback might come from if you were gathering it for your organization’s volunteer coordinator:  

  • Executive director: Can offer feedback on how the volunteer coordinator’s efforts to cultivate a strong volunteer program have affected the organization as a whole and helped build a community of support 
  • Department head or manager: Can provide insight into whether the volunteer coordinator has achieved recently agreed-upon goals and is aligned with the organization’s mission and strategic direction 
  • Department peers: Can speak to what it’s like to work with your volunteer coordinator on a day-to-day basis, providing insight on things like communication and collaboration skills
  • Cross-departmental peers: Can provide feedback on how well the volunteer coordinator communicates with their departments and how well the volunteer program integrates with and supports their work  
  • Volunteers: Can offer their thoughts on how the program coordinator recruits, manages, and supports them and what changes could be made to make the program more engaging 
  • External partners: Can give their thoughts on what it’s like to work with your volunteer coordinator to set up things like corporate volunteer days or community events and how effective the coordinator is at setting up and managing those partnerships 
  • Board members: Can discuss how effective the volunteer coordinator is in advancing the organization’s mission through volunteer engagement 

The list of people you turn to for feedback will look a little different for each employee. The main thing to remember is that you want to solicit input from people who interact with the employee regularly and can give you honest, thoughtful feedback that will help both the employee and your organization improve in the relevant area.

3. Hold performance review meetings. 

When the time comes to hold performance review meetings, ensure the managers at your organization are all prepared to follow a uniform process for each meeting: 

  • Walk through the performance review document. To keep performance review conversations on track, have managers compile all of the feedback and main talking points about the employee’s performance into one document they can walk through together. 
  • Provide both positive and constructive feedback. Managers should let employees know what they saw as “wins” during this performance period and what they saw as “challenges” or areas for improvement. A healthy balance of both praise and suggestions for growth will help motivate the employee to stick with your organization and perform to the best of their abilities in the new performance period. 
  • Talk about goals and targets for the new performance period. Together, the manager and employee should decide on new goals and performance targets for the new performance period. These should be realistic but achievable for the employee. This is also a good time to check in on career pathing plans. For instance, a manager may want to ask their employee if they’re interested in working toward a leadership position. 
  • Allow the employee to ask questions. Managers should always allow employees to ask questions during the performance review. This gives them the opportunity to clarify the feedback they’ve received, get a sense of their trajectory at the organization, and cover any other big-picture topics with their managers. 

If your employees are receiving raises or bonuses or there will be some other change to their compensation, consider covering those changes in a separate meeting. This is a best practice that allows you to keep the focus of performance review meetings on performance and professional growth rather than the numbers on a paycheck. 

4. Incorporate continuous feedback into your everyday work. 

Even after your formal performance review period comes to a close, your organization should still carry on the spirit of performance management throughout the year. One of the best ways you can do this is to ensure employees are continuously receiving feedback on their work. 

This can be done in one-on-one meetings with managers, employee recognition programs, or more informal performance check-ins. These opportunities allow your employees to keep their performance goals top of mind and continually improve how they do their jobs.

For example, say you have a major gifts officer who set a goal to build stronger relationships with four of their donor prospects. By regularly checking on their progress toward that goal and offering feedback on their efforts to meet it, they will be more likely to accomplish it.  

However, remember that even if you do embrace a continuous feedback model, it should be used alongside performance reviews as part of your larger performance management approach. Performance reviews are crucial, standardized checkpoints between employees and managers and as such, should not be abandoned even as ongoing feedback is incorporated.


Performance management, and specifically, performance reviews, are an integral part of a nonprofit’s HR function. By incorporating the tips above, you can strengthen your organization’s performance review process and ensure that you and your employees are truly moving the needle on your mission. 

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