The Art of Collaboration: Ten Ways to Facilitate Inclusive Decision Making in Your Nonprofit

Jul 14

Nonprofit leadership development hinges on the ability to bring people together while still moving projects forward. In this episode of Learning for Good, I dive into how inclusive decision making can elevate your training and leadership initiatives without stalling progress.

Using real-life examples, I share ten practical strategies to lead collaborative projects while staying focused on outcomes. You’ll learn how to clarify roles, create psychological safety, and ensure that every voice is heard, especially when implementing learning and development strategies across teams.

▶️ Key Points:

01:20 How working with nonprofits differs from working with other industries

01:55 The challenges of collaboration

02:53 10 Ways to facilitate inclusive decision making in your projects

Nonprofit Collaboration

One of the biggest strengths of the nonprofit sector is how collaborative it can be. We seek out input. We value lived experience. We make space for diverse voices.

But if we’re honest?
Sometimes it gets messy.

Projects stall.
Roles blur.
No one knows who’s making the final call.

Many nonprofits equate inclusive decision-making with inviting everyone to every conversation.

But when everyone owns the decision…
no one does.

That’s why clarity is non-negotiable. Not just about who is “on the team,” but who:

Has input
Has influence
Has the final decision

In episode 142 of Learning for Good, I explore what it really means to practice inclusive decision-making – without falling into the trap of decision-by-committee.

10 Practices for Inclusive Decision Making

Here are 10 practices I use to keep decision-making clear, inclusive, and efficient in learning and development projects that you can apply to your own nonprofit projects:

Lesson 1: Start every project with a kickoff where you can set expectations.

First, you need a kickoff. Kickoffs lay the foundation for an efficient and effective project. They allow you to review the project scope, timelines, meeting schedules, and most importantly, roles and responsibilities.

We need to be clear on roles and responsibilities up front.

Swipe my project kickoff process here.

Lesson 2: Make sure everyone who needs to be in the room is in the room.

During my project kickoff, I want to make sure we’ve identified all the possible voices that need to be heard during the project.

Just because we are being inclusive doesn't mean everyone is involved, but we do need to be intentional and make sure we have diversity of thought in the room.

People you might want to include:

Those who are impacted by the project
Those who will be expected to implement
People who will hold lived experience
People who have expertise to share

The actual people will vary by project.

But for a learning project, I might have:

a project sponsor
a subject matter expert
a key business partner

And we might use specific meetings - like focus groups - to hear the voices of those impacted by the project.

I've found a good project team size to be 3-4 people with the expectation that we will bring others in as needed.

Lesson 3: Get clear on roles and responsibilities.

Again, this can be discussed up front during the kickoff meeting.

We want to answer the question: who is doing what during the project?

It's important that everyone understands the expectations.

Lesson 4: Get clear on how decisions will be made.

This is part of clarifying roles and responsibilities.

I worked for a Senior VP once who said, “you get a voice, not a vote.”

Meaning we could give our input – and she wanted it – but the ultimate decision was hers.

It was clear.

So who gets the decision and how?

Is this directive? If you have a lot of voices at the table, your decision making probably won’t be directive. There are decisions that need to be directive though. That just means the leader makes the decision without input.

Is this consultative? When decisions are consultative, everyone discusses and the leader decides based on that input. This is the voice, not a vote example.
Is this a consensus? Using consensus means everyone decides together. This one is hard to do. What happens if there isn’t agreement?

For me, as a learning and leadership development pro, most of my projects are consultative. We include lots of voices throughout the project. But someone owns the decision at the end.

I find this to be one of the easiest ways to work, but there are definitely cases for directive or consensus decision-making.

Here’s what really matters most: everyone knows how the decision will be made and who owns it.

When we don’t have this clarity is when decisions get stalled or people get frustrated.

We need to be clear.

Lesson 5: Co-create group norms.

We want to answer questions like:

How do you want to be together as a group?
What does participation mean?
What are the expectations you have of yourself? Of each other?

It’s important to discuss these norms up front and agree on them.

Lesson 6: Include a variety of ways for people to have their voice heard.

I use a lot of open questions in meetings. Open questions are great for discussion.

But, you want to create a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing.

Sometimes this means small group discussions. Sometimes this means dot voting where people can use sticky dots to share their opinions. Sometimes this means surveys that provide anonymity.

We need to make sure everyone feels comfortable speaking and sharing their thoughts and ideas.

Lesson 7: Use empathy.

We want to always be thinking about others.

Who is impacted by this decision?
In what ways?
Who might be left out?
Who aren’t we thinking about?

From a learning perspective, one great example of this is designing for accessibility.

We have to understand how people will experience what we create so we can design in a way that is accessible for all.

Lesson 8: Document the decision.

This is the one where I'm the weakest honestly. I do it, but it doesn’t come as naturally for me.

Document the decision.

I don’t know how many times on collaborative projects we’ve circled back to the same discussion. It’s natural. But if a decision has been made, it isn’t efficient. So when decisions get made, document them clearly.

I worked for a client last year who needed to update some existing courses for educators. There were a lot of moving pieces and parts, so they had a project manager dedicated to our project. This project manager was SO good about documenting our decisions. And sure enough, every time we would go back and resurface a discussion, she would go back to her notes and let us know what was decided. It was so helpful.

Lesson 9: Schedule a project debrief.

When you reach the end of the project, you want to learn from the experience.

Schedule a debrief so you can hear from everyone on the team.

What went well?
What could be improved?

Learn my project debrief process here.

Lesson 10: Add personal reflection and planning.

After the debrief, spend some time reflecting on what people shared and what changes you need to make in the future to ensure inclusive decision-making in your future projects.

Lessons for Learning and Development Pros

Inclusive decision-making isn’t just a leadership skill; it’s a project success strategy.

When you’re building training, designing leadership programs, or rolling out org-wide initiatives, your job is to:

Honor diverse input
Prevent ambiguity
Keep forward momentum

You can do all three—with the right structure and processes.

To learn more about inclusive decision-making, tune into episode 142 of the Learning for Good podcast.

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