Why You Must Continually Reinforce Your Culture
- Tom Iselin
- Mar 20, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Dec 12, 2025
This blog provides an overview of the importance of reminding staff and board of the culture they worked so hard to adopt.
Why You Must Continually Reinforce Your Culture
Today I want to talk about why it’s so important to remind staff and board members of the culture they’ve chosen to adopt.
Once you establish a culture, your work isn’t done. Culture must be nurtured, reinforced, and kept front and center—because people forget. It’s that simple.
If you don’t actively remind people of your cultural facets and your culture statement, they will eventually collect dust—just like many strategic plans do. And we’ve all seen that happen.
Culture Must Stay Front and Center
If you want culture to stay alive, it must remain visible and relevant in the daily life of your nonprofit.
Staff should regularly discuss how culture influences:
Operations
Administration
Fundraising
Programming
Morale
Performance
Board members should intentionally discuss organizational, board, and staff culture during:
Board meetings
Strategic planning sessions
Orientation and training
Volunteers should also understand the culture you’ve adopted and how it applies to their work. Your volunteer coordinator plays a critical role in reinforcing this connection.
While cultural reminders may seem trivial, staff and board members often appreciate them—and need them.
Practical Ways to Reinforce Culture
When I ran Sun Valley Adaptive Sports, I used simple but effective reminders.
Sometimes I sent staff an email highlighting one cultural facet and explaining how it applied to a current project. Other times, I facilitated board discussions about culture—encouraging board members to work alongside staff on volunteer projects or to host social activities that strengthened relationships.
The more frequently you talk about your culture—its values, benefits, and expectations—the more likely people are to adopt and uphold it.
Leadership Is the Most Powerful Culture Reminder
The strongest cultural reminder isn’t an email, a poster, or a meeting—it’s leadership behavior.
Culture is reinforced when leaders live it.
If openness is a cultural facet, and supervisors openly share personal stories, challenges, and aspirations, staff will follow suit.
If fundraising is a board expectation, and the board chair actively makes donor connections, speaks at events, and volunteers at the annual gala, board members will be far more likely to fulfill their obligations.
Culture becomes real when people see it modeled consistently.
Culture Is a Shared Responsibility
Sustaining culture isn’t top-down or bottom-up—it’s circular.
Leaders draw the circle early and keep tracing it throughout the life of the nonprofit. Everyone shares responsibility for maintaining it.
If you want culture to remain front and center, you must continually find ways to remind people—through conversation, action, and example.
Takeaways
Culture fades if it isn’t intentionally reinforced.
Regular discussion keeps culture relevant and actionable.
Staff, board members, and volunteers all need cultural reminders.
Simple tactics—emails, meetings, shared projects—are highly effective.
Leadership behavior is the most powerful cultural reinforcement.
Sustaining culture is a shared, ongoing responsibility.
Summary
Establishing a culture is only the first step—sustaining it requires consistent reinforcement. By intentionally reminding staff, board members, and volunteers of the values and behaviors you’ve adopted, culture stays active and meaningful. When leaders model the culture through their actions, it becomes embedded in daily operations and decision-making. Culture doesn’t sustain itself—it thrives when it’s nurtured, shared, and lived every day.
Tom Iselin
Rated One of America’s Best Board Retreat
and Strategic Planning Facilitators
About the Author
Tom Iselin is recognized as one of America’s leading authorities on high-performance nonprofits. He has built nine sector-leading nonprofits and two software companies, written six books, sits on multiple boards, and has been rated one of America’s Best Board Retreat and Strategic Planning Facilitators. His work on nonprofit strategy, board leadership, and culture has been featured on CNN, Nightline, and in Newsweek.
Tom is the president of First Things First, a firm specializing in board retreats, strategic planning services, fundraising strategy, and executive coaching for nonprofit CEOs.
Board Retreats & Strategic Planning
If you’re looking for a board retreat facilitator or strategic planning facilitator who has been in the trenches and understands real-world nonprofit challenges, Tom can help your board gain clarity, build alignment, and create an actionable plan that improves performance and impact. His sessions propel organizations to the next level of performance and impact . . . and they're fun!
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