Unburden Yourself to the Nonprofit Confessional
It seem I have more to say about social media and if nonprofits are using it smartly and wisely. So, here is some research fodder for your social media strategy.
Item one: the human touch still matters! At least according to research by Hyojung Park, a doctoral student in journalism at the University of Missouri. Park showed study participants mock-ups of the “social media websites” of real for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Some sites just presented the organization—no names, no pictures, just the organization as a whole, Read more
Chasing the Future
This past week, I had the great pleasure to attend my niece’s graduation from one of the top business schools in the country. This school annually awards one-year fellowships to eight deserving graduates which allow them to spend a year applying their new-found knowledge in one of eight nonprofits. Some, my niece tells me, as she is one of this year’s class of eight, even become employees of the nonprofit after the fellowships conclude. That’s the good news.
The bad news came at a reception that Read more
Social Media Smashing Your Face In?
I remember the first time the call went out that pieces of some space exploration equipment were going to be falling from the sky, landing we knew not where. There were projections which—I truly thought then and now—were more hopes and spin put out there with the intent to diffuse anxiety about the “sky falling in”—that it would land in the desert or the ocean. But the reality was, the “experts” had no clue. And I so remember at the time ranting at the “experts” Read more
Spirit of Philanthropy
“Teach your children well.” A big Crosby Stills Nash and Young fan, I sang that line hundreds, if not thousands, of times in my “youth”. I sang that line thousands of time to myself as I raised my son. And it has flashed through my brain thousands of times more as I witnessed parents doing well and not so well with teaching their children and it has inspired some previous blogs
It had been rolling around my head a lot of late as I continue to Read more
Strategic Planning the Right Way
Strategic planning just may be the most important policy a board of directors, executing its governance responsibilities, may create. And yet, far too often, it isn’t done “right”. Why?
Let me be clear about two things. First, a board does not create a strategic plan by itself. And second, there is no one “right” way to do strategic planning; there is, however, a “right” cast of characters and order of appearance.
When I say a board doesn’t create a strategic plan by itself, I mean just that. Read more
Marginalizing Board Members
I have no time for an executive director who intentionally shuts out the organization’s board. Putting it succinctly: you are a self-aggrandizing, stupid and, might I even go so far as to say evil person? You know who you are.
Whenever you think it necessary, you say all of the things you think you are supposed to say: all the different variations of “Woe is me. My board doesn’t do anything!” You make all of the right noises and say how hard you’ve tried to get Read more
Time to Brew the Tea
When it comes to reading, I often come intentionally late to the party. I figure if everyone else is talking about it, I don’t need to be reading it right then as the word is getting out. Which is why I find myself now, five years after its publication, reading Three Cups of Tea. It is, as everyone said, a nice read—at least as far as I’ve gotten.
There are many things that one can take away from this book and Greg Mortenson’s story; Read more
Blow Hard
I feel sort of shallow saying this, but don’t judge me until you read it all: what boiled my blood in reading The Philadelphia Inquirer article reporting on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Orchestra voting to declare bankruptcy and file for Chapter 11 reorganization was not the fact that the Board was risking losing this city—and the world—a world class orchestra.
Very, very sad, but it wasn’t what revved my juices. It wasn’t the fact that the Orchestra was in the position of needing Read more
Let’s Have a Party!
I recently ran into a funder I hadn’t seen in a while. In response to the standard question of “How are you?” she responded with a roll of the eyes and “This is ‘death by gala’ season.” We both laughed, but it is so, so true. Name the time of day you wish to eat, and there is a gala waiting—breakfast, lunch, drinks, dinner, dessert? It is all there. And it isn’t just killing funders; it is driving executive directors and staff over the edge.
There Read more
