Find the Fraud
They are, if you will excuse me, a dime a dozen—or perhaps in these economic times, a penny a dozen. The headlines publicizing new found fraud at nonprofits. No doubt the stories are read, a shudder felt and then a huge sigh of relief and the thought: “Thank goodness it isn’t us!”
Or is it and it just hasn’t been discovered yet? The reality is that none of us is immune from this possibility. Thus, all of us should be doing everything we possibly can—even if Read more
Creative Genius from Hardship?
As the media begins to warm up to the end-of-the-year giving frenzy when we see the annual stories on what should a donor look for in judging a nonprofit, we can expect to see coverage of salaries of nonprofit leaders, questioning if certain executive directors make way too much. (Well, maybe, if nonprofit leaders full of themselves hadn’t decided they needed to be called CEO instead of Executive Director they would have flown more below the radar. What’s in a name, anyway?) I’ve stopped counting Read more
Idiot Says What?
It is time for a basic lesson in research and the creation of sound conclusions. Too many people are publicly exposing their stupid sides because they simply don’t understand the basics of how to draw conclusions.
So, let me give you a primer.
NUMBER ONE: We never, ever generalize our learning from one subject to the whole group into which that one subject might fall. In other words, experiencing the inefficiencies of one nonprofit does not allow us to generalize and conclude that all nonprofits are inefficient. Read more
When Boring is Better
Developing policies are a bore and a waste of precious time. At least that seems to be the thinking of most board members, as demonstrated by the amount of time and energy boards commit to their creation, reliance upon and monitoring. And yet, they are among the most important things a board should be doing as they provide for clarity, increased efficiency and, most importantly, allow the board to ensure that an organization’s values are both practiced and protected. Along the way, they do a Read more
Saving the Sector
This is a message for all executive directors, from one to another. If you don’t stop right now and look at your own performance, you run the risk of not only scaring off and pushing away all of the emerging leaders in your organization but in the sector as well.
For several years, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with and collecting data from emerging leaders from across the sector in terms of organizational mission, age, size, tenure of their executive director, etc. I Read more
Does the Punishment Fit the Crime?
The 13 September issue of Newsweek had a headline that grabbed—not merely caught—my attention: “Do fines EVER make corporations change?” And the answer, as you soon will learn, if you didn’t already know, was at this rate, how could they?
Newsweek provided data on three companies.
BP: 2007 was its worst year in the fines department, fined a total of $391 million dollars for such behavior as “illegally manipulating energy markets, breaking environmental laws, and anticompetitive practices.” In 2007, BP had revenue of $284 billion. Thus, its Read more
The Golden Fleece Lives on
I don’t know if the late Senator William Proxmire and Thomas Szasz, MD, ever met, but they had a lot in common. Proxmire was a Democratic Senator (and Hill School graduate) from Wisconsin from 1957-1989. He’s perhaps best known as the creator of the Golden Fleece Award which he gave to government funded research projects that he thought were a waste, as they merely demonstrated what everyone already knew. Szasz is a psychiatrist and academic who long ago infuriated many of his colleagues in psychiatry Read more
A Framework for Culture Change
Culture change is hard; there is no getting around that. But if you have reached the point where you are talking about culture change—or if you like the softer euphemism of culture shift–you are past the point of needing one. So now the challenge is to do it.
What am I talking about? Oh, I’m talking about that culture of no accountability that allows some people to not be accountable for doing all of their job while others work double time. I’m talking about that culture Read more
Who is Sean Coffey and Why Should I Care?
I don’t know Sean Coffey—don’t know anything about him—but if I were a resident of the State of New York, he’d have my vote for Attorney General—hands down!
Let me go on record saying that I am generally not a one-issue voter. It just isn’t smart electoral behavior. But I am so sick and tired of lawmakers who abuse nonprofits for their own benefit and, in so doing, damage the reputation and work environment of the millions of nonprofits who work so hard to do such Read more
Take the Oath
In May 2009, a group of Harvard MBA graduates of the Class of 2009 created the MBA Oath, intended to be the management equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath. By signing the MBA Oath, that MBA graduate is promising to abide by a number of standards, from not advancing” personal interests at the expense of [her/his] enterprise or society” to upholding both the letter and spirit of laws and contracts to refraining from business practices “harmful to society,” among other things. And a signer understands that Read more
