A Nonprofit Mash Note
l am not a romantic. I think Valentine’s Day sends the wrong message: only really appreciate the ones you love once a year, as opposed to every day. So, call me hypocritical for suggesting that we should all write a valentine to the nonprofit sector. Here’s mine.
I am propelled to do this in light of a recent conversation my Masters students have been having in response to an assignment. It is an assignment I give every time I teach this class, and students have Read more
Where are the Level 5 Leaders?
Having just finished teaching a class on governance where we talk about the should haves and the ought tos, as well as the realities, the one that has grabbed my attention this round is the paucity of quality leaders—at both the paid and volunteer levels. In so many ways, leaders are, for the most part, at best average, and at worst well below.
Perhaps the most basic of the deficiencies is the failure to understand their jobs. It doesn’t take long working in a nonprofit to Read more
A real working board
Twice a year I get to revisit the debacle that was Penn State’s board back at the time of Sandusky, as I use the Freeh Report as case study for my graduate students. Each time I reread it or discuss it, I renew my belief that I expressed the very first time that I wrote about the Freeh Report in 2012, that this should be required reading by every nonprofit board member. And, then, every board should have a thorough conversation, identifying all of the mistakes the Read more
Owning your Decisions
Sometimes, peeves are not merely annoying things; sometimes, they reveal some much bigger issues in play.
As someone who runs a master’s program in nonprofit leadership, which I also teach, it should come as no surprise that I spend a lot of time thinking about leadership: what it means to be a great leader, how leadership helps and harms, the tools of a great leader, etc. And, yes, how good leaders balance their plates.
As I’ve noted before, I really struggle with one of those time management Read more
Accepting Board Underperformance
One of my favorite classes in the eight-week online sessions of the La Salle Master’s in Nonprofit Leadership is in nonprofit governance. After each class, I relish reading and responding to each of the more than 200 student posts per discussion board.
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At the start of the session, I tell students, all of whom work for various nonprofits, that they are going to find this a very difficult class. Yes, there is a lot of work, but that’s not why Read more
You’re Overhead
This semester, I taught one class in nonprofit management in La Salle’s MBA program and another in its Masters in Nonprofit Leadership program. And while I have taught the former for about 10 years, this is only the third time I taught this in the Nonprofit Leadership Master’s. But this was the first time I have had the opportunity to teach them simultaneously, and it was interesting to compare the two student groups.
At the end of the semester, I learned that the most influential activity Read more
