What Matters to Donors?
For too many decades, nonprofits leaders have been plagued by the fear of overhead: too high and risk losing donors; too low and risk insufficient capacity to do all that needed doing. Then, Dan Pallotta did his famous TedTalk, the Overhead Myth letters came out from the three watchdog groups and Bridgespan and the Ford Foundation jointly suggested that it was time for donors to revamp their funding paradigm.
But, did things change? Sadly, no. Yes, there was a greater willingness to discuss the absurdity of Read more
No Such Thing as Overhead
In a comment on a recent discussion board post, a master’s student of mine commented that the three signers of the well-known “Overhead Myth” letters had taken a great risk and made great progress in doing so. I delicately questioned just what she thought the risk was and just what she saw as the progress made. I pointed out that the first letter was written in 2013, the second in 2014. Here we were, three years after the second letter hit the airwaves, and more 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
