Failed Promises
One of my big laments about our sector is that we are not altruistic. We think about our own nonprofit, but not about the sector as a whole. There is a place and a need for both. Ironically, a lesson that too few organization leaders have come to understand is that it is impossible to be a leader of a successful organization if the leader isn’t always thinking about the organization in the context of that larger sector, as well as the larger society.
In Read more
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
Charity Case
In March 2013, Dan Pallotta’s iconic TedTalk, “The way we think about charities is dead wrong,” was released; since that time, it has received over 4 million views. If you aren’t among those four million, and nor are the staff and board of your organization, correct that oversight immediately.
In June of that same year, the three nonprofit watchdog groups (GuideStar, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, and Charity Navigator), released the first of their two letters trying to debunk the overhead myth—the very thing that they 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
