On a Mission
In the past week, I have read 69 mission statements. Perhaps it is a Guiness Book of Records triumph, but that wasn’t the purpose. Perhaps it is one of the top 10 worst things I have ever done, but masochism was not the point either. It was done in response to an assignment I gave my graduate students: critique three mission statements. That assignment will most definitely be revised before next semester. I simply cannot put myself through it again.
#157382685 / gettyimages.com
While reading 69 of Read more
Who do you Trust?
Election season is looming and I’m thinking about ethics (why would that be?)
Trust: a simple word, but a complex phenomenon and not easy to win and maintain. Yet I am reminded on an almost daily basis how much nonprofits take it—yes, the very lifeblood of their organizations–for granted. I am amazed at how easily they trifle with it, ignore it, presume its steadfastness while doing things that blatantly dare others to challenge it and then open the doors wide so that it is so easy Read more
Not so Benign Neglect
Depending upon your age, you will no doubt remember the frenzy caused by the title of a policy written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who at the time was working in the Nixon White House, on loan from Harvard University. Writing as an advisor on urban affairs, Moynihan proposed a policy of benign neglect to address the racial tensions of 1960. His thinking was that if we stopped attention and focus on the problem, things would, at best improve in the natural course of progress, or, Read more
Nonprofit Doesn’t Mean No Profit
Not too long ago I got a call from a woman who wanted to know all about our services and how we could help her—with the expectation that all of this help would be for free, of course, because, duh!, we are a nonprofit and she is a nonprofit. Turns out, her organization had just become a nonprofit.
#173555224 / gettyimages.com
Nothing new there, we get those calls all of the time. But hers wasn’t a new organization. Nope. Hers was a conversion organization, going from a Read more
The Real World
#453943866 / gettyimages.com
There is a parallel, of which I am all too frequently reminded, between working in the nonprofit sector and being an early feminist of the second half of the 20th century: just when you think you are making progress, something smacks you in the face and says, “Hah! Gotcha, dummie!” Recently, I got a double whammy of both. Michelle Nunn is the Democratic nominee for the US Senate seat from Georgia, and the on-leave CEO of Points of Light, an almost $30 million Read more
Pride Goeth
#6285-000073 / gettyimages.com
I do believe that at birth we are all tabula rasa, and it is nurture that takes over and shapes our ways of thinking, doing, responding, etc. When people say, it is “human nature to do …,” I cringe. I know nothing that is human nature. (Instinct and human nature are not one, as the former is something that we all do, as definitions say, without “knowing” or thinking; we just do).
As the world threatens to crumbles around us, I am struck by Read more
Dirty Money
#106670363 / gettyimages.com
When are people going to learn that politics and nonprofits just don’t go together? It is messy; it even gets ugly. It complicates things where, truthfully, additional layers of complication don’t need to be added. Plus, it always raises eyebrows. And that’s never a good thing.
Recently, The Philadelphia Inquirer did an article on the philanthropy of media and cable giant Comcast. Dollar-wise, Comcast is a good philanthropist: according to its own promotion materials, it has given $25 million to charity since its inception Read more
It’s All About Me
#129748398 / gettyimages.com
Recently, I had a conversation with my Millennial niece, nephew and his significant other. Well, at least I tried, but the conversation didn’t go far. We were talking about generations and I just happened to refer to them as Millenials, which brought a very strong and decisive smack from the significant other. She was certain she and the others were not Milennials. Only showing her the birth year range, generally placed at those born in the early 1980s to early 2000s, got her Read more
Let’s Talk Philanthropy
#166260846 / gettyimages.com
Recently, I got a question from a young executive director of an organization clearly in the start-up phase of its lifecycle. The board, too, is young. And, as so many young people are, they are very earnest and concerned with doing the right thing in the right way. But the subject of the question she asked is not a young person’s or young organization’s question; it is a question that I get so regularly in some form, I am almost tired of answering Read more
Nonprofit Status for Everybody
#170009325 / gettyimages.com
For people like me who love fireworks, early July is always exciting time. It seems no matter where you are, you don’t have to wait until the 4th to see the displays of color in the air and hear the bang and whistle of exploding fireworks. And this year, the IRS treated the nonprofit sector to its own special brand of fireworks.
It came on July 1 and it wasn’t blue and gold and shimmering and oh-so-wonderful in the sky, but rather fell more Read more
