The Art of Relationships
Some expressions still have traction after a couple of hundred years, case in point: the old English aphorism of “Penny wise and pound foolish.” It’s applicable to a trend I’m seeing in today’s nonprofits of eliminating development staff and replacing it with consultants.
Certainly there are aspects of fundraising work that can be done just as well (and sometimes even better) by consultants. Grantwriting is one of those things. There is so much art and science that goes into good grantwriting, that hiring that expertise on Read more
Keeping the Success in Succession Planning
While preparing to do some capacity building work with a client, I was enthusiastically told about the capacity building workshops that had already been provided to the organization’s members.
The key presenter of these prior workshops was a renowned expert within this organization’s mission specialty. One of his messages was that everyone on the board must find their own replacements before they can leave. That’s just so wrong as a practice and sends some of the worst messages possible about board functioning and performance. But what Read more
Making Change
The history of nonprofits has always been about helping individuals, but was equally about holistic change–changing systems and community. Somewhere along the way, have nonprofit gotten caught up in the cult of “me, forgetting the us and focusing solely on my organization, my work, my goals.
One key consequence of this attitude is the unnecessary expansion of the sector that results from individuals insisting on starting their own new nonprofit to put into practice their idea. Except rarely is the idea new. Even more rarely does Read more
Is your Organization an Endangered Species?
Even as you’re still processing your year-end appeal donations, it’s past time to be thinking about next year and just how well you are really doing in the area of fund development. Can you state that you fully understand the long-term implications of your fund development position?
A staggering fact brought to us by the Nonprofit Finance Fund: nearly 50 of nonprofit organizations do not have sustainable funding models and are heading for extinction in the next three years.
In fact, the end of the year dollars Read more
Communicating about Nonprofit Talent
Rusty Morgen Stahl, director of the Talent Philanthropy Project at NYU, wrote an article entitled “Talent Philanthropy: Investing in Nonprofit People to Advance Nonprofit Performance.” The article is a good one with an invaluable end goal of persuading donors of the righteousness of the article’s subtitle: investing in people improves performance. But the title diverted my attention for the first five plus pages until I finally got to the author’s definition of talent philanthropy.
It is—drum roll, please—“intentional philanthropic investment in grantee and nonprofit talent to Read more
Giving Tuesday. Bah! Humbug!
How many email, tweets or other communiques did you receive about “Giving Tuesday? ”
The Nonprofit Center chose to refrain from sending any pleas on its own, or anyone else’s behalf. Some may wonder why thinking that our role as unofficial spokesperson for the sector demanded it.
Our reasoning was why would we want to be part of the hordes? Why would we want to waste time drafting a pitch to entreat people to give to us while thousands of other nonprofits around the country are doing Read more
Giving Women
Recently, I watched The New York Times’ Op-Doc “Great Expectations for Female Lawyers” After reading the documentarian’s introduction, I was quite nervous as to what I would see and hear. I shouldn’t have been, as, unfortunately, I knew exactly what to expect: as professional women, we still have miles to go before we rest. Female attorneys still have to make choices about career, family, balance; they are still not climbing the ladder at a pace with men; they are still a minority at the top Read more
An Ounce of Prevention
Recently I was asked by an attorney to be an expert witness in a case for his client, a nonprofit’s board of directors that was being sued by a former board member. This ex-board member accused the board of neglecting its financial oversight responsibilities thereby allowing an employee to embezzle almost three-quarters of a million dollars. Additional claims also were related to the board’s failure to do its job.
This was not my first introduction to this organization. Seven years ago, a now former board member Read more
It’s All Relative
The Urban Institute recently came out with the results of its assessment of donor retention using 2011-2012 data. The conclusion? Nonprofits are losing donors at a rate that does not allow them to keep pace: for every 100 new and recovered donors gained, 105 were lost between 2011 and 2012; the year before the gain was 100 to a loss of 107. This, according to the study, is a marked contrast with the years prior to the recession when there was a net positive year- Read more
I Teach Philanthropy
Dan Pallotta’s been getting a lot of attention lately. While I find his message a bit of “heard that before,” I still enjoy hearing his message because of the different ways I receive it. My response varies depending upon what I’ve been working on or thinking or talking about; like rereading a good book, wondering how you missed something in an earlier read.
Because I’ve been thinking a lot about philanthropy, his question, whether explicit or not, on who is the true philanthropist really resonated. Who? Read more
