I Give to Charity
How do you say this without coming off like a spoil sport? I really am not in love with all of these “jump on the bandwagon” campaigns and new websites that let you buy whatever you want -from your routine shopping at Sam’s Club to your jewelry and shoes to your home redecorations at special online sites–while giving some percentage of the purchase price to charity.
On the surface, this sounds great. How could I possibly be against that when I call myself a champion of Read more
Ink on my Fingers
Funny what we will and won’t do, to what we can and can’t adjust. A voracious reader, I love my e-books. I can take as many books as I want wherever I go to fit my mood, whatever it is, and I don’t need to schlep an extra suitcase. I will not, however, read a newspaper on line. Couldn’t figure out why, what was stopping me, until recently.
It was the May 5 issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that helped me to understand why. Online, Read more
We’re in This Together
I usually don’t play favorites within the nonprofit sector. I advocate on behalf of the entire sector, not one part. But everyone doesn’t play the same way
Arts and culture groups: you are not the only part of the nonprofit sector that enriches our communities! If I read one more article, op-ed piece, blog post or tweet that touts the singular benefits that arts and culture organizations bring to a community, I am going to scream. Why do you push the rest of the sector out Read more
Are We Better Off?
Recently, the IRS published the list of the 279,595 nonprofits which had their nonprofit status revoked for failure to file a Form 990 for at least three consecutive years, a requirement put forth in the Pension Reform Act of 2006. Taken in the larger scheme of things, 280,000 out of a total of approximately 1.6 million nonprofits is about 18%. Since that release, newspaper headlines around the country have been reporting the local numbers, which vary depending upon whether reporting on a town, county or Read more
Unburden Yourself to the Nonprofit Confessional
It seem I have more to say about social media and if nonprofits are using it smartly and wisely. So, here is some research fodder for your social media strategy.
Item one: the human touch still matters! At least according to research by Hyojung Park, a doctoral student in journalism at the University of Missouri. Park showed study participants mock-ups of the “social media websites” of real for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Some sites just presented the organization—no names, no pictures, just the organization as a whole, Read more
Chasing the Future
This past week, I had the great pleasure to attend my niece’s graduation from one of the top business schools in the country. This school annually awards one-year fellowships to eight deserving graduates which allow them to spend a year applying their new-found knowledge in one of eight nonprofits. Some, my niece tells me, as she is one of this year’s class of eight, even become employees of the nonprofit after the fellowships conclude. That’s the good news.
The bad news came at a reception that Read more
Social Media Smashing Your Face In?
I remember the first time the call went out that pieces of some space exploration equipment were going to be falling from the sky, landing we knew not where. There were projections which—I truly thought then and now—were more hopes and spin put out there with the intent to diffuse anxiety about the “sky falling in”—that it would land in the desert or the ocean. But the reality was, the “experts” had no clue. And I so remember at the time ranting at the “experts” Read more
Spirit of Philanthropy
“Teach your children well.” A big Crosby Stills Nash and Young fan, I sang that line hundreds, if not thousands, of times in my “youth”. I sang that line thousands of time to myself as I raised my son. And it has flashed through my brain thousands of times more as I witnessed parents doing well and not so well with teaching their children and it has inspired some previous blogs
It had been rolling around my head a lot of late as I continue to Read more
Strategic Planning the Right Way
Strategic planning just may be the most important policy a board of directors, executing its governance responsibilities, may create. And yet, far too often, it isn’t done “right”. Why?
Let me be clear about two things. First, a board does not create a strategic plan by itself. And second, there is no one “right” way to do strategic planning; there is, however, a “right” cast of characters and order of appearance.
When I say a board doesn’t create a strategic plan by itself, I mean just that. Read more
