The Double Standard for Nonprofits and For-Profits
We live in a world where double standards are the accepted norm. As a society, we are slowly working on redressing certain double standards, as in race and gender. It’s time to call attention to an enduring double standard for for-profits and nonprofits.
We hear again and again that nonprofits are businesses and they should be run as such. I couldn’t agree more, but with a few caveats, such as tempering our bottom line with our mission and having to raise some of our income Read more
March 14th, 2008 4 Comments Do Nonprofits Spend Too Much on Overhead? Most Americans Think So.
If I could bust all of the myths and misperceptions that Americans hold about nonprofits, I’m not quite sure where I would begin. The one about nonprofit employees not needing to make a decent salary? The one about us being expected to work in the seediest of office environments? The one about nonprofits not having to make money? Now that’s a really good one.
But the one that has me all roiled up is the one that nonprofits waste money. Waste suggests frivolous expenditures. Offices, Read more
March 7th, 2008 12 CommentsYo Nonprofit Boards: Get Your Heads Out of the Sand
This is a public health announcement: there is two-pronged epidemic of poor judgment—severe to extreme–affecting the nonprofit sector and it must act quickly to immunize itself.
Yes, I am sounding the alarm because nonprofit boards are risking the health, well-being, and in tough times we could even say survival, of the organizations they are shepherding by keeping their heads in the sand. No longer is the crisis of executive leadership turnover looming; it is already upon us.
And what are boards doing to address this? Read more
February 29th, 2008 2 Comments Weight Watcher’s for Nonprofits (Or Does this 501(c)(3) Make Me Look Fat???
Why is it that Americans always associate growth with good? (Except, of course, when it comes to personal weight growth, which most people generally perceive as bad.) The bigger the better, the more the merrier, etc. And the bigger something gets, the “more better” it is.
Well, I beg to differ. In recent years, the rate of growth in the nonprofit sector has outpaced that in the for profit sector. And people hail that as a great sign. Of what, I ask? Does this growth mean Read more
February 22nd, 2008 0 Comment The Pink Collar Ghetto Lives! Social Responsibility Part II
One of the joys of blogging is that there doesn’t have to be continuity post to post. I, however, have to continue this theme from my last posting.
This question of the extent to which nonprofits should be socially responsible not just through the charitable work that our organizations do but in how we execute that work continue to pound away at me. What I am about to report is no new disparity—and that is what makes it worse: we’ve known about it forever, or so it Read more
February 14th, 2008 0 Comment Part I: Is Social Consciousness Optional
As a nonprofit, do we get to pick and choose when we will be socially conscious and when we won’t? I never thought that being socially conscious was one of those concepts that was situational. Isn’t it like being pregnant: either you are or you aren’t? But, a recent conversation made me wonder if others see as I do. Is there a continuum of social responsibility that says we are more or less, depending upon the question being asked?
Read more
February 8th, 2008 5 Comments Is Your Nonprofit a Survivor?
I am not a financial expert nor am I a Chicken Little, but if I pay attention to the financial chatter there is good reason to believe that we are on the verge of, if not in the beginning throes of, a recession. So, perhaps the sky is beginning to chip—or fall—depending upon who you are and what you’ve done since the last time we were at this precipice.
This isn’t the first recession we in the nonprofit sector will face, nor will it be Read more
Who Owns a Nonprofit?
I believe in coincidence—not that it is a sign from some higher power sending some message, but rather that I should look at the confluence of ideas and ask: what is going on here? Is there a trend brewing? The trend I’ve been seeing lately is about the ownership of a nonprofit.
First: no one—not the founder, the current executive director, the board, no one—owns a nonprofit. Nonprofits exist for the benefit of the public good, working on behalf of some Read more
Death Becomes Us
I’m approaching my new blog like it’s a virtual Hyde Park Corner and I’ve never lacked soap boxes to climb upon. I see it as a very large classroom (certainly a venue I’m familiar with), where I throw out ideas and have people react. So, with that, we introduce Nonprofit University of The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University.
University of Colorado Professor Thomas Pyszcynski and colleagues recently tested people’s attitudes towards charitable organization as influenced by their surroundings. They stopped people on the streets of Read more
