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I received some great responses about my last post, “Why Don’t We Make Big Bets on Nonprofits?” One of the recurring questions in those responses was “How do we change nonprofits and the nonprofit sector to be able to absorb bigger investments?” The fact is that a financial glass ceiling exists for nonprofits — a […]
One of the Giving Pledge philanthropists and co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, recently died. But at his death he was worth more than he was when he signed the Giving Pledge, a pledge that 186 of the wealthiest philanthropists have made to give away half of their net worth before they die. This inspired Alana […]
Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself worn down by the state of our country. The divisiveness, the anger, the coming apart instead of coming together is increasingly hard to take. And I know many of you feel the same. It seems that as time marches on we increasingly find ourselves battling the differences […]
In one of my coaching sessions with a nonprofit leader last week, we spent a good deal of time discussing how to take a break. But like so many leaders in the nonprofit sector, this exhausted, worn down, borderline burned-out nonprofit leader was very resistant to what every cell in her body was craving — […]
There is a fairly ubiquitous notion about the nonprofit sector. We as a society often believe (either consciously or subconsciously) that nonprofit leaders and their work are less valuable. Nonprofit leaders have been told for so long that they must scrape by without the amount of funding, people, or attention that they truly require. But […]
Something pretty interesting is happening in the world of philanthropy. Anand Giridharadas, journalist and former Aspen Institute fellow, has just written a pretty major indictment of modern philanthropy in his new book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. Giridharadas takes big philanthropists to task for reinforcing the social problems they claim to […]
As human beings we are often held back by a sense of needing permission from someone (sometimes anyone) to do something we already know deep down is the right path. And certainly in the nonprofit sector with many and varied stakeholders to constantly engage and include, it can often seem that moving forward on anything […]
Note: The Center for Effective Philanthropy recently released a report uncovering how foundation and nonprofit leaders are feeling about the potential impact of new tax legislation on charitable giving. I found the report fascinating and asked CEP if I could write a guest post on their blog about the report. Below is my post, which […]
Today I’m delighted to announce the launch of a brand new Social Velocity website. I hope you will go take a look! As you know, last Fall I took a 4-month break from social media. I stopped writing the blog and checking Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and spent more time reading books, meditating and figuring out where […]
In the age of Big Data there has been a real push among funders, government, and thought leaders to encourage nonprofit leaders to make decisions based on data. I have been among the many who have heralded the importance of gathering and using data to improve performance. And I still believe data is incredibly important. […]
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