Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.
I’m a huge believer in questions. Sometimes asking good, hard questions is the only way to get to the bottom of something, to find the right path, to understand motivations, to analyze potential options. So too in the nonprofit sector hard questions can play a pivotal role. It is critically important that we move away […]
This post originally appeared on the Change.org Social Entrepreneurship blog last spring. The nonprofit sector often suffers from a propensity toward niceness. Indeed, according to a recent study by researchers at Stanford and two other business schools, nonprofits are perceived as “warm, generous and caring organizations, but lacking the competence to produce high-quality goods or services […]
The end of 2010 is upon us and perhaps this difficult economy is waning as well. It appears that the nonprofit sector may have brighter times ahead. Indeed, the philanthropy that funds it is arguably on the rebound. I’m excited to see what the new year will bring for a sector that has had a […]
In this month’s Social Velocity interview we are talking with Anna Land, founder of Heart House, a nonprofit after-school program for low-income children with some pretty impressive results and big plans for growth. Anna and her board are looking to expand Heart House to 5 Texas cities and increase the number of kids served by […]
I recently did an interview with Kellogg Venture Community‘s KVCcast host David Nosnik about where nonprofits fit in the social innovation movement. It’s a 20 minute conversation in which we discuss how nonprofits can: Recruit and manage a much more effective board of directors Raise growth capital Become more entrepreneurial to achieve more social impact […]
Because nonprofit organizations exist to do good, as opposed to generate profit, they often view their activities as outside of the market economy. But the fact is that nonprofits are very much part of a market economy and the sooner they determine where they are best positioned within that market, the more successful they will […]
In part four of our ongoing Financing Not Fundraising blog series, we are focusing on the most untapped, greatest sustainable funding opportunity facing the nonprofit sector. Individual donor dollars make up 80% of the private money entering the nonprofit sector each year, compared to 5% from corporate dollars and 12% from foundation dollars. Yet many […]
I am often asked by exhausted board members and executive directors what the board can do to raise more money. My answer, let me tell you right away, is NEVER to launch a new event. Don’t get me started on my anti-events rant, that’s another post. But there are other things that board members can […]
Note: This post is the first in the ongoing blog series, Financing Not Fundraising. For more on the Financing Not Fundraising approach, view the Financing Not Fundraising book series and the Financing Not Fundraising webinar series. I’d like to outline a new vision for how the nonprofit sector gets funded. Fundraising in its current form just doesn’t […]
We all know the nonprofit sector is really struggling. Particularly in the midst of a deep recession it can be difficult to figure out how to get out of a vicious cycle of increasing demand for services, relentless fundraising, diminishing capacity and so on. But there is hope. In order to break free of the […]
