Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.
It never ceases to amaze me how often nonprofit leaders give away their expertise and their time – for free. Here’s just the most recent example I’ve encountered. A leader of an education nonprofit, let’s call her “Amy,” was approached by a group of funders who wanted to start a similar program in a different […]
I’m excited to be heading to Pennsylvania next month to speak at the 2016 Nonprofit Day Conference. My keynote address for the conference will be “The Future of the Nonprofit Sector.” I wanted to share an abbreviated version of the speech with you here via the Social Velocity Slideshare library. In my mind, there are some fundamental […]
Since I was on vacation in late July and early August, I’m combining the last two months of great reads into one. The summer of 2016 certainly was a dark one. From continuing police violence against black men, to the shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, it seemed we were becoming a […]
Something really interesting could emerge out of new federal rules about overtime pay. My hope is these new rules force a better conversation between nonprofits and their funders about the real costs of creating social change. This coming December new Department of Labor rules will go into effect doubling the salary threshold for guaranteed overtime pay, from about $23,000 to $47,476 so […]
Because I talk about change in the nonprofit sector a lot, I sometimes get inquiries from nonprofit leaders who think they want change at their organization, but actually don’t. A nonprofit leader might be excited by the idea of dramatically improved fundraising results, or a board who is engaged and invested in the work, or funders who want to step […]
One of my favorite parts of my job is the time I spend working one-on-one to coach nonprofit leaders. One of my clients jokingly refers to our coaching sessions as “nonprofit therapy.” While we certainly don’t delve into psychology when we meet, it is, I think often cathartic for nonprofit leaders to have an impartial third party […]
There was a very disturbing report last week. An NPR poll found that half of Americans who work 50-plus hours a week don’t take all or most of the vacation they’ve earned. And among those who do take vacations, 30% say they do “a significant amount” of work while on vacation. Ugh! I cannot stress enough how important it is […]
Today I am continuing my on-going blog series on the 7 Pillars of the Performance Imperative. The Performance Imperative was released last year as a north star for the nonprofit sector by the Leap Ambassadors, of which I am a member. Pillar 4, about sustainable financing, is obviously my favorite since I am arguably obsessed […]
In today’s Social Velocity interview, I’m talking with Melinda Tuan, project manager for Fund for Shared Insight (Shared Insight), a collaborative effort among funders to make grants that improve philanthropy. In that capacity, Melinda plays a key role in guiding and facilitating Shared Insight’s activities including operations, communication, grantmaking, and evaluation. Melinda is an independent consultant […]
Lest you think we’ve made headway on overcoming the Overhead Myth (the false notion that nonprofits must keep their fundraising and administrative costs cripplingly low) you need only look as far as a recent Forbes article, “5 Nonprofit Leaders Share How to Keep Overhead Costs to a Minimum.” And this is perhaps even worse because it is nonprofit leaders themselves, […]
