Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.
I was speaking to a group of nonprofit leaders last month about creating a nonprofit value proposition — how to articulate the value their nonprofit creates — and it was exciting to see the lightbulb go on around the room. Nonprofit leaders are so passionate about the work they do — it is so obvious to them […]
There are many misconceptions about fundraising. One of which is that there is a magic bullet out there (the perfect event, a connection to a celebrity) that will create a financial windfall. Often in the nonprofit world board and staff members so despise fundraising that they desperately search for a shiny object to make it all go away. But the reality is […]
Today I’m in the beautiful mountains of Hailey, Idaho speaking to a group of nonprofit leaders about how to create a message of impact for their organizations. I so often hear from nonprofit leaders about how difficult it is to convince a donor to give to their organization. They will complain that it seems almost any other […]
Tired of the endless fundraising circuit, nonprofit leaders sometimes get frustrated when prospective donors won’t invest in their nonprofits, like this executive director: “Here’s my problem…It’s obvious these people have money, they just don’t want to share it with us.” What this executive director fails to realize is that the burden to connect the dots […]
I get a similar question a lot, “We really want to move our nonprofit out of startup mode but don’t know what the right first steps are.” Although the definition of a “startup” is an organization that has been around for only a few years, there are many nonprofits that are still in startup mode […]
It becomes increasingly obvious to me that the nonprofit sector suffers from a lack of confidence. Centuries of being sidelined as “charities” while the real work of the world (business) took center stage has made the nonprofit sector continually apologize for the work they do and how they do it. Nowhere is this more true […]
There is such a hunger in the nonprofit sector for help wrangling the board of directors. Because the board is a disparate group of volunteers, it can often seem impossible to get their attention, let alone get them all pointing in the same, effective direction. This is even more true in fundraising. But if you […]
I wrote last month about the crippling nonprofit fear of investment. Related to that, nonprofits need to understand and embrace the concept of Return on Investment. Nonprofit leaders often exist in such a world of scarcity that they don’t recognize that an investment today can have a huge payoff down the road. And not recognizing […]
After 3+ years of a difficult recession it looks like the economy might be starting to turn around. That’s great news. But for the nonprofit sector, which is always the first hit by and last to rebound from a recession, it might still be awhile until they enjoy the looming economic recovery. But it does […]
This post originally appeared on the Change.org Social Entrepreneurship blog earlier this year. There is a concept that good entrepreneurs know only too well, but nonprofits could stand to explore. A “value proposition” is the unique value a product or service provides a consumer. Without a value proposition a business has no place in the […]
