Social Velocity

Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.

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Taking Philanthropic Risks: An Interview with Chris Earthman

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In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with Chris Earthman, Executive Director for the Aragona Family Foundation. For the last 8 years Chris has also worked for Austin Ventures, the largest venture capital firm in the Southwestern US. Chris has over 15 years of experience at the intersection of nonprofit and for-profit enterprises, […]

Is Earned Income Right for Your Nonprofit?

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Earned income, or the sale of goods and services, is a somewhat misunderstood and unexplored financial opportunity for nonprofits. Yet there are countless examples of nonprofit organizations that sell goods or services to supplement their revenue, like the Girl Scouts, Goodwill, museum gift shops, hospitals, charter schools. If you’ve ever wondered if earned income might […]

10 Traits of a Groundbreaking Nonprofit Board

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Again and again, I’ve heard people say that innovation will never become part of the nonprofit sector — that nonprofits are too set in their ways. Or that the sector is too broken to emerge anew. And a particular area of dysfunction that people point to is the volunteer group that leads the nonprofit sector: […]

Financing Not Fundraising: The Critical Alliance Between Executive & Development Directors

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In this month’s post in the on-going Financing Not Fundraising blog series I’m talking about creating a productive partnership between a nonprofit’s leader (the Executive Director or CEO) and a nonprofit’s chief revenue generator (typically the Development Director).  If your nonprofit is going to start financing instead of fundraising, you must work to forge an […]

Could Philanthropic Equity Revolutionize the Nonprofit Sector?

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Today I guest blogged on the About.com Nonprofit Charitable Orgs blog, at the request of the blog’s author, Joanne Fritz. The topic is one that is near and dear to my heart, philanthropic equity. “Philanthropic equity” is just a fancy term for the kind of money the nonprofit sector so desperately needs and every nonprofit […]

Preventing Social Change Burnout

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Perhaps it is the nature of trying to solve the intractable, but social change leaders are heading for burnout. I see it more often lately. A nonprofit leader  gives me a dazed look, rubs her temples with exhaustion, throws her hands up in the air, seriously considers just giving up. The exhausting, endless hamster wheel […]

Why Nonprofit Overhead is Destructive

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It’s that time of year when donors make key decisions about their end of year giving. But a recent post on the Social Earth blog advising donors about questions they should ask nonprofits perpetuates thinking that actually hurts, rather than helps the nonprofit sector. The author, Tarini Chandak, asks “How do you know where your […]