You’ve been serving on the board of your favorite nonprofit for years, and you’re thinking about the next step in your career. You look across the table at the organization’s executive director and think, “Maybe I should do what she’s doing.” The truth is ...
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Many CausePlanet readers have participated in that long-standing tradition in nonprofit leadership: strategic planning. Most missives I’ve read on the subject are written from the vantage point of the glory days after the final document is written, approved and—hopefully...
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Endowment. For a nonprofit executive, this word brings with it all the joy of a bountiful holiday season. A healthy, well-managed endowment means financial stability, reduced fundraising pressures and a greater ...
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Why can listening to feedback prove so difficult for nonprofit professionals? One reason may be the passion with which we do our work. This passion increases the volume and intensity of the messages we send, and it can also prevent us from ...
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In 2007, the U.K. division of the bank HSBC promised students and recent college graduates bank accounts with no penalty for overdrafts … until August, when they revoked the policy with only a few weeks’ notice. They counted on two things when ...
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In nearly every community across the United States—and increasingly in cities and towns around the world—you’ll find an important and sometimes puzzling entity called a community foundation. “They make grants to us,” says one nonprofit executive ...
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Yes, we are facing one of the most challenging economic environments in our nation’s history. At the same time, our country has just witnessed a historic presidential campaign season, in more ways than one. Certainly, no matter what our ...
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It’s easy to bash businesses for not being more involved in the community. We’re the nonprofit sector, and they’re the ones with the profits, right? And aren’t they always the ones whose percentage is lowest in the Giving USA (www.givingusa.org) report ...
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This admirable sentiment lives and thrives everywhere in the nonprofit sector – from the volunteer who ladles soup into a dish for a hungry person to a fundraiser who submits a grant request to secure dollars for his or her program. One could say that ...
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In the nonprofit sector, we work hard to achieve missions that often will never be realized, at least during our careers. Sure, we can measure progress using all kinds of evaluation methods. But will we stop hunger, end poverty, and create opportunities for all children to achieve their dreams? Probably not in our lifetimes. Over a 20 or ...
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I cut my teeth in the nonprofit sector back in the early days of desktop computing. (Yes, I’m that ancient.) Through the years, I’ve been excited when new technologies have come along and I’ve adopted them for the nonprofits with which I’ve worked. The first time I helped develop a nonprofit website was back in the 1990’s – about a ...
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I’ve killed a lot of trees in my two decades in the nonprofit sector, even though I switched to using recycled paper in the early ‘90s. Direct mail, annual reports, newsletters, issue briefs…you name it, I’ve produced it! All in service to the mission...
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Many of us who work in the nonprofit sector spend our time in management and administrative tasks. In service to our missions, we make phone calls and send e-mails, prepare presentations, compose fundraising letter, manage staff. Though our ...
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Social media has great power to connect people within and across communities--geographic communities, communities of practice and interest and communities of faith and belief. How are nonprofit organizations mining these connections to achieve their missions? Crowdsourcing is often ...
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Late last year, I made the decision to serve as a board chair for two different organizations at the same time.Your initial questions might be, “Why in the world would you do such a thing?” and, “Don’t you have a full-time job?” The answer to the second ...
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