http://www.causeplanet.orgNon-Profit News and Informationen-gbWed, 16 May 2012 22:44:51 -0400Copyright: (C) Causeplanet.orgk15If you want to increase your grant dollars, it is very important to know what the overall success rate of your organization is. To do this, you must calculate how many proposals you submitted over the course of one year, the total dollar amount of all requests submitted, and http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=354http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=354Mon, 14 May 2012 22:43:49 -0400Effective stories that win both the listeners’ hearts and minds are critical communications tools that can enable leaders to achieve difficult strategic goals. When crafted with emotion and logic, potent stories not only help make sense of disparate facts, but they can also motivate people to undertake a formidable http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=353http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=353Mon, 07 May 2012 12:23:43 -0400The world’s most popular job-hunting book turns 40 this year. What Color is Your Parachute has inspired and supported generations of job hunters. One of the terms Richard Nelson Bolles coined in his seminal book is informational interview. An information interview is a meeting a job seeker schedules to ask for career or http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=352http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=352Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:03:37 -0400Because so much of what board members do as a group is behind the scenes, we often forget the supremely important role they play in governing our nonprofits. Boards are a tricky aspect of leadership when you’re the executive director or CEO. When your board is ineffective, you have to succeed in spite of its mediocre http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=351http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=351Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:22:24 -0400For years, nonprofits, for-profit corporations and even the government have discussed how to better reach the Latino Spanish-speaking community. Still, there are a lot of organizations that get it wrong or are unable to serve this population http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=350http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=350Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:50:04 -0400Instead of focusing only on how board members can raise individual donations (or not!), think more broadly and effectively about how board members can support the key aspects of your organization's business/revenue strategy: In the quest for funds, there is no shortage of advice given to nonprofits http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=349http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=349Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:23:49 -0400How many of us have had moments where we are reluctant to ask for help and understand the vulnerability that accepting it entails? I not only understand the difference I made, I think I understand something of the person I helped. http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=348http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=348Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:15:24 -0400I have been asked numerous times by clients to describe what a "good board" looks like. I understand the point of the question – what is the right size, what are the right committees, etc. But asking what a board should look like misses the more http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=347http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=347Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:07:57 -0400One benefit of having a Facebook Page is that once you build up a healthy community, you can start directing it to your website to join an email list, sign a petition, donate or take some other action. But have you optimized your Facebook Page for this purpose? Here are six ways http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=346http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=346Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:54:13 -0400Engaging in advocacy is one of the most effective ways for your nonprofit to achieve its mission. By augmenting the services and programs you provide with an active voice for change, you can meet the need while working to affect the systems creating the need. Although it can seem daunting, advocacy programs http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=345http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=345Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:39:33 -0400As many state legislatures are about to convene or already have for 2012, it’s a good reminder for those of us who work in the social sector to roll up our advocacy sleeves and engage in the process. My friends at The Bell Policy Center tell me http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=344http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=344Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:08:16 -0500It’s four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon. The school dismissal bell rings and most students leave for the day. One classroom fills with middle school students. These students walk to desks, pull out academic materials and quietly begin to work on http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=343http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=343Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:55:32 -0500“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.” Bill Gates said that, and he’s exactly right. More often than not, great accomplishments cause individuals and organizations to become comfortable with http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=342http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=342Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:04:16 -0500The competition for grant funding is high, and foundations and other grantmakers are faced with making very difficult funding decisions during every grant cycle. Many foundations, for example, decline more than half the proposals http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=341http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=341Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:31:53 -0500What set the winning collaboration apart from the other 174 applications was the breadth and depth of commitment from all six organizations to full, unimpeded collaboration and the results this commitment had achieved in six years. From sharing funds to joint processes to group consensus on decisions, NCCHP functions in all capacities as a http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=340http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=340Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:20:09 -0500Many nonprofit executives, development officers and board members are eager to recruit business people from diverse backgrounds to their boards because they think business people will come in and solve their financial and strategic http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=339http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=339Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:18:56 -0500Dylan Taylor showed up at my office on the Friday before Christmas with a nicely wrapped gift that, frankly, blew me away--all the baseball cards for the 1977 New York Yankees, matted and framed with a personalized plaque that said, "To the greatest Yankee fan. Love, your friend, Dylan." Dylan and I met about a year ago when he hired me to speak at the http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=338http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=338Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:30:21 -0500In 2012, nonprofits face another year of budget battles and political skirmishes, and the fight continues to intensify with the coming national election. Make no mistake. Nonprofits are in a full-fledged combat situation. Social, political, and economic forces have created a http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=337http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=337Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:15 -0500Social 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 http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=336http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=336Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:45:31 -0500The walls at Seniors’ Resource Center (SRC) are lined with beautiful photographs of people they have helped, which can be shared with generations of family members. These pictures tell of lives filled with joy, struggle and stories. Telling the story of these seniors is what the CEO for almost 30 years, John Zabawa, believes is the http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=335http://www.causeplanet.org/articles/article.php?id=335Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:31:34 -0500