Executive Issues
June 15, 2016 at 12:20 pm
Like your donors, you want as much of your nonprofit's funds to go directly to the cause it supports. However, you also know that there are a lot of administrative and operational costs involved in your organization, and those can add up. So how do the most successful nonprofit organizations manage to keep their overhead to a minimum without…
June 15, 2016 at 9:23 am
The beloved and I were meeting recently over dinner with Robert, (not his real name) a fundraising executive with one of the top 20 health care nonprofits. Robert had been in this particular position for only four months, and was telling me about the challenges he is facing navigating the organizational chart to get things done...
June 15, 2016 at 9:00 am
How is it good in the context of nonprofit fundraising, marketing and management? How do you know you’re changing in the right direction? And at the right time? I'm a firm believer in challenging the status quo, as long as that does not ipso facto mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater...
June 14, 2016 at 11:19 am
Charitable giving topped $373 billion in 2015, a 4 percent increase over 2014, according to "Giving USA 2016," the annual report published by Giving USA Foundation and produced by Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The giving totals are the highest ever recorded for a single year. Don't have time to dig into the full report? No worries. We've compiled some of the highlights...
June 14, 2016 at 10:59 am
It’s all about your organization’s culture. And affecting your organization’s culture shift absolutely will not happen overnight. It takes patience, consistency and commitment. And, as the development director (or executive director), you primarily are responsible for building a culture of philanthropy. So how do you become a dedicated key player?...
June 10, 2016 at 7:00 am
A nice, fat paycheck is all well and good, but new research has revealed a surprising price tag on the job satisfaction that comes with working at a nonprofit organization: almost $40,000! The study, which was published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, compared the happiness levels of people who worked at nonprofit organizations with…
June 8, 2016 at 11:23 am
A CompassPoint study, “Underdeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising,” found that half of chief fundraisers planned to leave their jobs within two years. Tenures that are too short in a relationship-based field are not positive. But neither is stagnation. No matter how long you have been in your role, find ways to continually grow, be challenged and stay fresh...
June 8, 2016 at 10:27 am
In a recent, intentionally provocative opinion piece on the Plymouth University Critical Fundraising blog, Joe Jenkins shared the notion that the social benefit sector has “a big problem: the entrenched homogeneity of charity communications. To the rest of the world we mostly look, act and appear to be the same.” Does nonprofit fundraising have an innovation problem? In part one of of a four-part series, we look for answers...
June 8, 2016 at 10:13 am
Believe it or not, an understanding of what causes post-traumatic stress disorder tells us a lot about what motivates people. How? We in nonprofit can make people feel necessary. We can give them purpose. We can give them ways to show competence, and to be part of something bigger than themselves. We can make them happier than they were before while accomplishing important goals for humanity...
June 7, 2016 at 9:24 am
The best question I’ve been asked was from an executive director: “Can you help me figure out how to fire my board chair?” Unfortunately, there is little an executive director can do with an underperforming, ineffective, inappropriate or bullying board chair. I would suggest a policy that provides a grievance process for the executive director. The…
