Executive Issues

Since I joined as CEO almost three years ago, Smile Train has revamped its brand, expanded staff significantly, taken steps to make key regions self-sustainable and reached the incredible milestone of transforming one million lives through cleft repair surgery. Along the way, there have been three key common underlying practices to our evolving management system: hiring hard workers, breaking down barriers and operating like a business...

Three former H.J. Heinz employees are suing the Kraft Heinz Co. because the company ended a program that would have made large donations to charity in those employees' names. The H.J. Heinz Co. in 1989 offered the Key Employee Charitable Award Program, in which eligible top employees could donate money each year for five years…

Many events or activities will be completely out of our control. In the majority of cases, events have placed us in a situation of transition where we have to ride the storm out and move on. The good news with bad outcomes is we learn to cope and adjust to transitions and try to understand it...

Have your board members lost their enthusiasm? Have they lost their energy to create change and make a difference? Have they checked out? Nonprofit boards can’t run on fumes. You have to keep their motors primed or they will run out of steam. But keeping that energy level up isn’t as difficult as you might think. Here’s my recipe for creating change, renewing enthusiasm and firing up these lovely people who care so much about your cause...

The headline hasn’t changed. Salaries for women continue to lag behind men in comparable positions at nonprofits of all sizes, according to a new report from GuideStar. The gap is most pronounced for women chief executives at groups with budgets of $2.5 million to $5 million, who take home 23 percent less than male peers.…

Although I am now a fundraising consultant, I worked for about three decades for three different nonprofits. That’s long enough that it left an indelible imprint on me, and I still react like an organizational fundraiser when I hear stories on the news that directly or indirectly impact nonprofit organizations. The truth is it’s impossible to keep up on everything that matters, or potentially could matter—and that’s not for a lack of opportunities...

As more organizations leverage cloud-based solutions and services, cybersecurity for nonprofits has become increasingly complex. How can nonprofits face the challenges of the evolving threat landscape? By employing a holistic approach to cybersecurity that continually accounts for financial, human and physical resources, along with outreach/oversight and politics/standards...

I learned the hard way and made a lot of mistakes during my first management roles. I didn’t have any formal training on management; overseeing a team came with my first fundraising position. I might have been good at managing a project and making the tough decisions, but understanding how to build and motivate a…

While I believe all of us in the nonprofit arena have noble intentions, we all make mistakes. As board members, fundraising professionals, CEOs and everything else, we should be able to grow from our errors and not repeat them. If not, they become habit...

Now that we are halfway through 2015, let’s take a quick glance at some of the trends in charitable giving and the impact that the U.S. economy has had on consumer benevolence. It’s been a rollercoaster for the U.S. economy thus far. 2015 started off looking pretty good: Consumer confidence was up, and many economists and the Congressional Budget Office projected as much as a 3.4 percent rise in the GDP. Since then, the news hasn’t been so rosy...