This old dog knows that hiring and training a new team member is not easy (or cheap). So watch for the signs of passion and never settle for a “good enough” employee. The cost is not only wasted time and opportunity, but it can also cost you those who are passionate...
Remember your first job? Most people do. In my case, each of my early jobs—from working as a musician while in college to my time as a pension fund executive overseeing billions of real estate assets under management—played a role in getting me to the next step in my career. Here are some lessons I took from early jobs that I still use today...
Successful nonprofit organizations are run by great leaders. So, what does it take to show excellent, innovative leadership in the public sector and nonprofit worlds? These two realms often intersect, since they share similar interests: the public good, social justice, socioeconomic mobility, ending hunger and homelessness, and so on. According to Ohio University, one of…
Given its collective mission—changing the world—you might expect the nonprofit sector to be filled with starry-eyed, idealistic individuals whose passion for the cause is motivation enough to show up to work each day. But, as it turns out, changing the world is kind of a grind. A study found that, in 2015, just 58 percent of employees were engaged, and a combined 12 percent were disengaged or hostile. The numbers place the nonprofit sector third from the bottom among 18 industries...
I’ve been enjoying The Cooper Review, the satirical blog of Sarah Cooper that features weekly original articles, videos and cartoons on workplace humor. I happened to catch one of the cartoons in a recent Medium post called “9 Cartoons To Help You Avoid Any Work.” It really spoke to me about our culture of overwork,…
We work in a world of transition. Each of us has gone through a number of job changes in our nonprofit careers. If we have served in a management role, we have also seen a number of employee transitions. A fact of life in our profession is that employees will come and go. And if not handled properly, these transitions can hurt your organization's donor retention...
I can’t believe 2017 is already here! Are you ready for it? Is your fundraising ready for it? How will you be increasing fundraising revenue and strengthening donor relationships this year? Learn what smart fundraisers will be doing—and download a free 2017 fundraising and marketing calendar!...
It’s one thing to come up with a great idea that may serve a need within the community. It’s quite another to build a sustainable nonprofit organization that will grow and thrive well into the future. Local standouts in the nonprofit sector say a sound strategy, a dedicated staff, a healthy infrastructure, educated board members…
MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston's second-largest employer, is eliminating about 1,000 jobs as the elite medical institution continues to wrestle with losses that exceeded $100 million last quarter. The center's leaders announced Thursday that 800 to 900 employees will be laid off and another 100 to 200 jobs will be reduced through retirement and attrition.…
I declared that resilience was one of my themes for the new year. And, in writing a guest post about it over at the Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effective Blog, I shared the story of the boiling frog. If a frog is dropped into cold water in a sauce pan and brought to a boil slowly,…
