Staffing & Human Resources

We take a moment to explore the many legal questions nonprofit organizations face on a daily basis. Just as nonprofits themselves are diverse and cover many topics, so too are the legal issues they face—employment law, tax questions and queries straight out of Business Law 101...

While I do believe too many fundraisers are underpaid relative to their skill sets and performance, I have a hunch it’s not the real chief culprit for fundraiser dissatisfaction. What is?...

It’s no secret that nonprofits have an alarmingly high employee-turnover rate. Why are there new faces around the office so regularly? Many have brushed it off as “burnout,” but what does that really include? Tech Impact took a closer look at the causes of nonprofit turnover in this infographic...

Fundraising is a high-stake, high-anxiety field. Both staff members and board members face constant anxiety and fear of failure. And the anxiety ramps up during capital campaigns when the goals and consequences of failure are even higher.

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...