9 Nonprofit Trends That Need to Die

1. Ignite-style presentations, aka "presentation by karaoke"

"Ignite" involves a five-minute PowerPoint presentation with 20 slides, where the slides advance themselves every 15 seconds. It cuts off long-winded people, and it’s kind of fun to see how speakers match up their speech with the slides. When done right, and used mostly for humorous and easy-to-understand stuff, it can be great.

But I've seen it too often used for novelty's sake to explain difficult nonprofit concepts or missions, in which case it becomes "presentation by karaoke," underestimates the intelligence of the audience, wastes endless hours of speakers’ time in preparation and makes me want to punch the event organizer in the neck.