Board

A few days ago I received a phone call from a business acquaintance. In the course of the conversation, he talked about how frustrating it was to serve the nonprofit community when some organizations act so unprofessionally toward his firm. I replied that just the night before, in the final class of the semester for the graduate students I teach, I had gone over the 20 things that—if they forgot everything else—I hoped they would take from the class. One of those learnings was, “A nonprofit is not a business. But if you don’t run it like a business, you will go out of business.”...

I had the opportunity to speak to a large group of fundraising professionals, CEOs and board members earlier this week. We talked about everyone’s favorite topic: the secret to successful, sustained fundraising. Most of my remarks were on the board of directors and the vital role it plays in the fund-development process. I’ve written and…

Don’t have any Millennials on your nonprofit board yet? Your future might be tough. There are a whole heck of a lot of good reasons to target Millennial visitors and supporters. They are not visiting cultural organizations at representative rates, they aren’t magically “aging into” increased care for arts and culture, and–perhaps most importantly–data suggests…

Goodwill Industries of Toronto, Eastern, Central and Northern Ontario (TECNO) has had a tough 2016 so far. The nonprofit abruptly closed all of its locations Jan. 17, lost its affiliation with Goodwill Industries International (GII) Feb. 5 and filed for bankruptcy Feb. 8....

Eric is the development officer for a youth-related charity in the Southeast. Eric, his executive-director boss and I had a very productive 30-minute phone call a couple of weeks ago. Eric wants to be perfect. So does his boss. Wouldn’t we all?

Busy is a term we’ve come to embrace in our society and have even glorified the meaning. You’re busy. I’m busy. We’re all busy. So naturally, your organization’s board chair and CEO are, no doubt, busy. But there’s one thing that simply can’t be put on the backburner if you want your organization to run…

One of the top complaints most nonprofit staff have is about its board. “They won’t help with fundraising;” “They don’t attend our events or even act like they care;” “Don’t get me started about 100 percent board giving–some of them think giving their time is enough.” Can it be fixed? Absolutely! Just imagine–your whole board…

Scrutiny of the Wounded Warrior Project has increased since reports have questioned the nonprofit’s spending. It’s not known if the reporting is 100 percent accurate, and the organization denies any wrongdoing, but the attention has pushed the nonprofit to act....

I was speaking to a group of nonprofit leaders in Pittsburgh last month about how to Move from Fundraising to Financing, and there were some parts of the presentation that raised eyebrows and (sometimes) controversy. And it usually happened around the topic of the nonprofit board. I strongly believe that the board of directors is a nonprofit’s most…

A few years back, I was facilitating a board retreat, where it quickly became clear to me that the majority of the board members were unwilling to participate in fundraising or even open to the idea of fundraising. The First Question Is Key In all my years of working with boards, I had never encountered…