Executive Issues

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...

I normally create a post title quickly for my Friday slot on NonProfit Pro. This week’s title was the hardest for me to write, as I lost a dear philanthropic brother, George Mongon of Huber Heights, Ohio. He passed away suddenly on July 28, 2015...

Ceding control is a change and requires a decision. Why should this—or any—change be such a gut-roiling exercise when all the research, both quantitative and empirical, says, "do it"? Most often, people stay the course in the face of diminishing results. Each of us has sat back in our chair, exasperated and confused about a leader or subordinate’s unwillingness to change in the face of overwhelming evidence...

Nonprofits take on debt (i.e., borrow) in the short term to cover temporarily inadequate cash flow and in the long term to finance capital expenditures that they expect to recover in the course of doing business. Capital expenditures naturally carry an element of risk. That chicken came home to roost for many arts organizations during…

The last of the three articles on the roles in soliciting, this week I take up the role that many people see as the sum total of the ask: the individual that actually does the asking. I call it the “rainmaker.” What does the rainmaker do? In fundraising, the rainmaker makes things happen...

The messages you send early on in a project’s development, the leaders you involve, how you plan for and implement a campaign and when you break ground all impact the success of a major fundraising campaign. Throughout a campaign, if people think the project is taken care of, by the organization, or other donors or volunteers, they will happily pass and let someone else do it...

The last election provides a prime example of what I consider to be the loss of science in today’s fundraising campaigns. On any given day, I probably received 20 emails from the same organization. Its “strategy” amounted to nothing more than throwing spaghetti noodles against the wall to see what stuck. There was no conversation, and there was no appreciation of my past giving habits...

Nonprofit organizations often cite the high percentage of their incoming donations that go directly to the cause they support, not to administrative costs. However, a new study by Jeffrey Burks, associate professor of accountancy at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, found that nonprofits make accounting errors at a relatively high rate,…

Inside the Field Museum's recently unveiled Cyrus Tang Hall of China, a rare kingfisher headdress glitters in a new technological light. Touch screens allow visitors to view it and 350 or so other artifacts from every angle and to read the unique stories behind them. This sort of approach might not have happened if it…