Recently I met with a client—one of the top 10 health care nonprofits in the U.S. I asked for a meeting with its marketing and donor acquisition staffs. Much to my surprise, this was the first time this group had been brought together in the same room. At another client, recently an entire layer of the marketing department had been released, with new personnel being brought into the development department to do marketing....
I recently had the pleasure of working with a homeless services nonprofit (not named to protect the innocent). Its challenge was engaging donors beyond the first gift—and its donor retention rates were in the basement. During our first meeting, I asked: "Tell me what you do and why your organization matters?" The director of communications looked…
As a former finance chief of four public companies, including mortgage giant Fannie Mae, David Johnson knows about investments. “When I think about investment, I immediately think about hurdle rates, return on investment and return on equity,” he said. At International Rescue Committee, the refugee-aid charity that Johnson joined last March, the term investments refers…
After eight months of scrutiny, Wounded Warrior Project's effort to rebuild its reputation in the nonprofit community got a big boost when a major charity watchdog group removed the veterans charity from its watch list. Charity Navigator, known for its independent review of nonprofits across the country, added Wounded Warrior Project to its watch list…
We were sitting in a room discussing how to approach various businesses and corporations in the community. The director of development and several major gift officers (MGOs) were having quite a debate about the subject with the prevailing argument being that we needed to lead with a compelling need the business would be interested in...
Many nonprofit executives are lucky if they can spend 10 percent of their work year on vacation. This 10 percent could easily affect the 90 percent left on the job. Be sure to take your vacation and try to take it the right way. How? Focus on body, mind and spirit...
New management trends have cropped up recently in the social impact sector that are changing the way nonprofits approach their work. Purposeful goal-setting, sustainability and a new emphasis on technology (for both marketing and productivity) are just a few of the principles behind these new trends. Here, several nonprofit executives and members of Forbes Nonprofit Council explain six…
A former manager at a Northwest Philadelphia mental-health treatment facility was accused Tuesday of embezzling more than a half-million dollars in public funds meant to help children suffering from trauma and behavioral disorders. Federal prosecutors say Sonja McQuillar, the former director of health and information management at Northern Children's Services, issued checks through her job…
Nonprofits are messy. It’s true even for the best nonprofit organizations out there. Not enough money. Too many cooks. An abundance of passion. Often on this blog I write about what nonprofits are doing wrong and how to fix it. After all, “nonprofits are messy” is more than just my tagline—it’s my mantra. And my…
We are working with a client who is undergoing a CEO transition. Over the past two years, this organization had invested in a master planning process and also an extensive strategic planning process. When asked if it should pause while searching for a new CEO, our response was an emphatic "No!"...
