Who Decides When You’re Ready to Lead

from Rosetta Thurman: The Normative Problem With the Term ‘Next Generation Leaders’ Having a cadre of bright young leaders in the nonprofit sector is great, but typecasting us as the ‘next generation’ can also indicate that we need someone from up on high to deem us “ready” to lead when our time comes. Using the term can make it seem as if young people will lead after all the Baby Boomers are gone, however we all know that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. Baby Boomers are staying in their jobs longer as a result of the economic downturn, and many are taking on “encore careers” as nonprofit leaders. So it’s up to us, the young nonprofit leaders, to redefine who gets to say when we’re ready to lead. It can’t be our bosses, our mentors, or some older and wiser colleague.... Continue Reading

Merging Wisely

With the economy in turmoil, funders are increasingly pressuring nonprofits to merge. Yet mergers are not always the right path for nonprofits in financial distress. For a healthier nonprofit sector, funders should consider a wider variety of partnership options. from The Stanford Social Innovation Review: Merging Wisely Now 2010 is upon us, and the urge to merge shows no signs of abating. Underlying this trend are two core beliefs: The nonprofit sector has too many organizations, and most nonprofits are too small and are therefore inefficient. Mergers, the thinking goes, would reduce the intense competition for scarce funding. Consolidating organizations would also introduce economies of scale to the sector, increasing efficiency and improving effectiveness. Yet a closer look at the nonprofit sector... Continue Reading

Program Growth Requires Increased Fundraising

Steve Goldberg, author of Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets:  Why Philanthropy Doesn’t Advance Social Progress, writing on Tactical Philanthropy: Raising Money v. Moving Money Fundraising relies on building relationships with prospective donors and telling engaging stories about the nonprofit’s work.It represents the personal connection of philanthropy, one that’s inherently time-consuming and labor-intensive. Moving money is data-driven: it depends on creating new value from market intelligence. Fundraising is useful for even small donations, but spending time and effort to move money around only makes sense for sizable, usually aggregated funding looking for investment opportunities that individual donors can’t find on their own. If nonprofit capital markets became more adept at moving... Continue Reading

Delivering Stakeholder Value

The nonprofit Institutional Imperative leads nonprofit management teams to run their organization for the sake of the organization rather than for the sake of stakeholders: from Tactical Philanthropy: The Nonprofit Institutional Imperative … The nonprofit Institutional Imperative is driven by fear, the fear created by running an organization which is constantly fighting for survival. Nonprofits, even large ones, rarely have enough money. Even when their revenue is high, they frequently do not have the philanthropic equity on their balance sheet that would give them the ability to invest in the future. When an organization, or an organism, is in survival mode, it must shut down nonessential functions. It must operate so as to preserve itself. In the case of a nonprofit, this means focusing on fundraising... Continue Reading

Email: RIP or Not?

from Giving in a digital world: Social Media is not killing Email – so what’s your next excuse for not using Email as well as you could? Each time we see a significant evolution in the way consumers communicate there is always a temptation to jump to the conclusion that the latest method will surely kill-off the previous methods. Presumably such predictions were bandied about after Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call back in 1876 – yet the mail service didn’t die-out as a result of the adoption of telephones. Rather more recently, there have been suggestions that email will kill-off traditional mail ever since I got my first email address back in the early ’90s (remember Compuserve?) – but it hasn’t happened yet (although that debate does continue). As such,... Continue Reading

The Old Becomes New Again

by Steve Rakitt We read so much about “high tech” ways of reaching donors that we may forget that the “high touch” approach is still very much desired and required. A recent change in the way the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta is doing business blends both. Faced with a young, rapidly-growing Atlanta Jewish population, Federation – like many other non-profits – has enhanced its website and launched a branding campaign, utilizing email, viral marketing, Facebook and other social media to connect to a large number of potential donors. At the same time, we went “retro” last summer, creating a new Philanthropic Advancement department, assigning four dedicated and knowledgeable members of the Federation staff full-time to meeting with donors. This is a major shift away from... Continue Reading

Best Practices in Marketing to Women

from frogloop: Is Your Nonprofit Cultivating Women Donors? Is your nonprofit reaching women and harnessing their power for social change? If your nonprofit is not actively marketing to women and recruiting them, your organization is missing out on major fundraising opportunities. During last week’s webinar The She Spot – Best Practices in Marketing to Women, Lisa Witter co-author of the book The She Spot and Morra Aarons-Mele of Women Online discussed why women are the market for changing the world and how to reach them. Click here to download the presentation. [Translate] Bookmark:  Read More →

Imagining the Internet

from Mashable: The Future of the Non-Profit Internet Earlier this month, Pew Internet released its annual Future of the Internet report. The survey of 900 leaders forecasts the future direction of online media. In turn non-profit strategists can glean insights into the future, and how to steer their individual programs. This year’s research report dove into five critical areas. Here’s what non-profits need to take away from the Pew report for their efforts: Google Changes the Way We Think; The Internet Changes Language; The Pundits Don’t Know What They’re Talking About; The Internet Will Remain End-to-End – Sort Of; Anonymity and Privacy Will Continue to Be Big Issues. … “The report’s findings reflect the notion that the tools are not going to change much in the near future,... Continue Reading

Welcome to the Cooperative World

from Debra Askanase, Nonprofit Collaboration: Doesn’t It Make the Pie Bigger? In the digital age, no one is interested in only your services and products. We’ve grown up in a competitive world. But now it’s a cooperative world: coopetition is becoming the means to success. We are no longer isolated geographically, culturally, or demographically. Nonprofits may serve local clientele, but their online presence is global. I know that it’s counter-intuitive to recommend your competitors. But in the Web 2.0 world, it’s exactly what the culture demands. I contend that nonprofits must, and should, be ready to retweet, repost, and support competitors online. [Translate] Bookmark:  Read More →

Are We Entitled to Free?

from Altitude Branding: 3 Reasons Why Expertise Costs Money There is a ton of information out on the web that’s free, and it’s given us a bit of an expectation that things we find on the internet shouldn’t cost us anything. But I just don’t understand the griping and whining that happens when someone decides to charge for their stuff. There are three big reasons I pay for things, have charged money for my expertise and services, and think you have a right to try and do the same: 1. Experience Requires Investment What you know didn’t get there by accident. Whether it was formal education or learning in the trenches, you paid for your education. You paid in time, in effort, perhaps in money. The stuff that’s in your head and the practical, tangible experience you’ve accumulated over the... Continue Reading

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