I was thumbing through our Board Recruitment & Orientation workbook this weekend, looking for a particular form. (I shouldn’t confess how often I’ll be almost done creating a form, only to do a palm-smack to the head, remembering that the exact form I need is in a book I wrote. Not that that’s what happened … Read more
In December of last year, we made the last minute decision to do a year-end fundraising campaign for the very new organization that is Creating the Future. In the spirit of transparent engagement, we promised to share what would normally be kept secret – everything we learned from that campaign. That is what this post … Read more
I received this question via email this morning, and it made me smile. First, the message: In today’s world, is an annual report of the traditional kind important for nonprofits? Smaller as well as larger? We are debating how much money and staff time to put into some kind of publication – we haven’t done … Read more
What if boards don’t need training? What if board members already know what they need to know, and just need to be reminded of that? What if “what boards need” is help with uncorking and putting to use the wisdom they already have just from living life? What if “what boards need” is encouragement to … Read more
We’ve had an idea for a program at Creating the Future, and in following our own advice, we don’t want to launch anything until we get all the possible insights we can. Programs are so much more effective when they’re built by the people who will use them! This will be a program for people … Read more
I thought it was going to be easy. Yes, I know, famous last words, but I really did. In a post early last week, I asked whether or not we should do a year-end fundraising appeal. We received many responses to that post (sadly, most of those responses were off-line – what is it about … Read more
An organization Dimitri and I love is about to die. Everyone says it is a casualty of the economy. We know that is not true. Even when times were good, the ABC Group was struggling. And so five years ago, when we were teaching an earlier version of our “Building Engaged Support for Your Mission” … Read more
I confess that sometimes even this Pollyanna gets fed up. I don’t get fed up with the same things as most people in this field, though. I get fed up with blame and intolerance. I get fed up with pointing fingers at symptoms, focusing and refocusing on addressing those symptoms, drilling deeper and deeper, unpacking … Read more
The vision of the Community Driven Institute is a healthy, vibrant, resilient, peaceful, humane world. To make that vision a reality for all of us, the mission of the Institute is to encourage and support the Community Benefit sector to leverage its considerable resources to do so. In developing our plans for the next 12-24 … Read more
(This is the final installment in a 4-part article. Head here to start with Part 1.) Management Support Organizations have immense potential. Looking beyond just helping the individual organizations they serve, their highest potential is the highest potential of our communities themselves. No one could be more interested in that potential than Gayle Valeriote and … Read more