Archive for the ‘Nonprofit Leadership’ Category

Shane Claibourne recently posted a list of his 12 Hopes for 2012. I like all of Claibourne’s “hopes,” but two stick out to me and resonate with my own vision for 2012: “ 4) Choose life. Do something regularly to interrupt the patterns of injustice – do something to end (Continue reading…)

Shifting from the for-profit to the nonprofit sector can be tricky. Bridgestar recently released a report that brought to light some great ideas for the transitioning executive. Here’s four that I think are most important: Prepare. Some non-profits may be growing so fast that they do not have trained structures (Continue reading…)

Nonprofit leaders should be able to work with many different kinds of people. A lot of my staff at Soles4Souls is young. We have a mix of Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials. When you have that level of diversity, there are some important things to keep in mind about leading a (Continue reading…)

What do you think of when you hear annual report? If you’re like me, just reading that phrase makes my eyes glaze over. But in the nonprofit world, the annual report is essential. And though it does fall into the “report” category, it does not have to be mind-numbing. In (Continue reading…)

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.” -William Butler  Yeats Over on Katya’s Non-profit Marketing Blog (one of my favorites, bookmark it if you haven’t yet!), she listed 18 mood-killing words to banish in 2012. Among the list were a few that I especially (Continue reading…)

The Charities Aid Foundation recently released the 2011 World Giving Index, a study that ranks and compares generosity and altruism of 153 countries. The study was based on three measures of giving behavior: monetary giving, volunteering, and helping a stranger. Here are a few findings that might surprise you: Up (Continue reading…)

Released last summer, Woody Allen’s film, Midnight in Paris, got imaginations spinning with the story of an American writer (played by Owen Wilson) enchanted with the idea of living in Paris in the 1920’s. Through some creative storytelling, Allen transported his hero to that era where he picked the brains (Continue reading…)

Have you ever thought about why your donors give? Perhaps we can get more detailed than simply “they believe in our cause.” Recently, Hope Consulting and GuideStar released their findings from the Money for Good study. In the second part of their report, they pointed out that there are six (Continue reading…)

Last week I commented on donor happiness. This week I want to continue brainstorming about how we can raise donor happiness. One of the simplest, most often overlooked vehicles for increasing donor happiness is the thank you note. Often, instead of receiving a year-end thank you, donors receive a year-end (Continue reading…)

Jeff Brooks recently wrote a spot-on post that identified his “best practices” for editing fundraising copy. Brooks’ primary point is this: less is more. The purpose of editing is to say precisely what  you mean with fewer words. The problem is sometimes the editing process makes fundraising copy even longer. (Continue reading…)