It’s not personal, it’s business. It’s not about you, it’s about our goals. It’s not about getting along, it’s about getting the job done. These are all interesting phrases I’ve heard thrown around in the living rooms of leaders...aka...the conference room. These are the phrases leaders like to use to [...]
Let me start by saying I did not do track and field (but maybe I should have) Track stars understand the concept of the finish line. When you cross it, you’re done. You actually get to fully rest. Every day are you racing towards an imaginary finish line? When you [...]
Tax season is no one’s favorite time of year. Even for tax-exempt organizations, dealing with the required forms and paperwork can get quickly overwhelming. However, it’s imperative you don’t blow off this work! Your 990 is critical for your fundraising success. Pulling all of the important data included in this [...]
A mentee of mine reached out to me the other day for advice about a role she was applying for in the near future. She shared the job description with me, and friends...friends…that job description was 2.5 pages long, and it had everything in it except solving world peace. I [...]
I had the urge to bite my nails during a meeting. Don’t look like that. It’s a habit I haven’t quite been able to conquer. We all have bad habits. For some of us, it might be biting our nails. For others, it might be chewing with our mouths open. [...]
More and more, the nonprofit sector is having conversations about equity and inclusion. Conference keynotes, webinars and trade publication articles are prompting fundraisers to broach the subject within their own organizations. In a recent Bloomerang webinar, I touched briefly on the topic, and in the chat one person wrote: “I've [...]
Do you have a culture of philanthropy at your nonprofit? You either do or you don’t. There’s no in-between. All it takes To destroy your nonprofit's reputation as a force of goodness in the world is: One rude receptionist. One program staffer who doesn’t return phone calls promptly. One harried [...]
In any profession, certain words and phrases provoke reactions from cringing to shrieking, eye rolling to angst. For many in organizational leadership, these include audit, grant report, and restricted funding, to name just a few. And…. strategic planning. Perhaps scarred by a past planning effort, many nonprofit leaders and board [...]
All too often, nonprofits see their donor database as a glorified phonebook. This may be because they're not getting the most out of the software or because the solution in which they've invested doesn't have the expansive functionality the organization needs. When nonprofits invest in the best donor database [...]
Co-dependency is such an ugly term. Yet, a pleaser is often one-half of a co-dependent team. The one who accommodates, and the one who does their best to smooth things over, placate, please, and keep the peace. If you are a pleaser fundraiser at work, you may have internalized some [...]
In my last post “Get a GRPI to Improve Your Nonprofit Team,” we discussed how using a Six Sigma tool called a GRPI (which is an acronym for Goals, Roles, Processes and Interpersonal Relationships) can be used to increase the effectiveness of non-profit teams. Today, let’s add more letters to [...]
Nonprofits tend to wring their hands a lot about fundraising. We don’t have enough. It’s so difficult. Our board won’t help. Our staff isn’t sufficiently skilled. It’s so distasteful. It’s a necessary evil. We have more important things to do with our resources. All of this hand-wringing comes from a [...]