Volunteer Leadership
Burn baby burn
Nancy Lublin was right on the mark in a Fast Company article when she observed: The biz model [for nonprofits] destines us for burnout. We take people with big hearts and crush their souls; you sign on to help cure cancer and then leave because you’re just shilling rubber bracelets. You want universal literacy, but [...]
Support for new ideas
photo credit: smemon87 Discovery is wonderful. I have recently discovered how many people have some of the same ideas as I have. And I have a few strongly held ideas. Nonprofits are businesses. It is a positive sum game for nonprofit entrepreneurs, nonprofits volunteers and nonprofit staff to collaborate with others in nonprofits. Nonprofits are [...]
Volunteers: Care of
Many nonprofits treat volunteers like fingers for a leaking dike. They stick them into whatever role seems to have the most need at the moment. This is a mistake. Poor decisions about volunteer assignment, I believe, increases burnout and, more importantly, underperformance. A board member or committee member, who underperforms, accepts a responsibility but doesn’t [...]
Nonprofit Organization and Operation: A Hands-on, How-to Approach
I will lead two of these workshops. Each of these workshops meets once a week for four weeks. Inver Hills Community College Inver Grove Heights, MN beginning September 28, 2010 Minneapolis Community and Technical College Minneapolis, MN beginning September 29, 2010 Nonprofit Organization and Operation: A Hands-on, How-to Approach is designed for nonprofit entrepreneurs and [...]
Nonprofit Technical Assistance
Have you decided to start a nonprofit? Have you just got one started? Where do you go for technical assistance? What questions do you need to answer as a nonprofit entrepreneur before you organize a new nonprofit? You can find a lot of information on boards and board training. You also need to know about [...]
Management by the Many or Management by Email Group
Does the communication and decision making in your organization get hijacked? A friend recently shared with me and an interesting observation: In both emails,…, I think we have examples of what I might call Management by the Many, or Management by Email Group. In other words, anyone who has an agenda can simply put an [...]
A hiatus?
When is it a hiatus and when is it goofing off? I have been thinking about this ever since I realized I haven’t posted anything new in my blog since September. At first I thought I was taking a hiatus because I was working on a couple of projects that used a lot of my [...]
Board change and group dynamics
Every time someone new comes on your board, the group dynamics of the board changes. The group has to reform. It has to start over to some degree. Bruce Tuckman developed and published in 1965 a 4-stage model of group development. He labelled the stages: 1. Forming: The group comes together and gets to initially [...]
Boards are for governance, committees are for results
Confusion I have pointed out in a recent post that nonprofits need to reduce confusion by separating the governance and results function of the organization. There is a knee jerk reaction when a nonprofit is formed to make those who sign as incorporators members of the board of the new corporation. Then the board, in [...]
Why Your Results Stink
Results stink. Volunteers don’t meet deadlines or don’t do what they committed to do. So, the committees are not getting results the board wanted. Chaotic. Dysfunctional. Disorganized. Organization not operating effectively. Take your pick. The result is the same. The mission to which you are drawn, to which your heart is connected, is not being [...]
