Past Articles

Capital Campaigns

Why Endowments Now!

Focusing on building – or establishing for the first time – your endowment fund is perhaps the best way to respond to the challenges presented by a strained economy.
Given the recent challenges nonprofit organizations have been facing, focusing now on strengthening – or perhaps establishing for the first time – your endowment fund, may seem [...]

Fundraising

READ outside your box! nonprofit nugget for you to think about

Read outside your box! Reading for-profit business magazines gives you new ways to look at management and communication.
Read outside your box! Reading arts and leisure newspaper sections gives you conversational fodder in building relationships.
Read outside your box! Reading nonfiction books outside your field expands your perspective on the world.
Read outside your [...]

Capital Campaigns

Are You Serious About Conflicts of Interest?

Is there any issue that creates more consternation for nonprofit boards or management, than the presentation of actual or potential conflicts of interest?  In this day and age, it is fair to assume that most nonprofits, and virtually all 501(c)(3) organizations, have adopted some sort of conflict of interest policy, either as part of the [...]

Capital Campaigns

How NOT to Fundraise: Lessons from the NPR Fiasco

Last month in this space Jeff Metz posted a wonderful blog titled Cultivating a Donor: Like Cultivating a Garden.  http://www.nonprofitwatercooler.com/2011/02/cultivating-a-donor-like-cultivating-a-garden/  
Too bad that NPR fundraising vice president Ron Schiller did not bother to visit the Nonprofit Water Cooler before he went to lunch with what he thought were representatives of the Muslim Education Action Center.  [...]

Capital Campaigns

Cultivating a Donor: Like Cultivating a Garden

When growing a garden, the gardner has to plan the garden, plant the seeds, provide the right balance of water, sun and nutrients and keep the garden free of weeds and threatening pests. Cultivating a donor is much the same process. You need to have a plan, plant the seeds of knowledge about the good [...]

Capital Campaigns

Your Services Are Great, But We’re Flat Broke!

If we had a nickel for every time we heard this comment from prospective clients, we would have enough money to retire.  OK, well maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture.
Perhaps the irony of needing financial resources to support a nonprofit organization is most apparent when we’re meeting with organizations to discuss our [...]

Leadership

Slow Down!…What We Can Learn From Eagles Coach Andy Reid

What a strange time to be a Philadelphia Eagles fan.  On Sunday and Monday, September 20 and 21, Coach Andy Reid stated definitively that Kevin Kolb was the team’s starting quarterback.  On Tuesday, September 22, in the late afternoon Coach Reid appeared to completely reverse his position, and announced that Michael Vick is now the [...]

Capital Campaigns

It’s Not Rocket Science…Why Do We Need to Hire a Consultant?

As consultants working with nonprofit organizations on various aspects of nonprofit life including fundraising, strategic planning, marketing and leadership development, we are often asked why an organization should engage our services rather than just do it themselves.  My answer is that consultants bring experience, focus, perception, accountability, objectivity and style that make the realization of [...]

Leadership

How to present a new idea without getting lynched!

I’ve been watching the dues committee at a non-profit where I’m a member spend the past year, researching, studying, analyzing, considering, projecting and estimating what impact a new membership dues structure would have on the organization. I’ve also been watching them present this new idea to board members and some of our bigger donors [...]

Leadership

Tax-exempt groups must adapt to economic woes

Nonprofit crisis can generate the energy to transform Delaware’s sector into one that more efficiently and productively serves its diverse constituency and supplements efforts to foster economic development.