Seventy-three percent of your funders say it is “very important” to trust a nonprofit before giving, yet only 19% say they “highly trust” you and 10% are optimistic about the sector becoming “more trustworthy” over time.  Wait, what?  I’ll say it another way. This research was first reported in The Chronicle of Philanthropy: What have … Continue Reading

Would you consider the nonprofit you work for, or financially support, excellent?  I don’t know too many people who would want to work for a mediocre organization or give money to an adequate agency. Do you?  Okay, let’s get real…  Excellence Guru Tom Peters says in his book, The Excellence Dividend: “Excellence is the next … Continue Reading

There are many reasons to consider inviting an outsider inside your organization. Usually, it involves a specific outcome or objective that you need or want to achieve. Are your donations lagging? Do you need fresh messaging? Have you lost key employees? If your organization already had the capacity to address the issue, you would have … Continue Reading

With hundreds of fundraising tactics to choose from, how great would you feel if you could walk in perfect assurance that you were making the right choices? There are so many choices to choose from, aren’t there? You could increase your Facebook advertising. You could create a new landing page. You could raise your major … Continue Reading

The Importance of Leadership The best nonprofit leaders understand that a good strategy and a healthy culture ultimately control the level of operational competence your organization will achieve. Strategy decides your flight plan for organizational effectiveness, impact, and sustainability by intentionally mobilizing people, allocating resources, and implementing systems to arrive at a predetermined destination. Culture … Continue Reading

Have you ever met a nonprofit leader who intentionally manages below operational competence? Neither have I. The problem is that only 6% of managers actually perform above operational competence. (Source: HBR 2017) 94% of all managers mistakenly assume that they are above average in operational competency. They are not.  Is it any wonder that most … Continue Reading

At a recent quarterly meeting reviewing donor mailing, a prominent nonprofit discovered that they and their agency had been over-mailing almost 20,000 pieces many times a year for over 10 years. Yes, potentially millions of direct mail pieces that should never have been mailed.  How does that even happen?     In this case, it was a … Continue Reading

Nonprofit leaders share an instinct to maintain the minimum standard of operational competency in their respective areas of responsibility. In short, this is the common survival mechanism that allows our leaders to serve another day. When a drop in operational competency occurs anywhere within a nonprofit, the leader responsible experiences an immediate and unpleasant response … Continue Reading