Insights on nonprofit organizational health, board governance, capacity building, and community impact.
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Foundation research can feel like a members-only room. Yet every private foundation lists its grants in a public filing, and two free tools will read those lists for you. A method any nonprofit can run in an afternoon.
Read moreGrowth is the sector's default compliment, and expansion ideas arrive dressed in mission language. Six questions to ask while the new program is still an idea, including the one about stopping.
Read moreWe assume the hardest organizational choices belong to struggling nonprofits. I've watched the opposite: strength brings the questions with no deadlines, no forcing functions, and no obvious answers.
Read moreSomeone asks where the organization wants to be in five years, and the room goes quiet. Not empty quiet. Out-of-practice quiet. On rebuilding a muscle that survival seasons take away.
Read moreIn a cabinet near you sits a handsome strategic plan that has been consulted twice since the retreat. Most small organizations need the other document first, and it fits on a page.
Read moreA bequest, a below-market offer, a landlord ready to sell: suddenly owning a building is possible, and the dream arrives with a shadow. Questions to sit with before your organization becomes a property owner.
Read moreThe funding opportunity is almost your mission. The room is talking itself into it. A few questions worth asking before yes, and some thoughts on declining money graciously.
Read moreBoard members and staff experience your organization in fundamentally different ways, and both views are essential. The strongest organizations build deliberate channels between them.
Read moreTraditional assessment often means a five-figure consulting engagement. But the value was never the consultant in the room. It's the structure, and structure has gotten far more affordable.
Read moreThe most important part of an assessment happens before the survey opens. How you frame it, to your board, your staff, and yourself, shapes everything that follows.
Read moreThe report is a starting point. The real insight arrives when board and staff look at the same data together and ask what it means for us. A 90-minute format any chair can run.
Read more'Organizational health' shows up everywhere in the nonprofit world, defined either too vaguely to use or too narrowly to be true. A practical way to think about it, built for community-based organizations.
Read moreAn organizational assessment is only as good as the honesty behind it. What actually makes people honest isn't a promise in the fine print. It's a system designed to protect them by default.
Read moreMost board meetings are consumed by reports and updates, leaving no time for the conversations that actually move organizations forward. Three changes you can make before your next meeting.
Read moreOrganizations evolve through stages, but governance structures often don't keep pace. Five signs your nonprofit's governance hasn't caught up with its growth, and why each one is actually good news.
Read moreMany nonprofits avoid organizational assessments because they're afraid of what they'll find. But a well-designed assessment isn't a judgment. It's a map.
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