Telling Us What To Do
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At a time when Democrats and Republicans can find virtually no common ground, at least two prominent thinkers, one on the right and one on the left, emphatically agree on…
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Less is More
Half a lifetime ago, I found myself the newly appointed 27-year-old Executive Director of a small nonprofit. I had lots of energy and woefully little experience. I was particularly ignorant…
Read More Point, Counterpoint
Dear Readers: You may be familiar with epistolary novels – that is, novels told entirely in letters between the characters. Today is an epistolary blog post. My first! (Perhaps yours…
Read More Scale, For Better or For Worse
Nonprofit trends – and their associated jargon – seem to come in waves. Given the disparate and atomized nature of the sector, it’s striking that new notions and terms fall…
Read More Stories, Not Bullet Points
We all tell stories, though not necessarily well. I like to think I’m better at it than most, but my too-deliberate-and-full-of-detail style doesn’t work with everyone. It particularly bugs my…
Read More Like Nobody’s Business
I often hear that nonprofits should be run more like businesses. There’s a prevailing sentiment that the realities of the market impart a kind of discipline on businesses that is…
Read More Small Potatoes
Back in the Soviet Union, you had to stand in three lines to buy potatoes. I know: I stood in those lines. I spent a semester in 1980 as an…
Read More Baby Boom and Bust
It’s not always fun being a Baby Boomer. Nobody calls us the Greatest Generation – those are our parents. We’re not the cool, creative generation – those are our kids.…
Read More White Space
In laying out a newsletter or designing a website, it’s smart to include plenty of white space. Staring at wall-to-wall words and illustrations exhausts us. We can’t take it all…
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