The Billionaire Who Wasn’t
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You probably have never heard of Chuck Feeney. Until recently, neither had I. (more…)
Read More The Big Squeeze
When I was a kid, I loved the TV series “Batman.” There was a scene in every other episode, it seemed, where the caped crusader found himself trapped in a…
Read More Follow the Money
It’s important to know how people get paid. Once you understand that, you can see how financial motivations affect their actions. (more…)
Read More Getting Something for Nothing
Sometimes relatively insignificant measures can assume an absurdly disproportionate importance. For decades U.S. News and World Reports has been ranking the country’s top universities and colleges. These rankings have taken…
Read More Why Mergers Make Sense… On Occasion
With funding cuts and rising demand for services, nonprofits are in a bind. One reaction – which sometimes makes sense, but often doesn’t – is to consider merging with another…
Read More Front Seat, Back Seat
A few weeks ago I was in California on business, and my last evening there I visited the home of my high school friend Dori, now an English professor at…
Read More Learning From Warren
I am pleased to discover that I have a few things in common with Warren Buffett. (Unfortunately, being fabulously wealthy is not one of them.) Like Warren, I’m not one…
Read More The First Rule of Business
My friend Rory, who has made a good living selling medical equipment, shook his head describing a failing company. “They violated the first rule of business,” he told me. “Make…
Read More How Philanthropy (Strangely Enough) Can Widen the Wealth Divide
With the growing concern about the wealth gap, most of us can at least assume that charitable giving helps in some way to redistribute the wealth from the rich to…
Read More The Best Kind of “Ask”
I was giving a fundraising seminar a couple of weeks ago. Most of the audience members were nonprofit CEOs, development directors, and Board members. A woman asked me, “So the…
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