Blog Archives

In our rush to become efficient, are we paying too little attention to the glue that holds our voluntary organizations together? These days, Much attention is focused on how nonprofits can become more efficient by being more business-like in their operations. I believe that there is a lot to be learned from successful businesses. Why [...]

“Why are we in need of committees? Our Board members have enough to do without going to extra meetings.” That’s a common complaint I hear while consulting various clients. The answer is simple, committees are the work horses of the board. Committees are where the board finds solutions to problems and challenges that represent the [...]

“It’s that time again to plan this month’s board meeting agenda.” If you are an Executive Director, you know that this task comes up at least once a month. What happens? We usually pull out last month’s agenda, see what is needed to be added or deleted, and send it out. Some ED’s don’t change [...]

How can we turn our successful business board members into nonprofit leaders? We must recognize: • People bring their business and life experiences to a new culture (nonprofit) where everyone is participating on a voluntary basis. While most volunteers are very committed to the agency’s cause, people are busy with work and their personal life [...]

Why do we need volunteers in a nonprofit? The whole nonprofit field was built on volunteerism. Almost every nonprofit began with a group of volunteers sitting around a table trying to find ways to solve a community problem. As our agencies have grown and become more complicated, we needed to hire staff, and we have [...]

How do you assure that your board is fulfilling its legal and operational responsibilities while at the same time keeping your board meetings interesting? Conducting interesting board meetings is a must if you are going to attract and maintain top-level leadership for your agency. I have written that Board meetings must include at least three [...]

HOW TO UTILIZE A CONSENT AGENDA In the last blog I introduced the concept of a Consent Agenda. This blog will deal with how to utilize it and how to introduce the idea to the board. How does it work? 1. Committee chairs are told they have to write reports to the board and have [...]

IMPROVING A BOARD MEETING WITH A CONSENT AGENDA Why are board meetings so long and often so boring? Maybe it’s because we subject people to sit and listened to long reports, one after another, month after month. We do this because we believe that as board members they have to know what’s going on at [...]

Is it really impossible to raise more money for an organization during a Recession? I don’t think so. While there is no doubt that these are difficult times to engage in fundraising, my experience shows that many organizations do such an inadequate job in the first place, that refocusing their efforts will result in surprising [...]

Friends and Colleagues, this stuff I’ve been writing about really works! Last week at a Board meeting, we saw the impact of the implementation of good board practices when a long time board member said, “We’ve come a long way, baby!” at the end of the meeting. Just a year ago this was a struggling [...]