Blog Archives

Is your Board Chair ready to lead the Board? Every year, thousands of well-meaning and committed volunteers assume the reigns as the Chairman of a Board of Directors. Unfortunately, the great majority of these individuals do not have a clue as to what to do. Most of us have done a very poor job of [...]

Let’s spend a little time talking about how the Board gets it’s work done. I have written in past blogs about Boards and that Board meetings should be all about education and inspiration, strategic thinking and making policy decisions. So where does the work get done if not at the Board meetings? In committees, task [...]

Thinking about holding a Board Retreat? I don’t really think we retreat at these events, as we plan for the future? We should call it a Board Advance. But I’ll stick to the old name, for familiarity’s sake. What constitutes a successful Retreat? From being involved with over 100 Retreats, here is what board members [...]

While we are going through these difficult times, we need to do a critical self-analysis of our human resources. The days of easy foundation money is gone, at least for a while. We must rely more and more on the generosity of individuals. Are you kidding-with so many people out of work and investment portfolios [...]

The meeting just ended with people laughing and hugging each other.  We had completed a very successful meeting.  This mood was dramatically different than just a month ago.  Then, the agency was struggling with a serious cash flow problem, unable to pay all its bills, with a small and frustrated Board of Directors. Now there [...]

So many times I hear staff and board members complaining that they can’t get volunteers to do what they promised to do.  I believe there are several reasons why we are often disappointed when commitments made are not commitments kept.  Three critical factors can keep volunteers motivated and assure that decisions that are made are [...]

It is very difficult to be optimist and hopeful during these times. For most of us in the nonprofit field things look pretty bleak. There will be up to 100,000 nonprofits that could go out of business, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. I offer some tips to do the best we can with what we’ve [...]

UTILIZING FACILITATIVE LEADERSHIP TO IMPROVE MEETINGS One of the greatest challenges facing nonprofit leadership is getting volunteers to do the work that the Board needs to get done. Here is a major difference with the for-profit, with paid staff. In the nonprofit much of the work, especially Board work, gets done by people voluntarily. This [...]

Executives too often feel they must drown their nonprofit Board members with information when they present their monthly financial reports.  They feel that this is a way to keep from showing the Board that they are on top of the finances. What they do is completely confuse most Board members who really aren’t interested in [...]

In this time of recession, it is understandable that nonprofit Board of Directors and staffs are worried. They are seeing government contracts being reduced or cancelled. Their requests for foundation grants are being denied. Special events, which they counted on to bring in the bulk of charitable income, are falling dramatically below expectations. Some are [...]