Practical Inspiration for Nonprofit Leaders
Professionalism in the nonprofit sector is a moral obligation. If our work is worth doing, it is worth doing with efficiency and accountability. I have argued over and over that there is no integrity in the nonprofit sector unless we manage our organizations as well-run machines. Waste in our sector is devastating, and all too…
Thomas Edison, whose remarkable mind turned discoveries into groundbreaking technologies, famously said that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.” Indeed, many of the world’s spiritual traditions warn that, as the New Testament puts it in the book of James, “..faith without works is dead.” From my own Jewish tradition, it is…
As a nonprofit leader you will often find yourself in the middle. The middle can be exhausting, with stakeholders on both sides pulling you in opposite directions or using you as an intermediary to telegraph their displeasure to the other. This can take the form of two powerful board members with opposing visions for the…
I stumbled upon a precious lesson in a gritty industrial town in Northern New Jersey. It happened many years ago, in a plastic bag factory, to be precise. I was visiting the owner, a donor to the organization for which I was executive director at the time. After handing me a check for our humanitarian…