I wanted to be sure that you knew about NPQ's special webinar on May 17, on the newest concepts in nonprofit governance and how to use them.

One of the articles we published last week is about an “unlikely takeover" of a failing network of for-profit child care centers in Australia—the largest provider of child care in the nation.

What it has taken to shift the culture around same-sex marriage and civil and human rights in general has been an enormously personal endeavor that should teach us a lot about how to move a society from one emotional – and then legal – stance to another.

Last week I spent some time with my family in Mexico, and we stayed in a house that had no glass in the windows. We were sleeping surrounded by the air from outside. There were, of course, shutters to be closed during a storm.

We see a thing as the answer to a problem, and it just produces more questions and problems. So it is with our notions of accountability in the sector.

Every year, NPQ conducts a survey of its readers, the information from which informs our work in a myriad of ways.

I want to direct your attention today to our feature, by Tom Scanlon. It provides some context and a challenge to the concept of strategic philanthropy.

Yesterday, in an article titled “Firing your Development Director? Join the Club!,” I reported on a study that CompassPoint has published about the much maligned position of development director.

As we went to “press” this morning it struck me that we had a theme going – dysfunctional governance.

I have been speaking a lot lately and my message is that this next era is ours for the taking.

Life is full of little surprises that require us to step up, and nonprofits are great at just hunkering down and addressing such surprises.

I enjoy sitting on my couch in my house in my own neighborhood, but I also like wandering around in other countries so that I can get a real good sense of how big and unknown the world really is.

I wanted to share an article of my own with you today.

Let’s face it—it’s never good to go into high fundraising season with a constant national drone about an impending “fiscal cliff" hovering over our heads.

I admit I am so glad that the @$?+£¥ election is over. But I also see how it has left us all with responsibilities and questions.

Recently, I attended an event on governance and while I was there, I listened to a lot of stories about boards and executives.

At the risk of overexciting the pressed khaki, Ivy League crowd, I want to share this article that so piqued my interest last night I turned it into a newswire.

Fundraising for local projects is definitely one of those things that reflects the sensibility of the culture from which it emerges. So it is, I believe, with this nugget, which was in the newswires this morning: Local sheriff signs up to be tased in return for cash.

Think of NPQ as the guy on the coastline. It is important to get some sense of what you might be diving into before you take off, and then, of course, you have to make yourself responsible for letting the next guy know what you have experienced and heard.

Help us understand how the world works in the large and increasingly vivid civil sector.

Free press is, of course, a cornerstone of democracy, so the stakes are very high for all of us to find a model that works and that can include the deep investigative work designed to afflict the comfortable and inform those of us who consider the world our responsibility. This requires your help.

A number of readers contacted us yesterday to suggest that we emphasize for all of you some aspects of my letter in the “Editor’s Notes” send out yesterday so we are republishing it here with the parts they noted as most important underlined. The key phrase that readers wanted me to highlight is “unless nonprofits and philanthropy see themselves as part and parcel of a profound era change and even as informed leaders in that shift, we will lose the whole ball game.”

I wanted to make sure that you saw an article we posted online yesterday from the latest edition of the Nonprofit Quarterly journal. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the demands of leadership may be changing.

Rather than waxing on about Sendak, who was nothing if not plainspoken yet profound, I want to share a few snippets from his interview with Bill Moyers after describing a childhood that was full of undeniably difficult moments.

We here at NPQ love the research that proves or disproves something we all "know." So here is an article by Robert D. Herman and David O. Renz entitled "Do Big Names Really Draw Big Bucks?"

Real leadership often puts us at risk, especially when there are vested interests that oppose the changes we want to make.

I am very lucky to be able to talk to people every day who think they can change the world.

I am passing along this article from the Summer 2011 edition of the magazine after we saw a Twitter flurry about the piece yesterday. We figure our readers know best about what everyone needs, and so we decided to send it out to all of you FREE and in return we would love to hear your own experiences.

Dr. Conflict’s latest column is here and it deals with office gossip. My point of view on gossip has been redirected twice...

The nonprofit ethicist is open for business, so you can ask him your own questions about any ethical conundrums you have in your work.