It is March already and the crocuses are blooming here. To our friends in Minnesota — we sympathize with the six degree below zero run of weather you have had. To our friends in Hawaii — we know island living isn’t really paradise but our vantage point during a cool February makes it seem like paradise. It’s all in the perspective I suppose — and in what you look for.

Which brings me to the subject of our e-newsletter. I have to admit to having a little bit of a bad attitude about cause-related marketing–where businesses affiliate with a charity to raise the attractiveness of their products. I think that there are too many opportunities for selling your organization’s soul to a business that thinks a nonprofit is just another product on the shelf to be sold.

I do think we can develop good strong collaborative relationships with businesses if we have shared interests, but there is something in this particular type of arrangement that sets off warning bells for me. Too much space for “forgetting” important contradictions while pursuing the almighty buck.

However these arrangements are rife in our environment and we must, I know, not act simply out of a gut reaction. Therefore, I simply urge caution and good sense in the lead article for this month’s e-newsletter.  And direct you to listed resources below where you can avail yourselves of a variety of perspectives on the subject.

We can’t promise always to be so even-handed although we do always promise rigor when we are opinionated.

Anyway, as far as the weather goes, keep an eye out for the spring issue. There we have used the metaphor of “The Perfect Storm” to frame our coverage of the particular convergence of social and economic forces that will shape the environments in which we all work over the coming years.