Do you wonder whether the articles that interested you most also stimulated other Nonprofit Quarterly readers? Here are the 10 most popular NPQ online articles published in 2011. See whether they matched your favorites:

  1. Pinch Me I Must Be Dreaming: Is This the Future of Philanthropy? by Kathi Jaworski, October 25, 2011: Philanthropy is about to undergo seismic changes, according to Bill Somerville, executive director of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation. Many nonprofits will welcome the trend.
  2. Here We Go Again: The Cyclical Nature of Board Behavior, by Julia Classen, March 31, 2011: Do you ever get the feeling that the behavior of your board is cyclical? Miriam Wood asked the same question nearly twenty years ago, and answered, “Yes.” In the spring 2011 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, Julia Classen digs in to see if Wood’s assertion holds true, despite the exponential growth, increased professionalism, and explosion in academic research in the sector.
  3. Next Generation Leaders: What They Want and Need from the Workplace, by Terri Klass, Judy Lindenberger, and Jean-Baptiste Marchais, July 19, 2011: Have you ever wondered what makes Millennials tick? At NPQ we tend to be skeptical when we see research purporting to tell us what we need to know about one or another demographic segment of our workforce. That’s why when these findings came to us we immediately asked the Millennials on our staff to measure their authenticity. The verdict? Spot on!
  4. Social Entrepreneurship as Fetish, by Fredrik O. Andersson, June 28, 2011: We are apt to praise the entrepreneurial spirit, but entrepreneurship is not automatically tied to success—a fact that has not stopped proponents from prescribing it as a cure-all?for our sector’s woes, and which may have blinded some to the very real challenges that await those eager to put the concept into practice. Until the value of social entrepreneurship has been empirically assessed and established, it would be wise to proceed with care.
  5. The Other America’s Philanthropy: What Giving USA Numbers Reveal in 2011, by Ruth McCambridge and Rick Cohen, June 20, 2011: If you look below the headlines, the Giving USA numbers this year suggest that there is not only a decline in charitable giving reaching human services and social safety-net groups but also a class divide in charitable giving and in the nonprofit sector that reflects the deepening class divide in our society.
  6. E-Mail Voting—A Simple Trap for Nonprofit Boards, by Leah Cohen Chatinover, April 27, 2011: E-mail voting is quick and convenient, but there are legal issues to take into consideration. In order that the integrity of decisions made via e-mail vote remain intact, executives should follow the statutory procedures governing the practice, and make sure to stay engaged, informed, and compliant with their fiduciary duties.
  7. Ten Tactics for Engaging the Public, by Matt Leighninger, May 31, 2011: Though these ten tactics for engaging the public were pulled from a report targeting governments, we think the tools listed in this table are also worth considering for nonprofits that wish to engage their stakeholders online (and we think you’re missing the boat if you do not make the effort to do so).
  8. Nonprofits Could Benefit from Facebook Changes, by Aine Creedon, September 27, 2011: It would seem that the only constant on Facebook is change. Last week Facebook began to roll out some pretty sweeping platform revisions that will change the way nonprofits interact with their Facebook fans. All in all, the changes do look like they will work out in nonprofits’ favor.
  9. Logical Model for Creating Achievable and Sustainable Change Modalities Over Time, by the editors, April 18, 2011: Your search for the perfect logic model is now over! NPQ is proud to recycle this masterful example—ideal for insertion into your next grant proposal.
  10. Voices from the Field: Nonprofit Workplace Culture—Why it Matters so Much to Us, by Jinna Halperin, July 12, 2011: It is unreasonable to expect any organization to function perfectly, but an extra measure of unhappy cognitive dissonance exists when there is an essential contradiction between purpose and practice. Here reader Jinna Halperin discusses the problem as part of NPQ’s Voices from the Field series.