Although these are extraordinary times, things always seem to slow down a bit towards the end of the summer, as people take time off. It's a good time to stop and say, hmmm . . . …in other words, it's a good time for some out-of-boundaries reflection. Too often we get stuck ruminating on immediate

My daughter used to watch TV with my son and me, and when we'd laugh at a joke, she'd invariably yell, "What? I don't get it! Why is that funny?" It was awful. That's because we were then caught having to explain the joke — an impossible and thankless task. (This actually still happens sometimes

It’s September, and all across the country, no matter what else we are doing, most of us are thinking about money — how to raise it and, if we can’t, when and how to cut back on expenses and work smarter. Getting started on fall fundraising kind of feels like facing the hurricane season —

I’ve shared with you before that I often wake up in the early morning hours with ideas cohering in my mind — and I am such a geek that they are often about some work question. I am so privileged to work where I do because we get a constant stream of ideas from people

The October 30 roundtable held by the minority (Republican) staff of the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) on nonprofit hospitals sparked some troubling memories. When I was the director of a city government agency in Jersey City during the 1980s, I inherited a dynamic initiated by the preceding administration to do away with the Jersey City

Our organizations are full of smart, committed human beings whose most extreme characteristics tend now and then to get out of balance. Some staff appear to have natural self-corrective capabilities; others of us suffer from a kind of relentlessness that accompanies strong belief systems — two sides of a coin. “Your greatest strength is your

You might say that with regards to the recent spate of scandals about self-dealing among trustees of foundations, as a Boston resident, I sit in the belly of the beast. The Spotlight Team from the Boston Globe has found a great deal of low hanging fruit in its recent investigation of philanthropy’s miscreants. It’s difficult

A friend from the Philippines, Nicanor Perlas, traveled through Boston about a month ago with a spiel about the need for good people to combine efforts for a “peaceful revolution.” He has a theory that violent revolutions have not and cannot work in the long run and that what we need is a worldwide movement

How many times have we heard an organization’s founder referred to as a problem? On the one hand we love and admire the drive and passion of our founders and on the other hand they sometimes make life so hard for those around them. Little wonder. In their paper entitled Practical People, Noble Causes, Stephen

I was on the commuter ferry in Boston Harbor the other day and as it moved away from the dock a little 4 year old girl who had installed herself half beside and half on top of me pointed excitedly back at Boston and piped, “Look! The city is moving!” As with this child, many

Did you know that there is a whole “infrastructure” set up to support nonprofits in this country? Do you know what it does and how it works? It is important that you do because these organizations perform a number of functions that could affect things in your own organization — laws, regulations, your access to

A dear colleague of mine informed me the other day that her relatively small community-based organization has won an award for more than a million dollars to be spent over the next two years to bring their programs “to scale.” Wow! Hers is an excellent organization full of careful, thoughtful women — this includes board,