If you have a project on your desk, you have choices. You can manage it with a sense of urgency, you can vaguely hope it will resolve itself without your involvement, you can engage in a cycle of long-term analysis of options and alternatives, or you can wait deliberately and address it as deferred maintenance …
Continue reading "Maintain & Improve, or Fix it When it Breaks?"
This Capital Motion Blog post appeared as an article in the February 27th edition of Massachusetts Nonprofit Network Sector News Nonprofit 411. Nonprofit boards of directors have two key areas of responsibility: governance and fundraising. Governance has a set of responsibilities that are required and must be completed by each board. Fundraising could be more generally …
Continue reading "Beyond Fundraising: Board Members as Ambassadors"
Businesses and their mood indicator, equity markets, have recently been expressing their view by moving primarily in one direction, up. Nonprofit fundraisers looking to raise money in the wake of the Tax Act, on the other hand, have been a bit more glum. However! We leave room for hope.The complexities of the tax act (and …
It’s been a universe-altering year. And immediately ahead? More opacity. Pending changes in the tax bill have some degree of identifiable impact, even as our sector works hard to fight them back. The Law of Unintended Consequences suggests that we can also expect many more unknown unknowns. With so much ambiguity, we could simply dwell …
We get it; the phrase “let’s start this year’s strategic plan” doesn’t inspire excitement in everyone. Some people have shared that they may even prefer exploratory dental work. We do not believe we understate the situation when we call this a “missed opportunity.” Strategic planning can be as dull as the same conversation, again, with …
One of the most important functions of Nonprofit Boards is, of course, fundraising. Board members want to be set up for success when they join a Board, and generally, all is well and good when Board members are financially able to make donations, are comfortable talking about money and their charity, confidence in management is …
Continue reading "Successfully Managing the Ties That Bind Boards and Executive Teams"
We hear often about the opportunity for Boards and nonprofit executives to work even more effectively together to consistently raise money and resources. Nonprofit executives cite the “usual suspects” as trouble spots, including buy-in and engagement, and challenges in achieving give-and-get success. While these are certainly valid concerns, there are other stumbling blocks, including the comfort …
Continue reading "Get Your Board Past Stuck on “Give and Get”"
In some things, tradition matters more than almost everything else. Family recipes, for example. In other things, how much tradition we incorporate into our work is ideally understood – like so many things – along a continuum. In an organization that delivers services primarily using technology, or develops apps, for example, we can see intuitively …
Continue reading "#Sustainability Means Sometimes Taking Chances"
You know, of course, that the iconic nonprofit fundraisers' tool Raiser's Edge is made by Blackbaud. But did you know that the company trades publicly on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker BLKB? And that the company has a bunch of lines of business and revenue that extend far beyond nonprofits? This is true. …
