Category: nonprofits
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A Guide to Framing Issues for Public Deliberation
People often talk about issue framing as some kind of specialized skill that only certain people can do — or that takes huge amounts of money, people, time, and other resources. But we’ve learned that it is relatively straightforward and really just takes a careful attentiveness to a few principles and key ideas.
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Best Practices Are Killing Us
A friend of mine recently made the following comment: “[T]he dresses & hairstyles worn at the Emmy’s were really boring & predictable. Bring back the days before the stars paid stylists, please!” While I do not watch awards shows, the comment struck me, because it applies equally well to management and leadership. Today’s obsession with…
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Putting Our Organization First
At the drive through I saw this sign that struck me as amusing and I just had to snap a picture. It said: If you fail to receive a receipt with your order please notify manager before leaving window for a refund of price paid. After I finished chuckling, I felt compassionate. This is the…
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How Does The Current Economic Climate Benefit Civil Society?
I got a note over the weekend: I’m student [at an Israeli university]. I’m doing a Seminar work about Civil society in USA. I’m trying find an answer for the question: What have happened to the civil society in USA through the financial crisis. Is the civil society is getting stronger or weaker from it?…
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Against "Scale"
The White House announced yesterday that the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation “would fan out to every region in the country” (according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy) to search for worthy recipients of the $50 million social innovation fund created by the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The idea is to find…
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Yes You Can Destroy Your Organization Responsibly
As many of my readers and friends know, I am a firm believer that not all organizations need to exist in perpetuity. Especially in the community benefit sector, my feeling is that most organizations would do well to plan to close their doors in fifteen years from inception. Even if you aren’t planning to close…
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I'm Just Not That Into "Theories Of Change"
An offhand question asked by a colleague the other day got me thinking. She asked me, “In five years, what would you like to be known for?” This is a slightly different version of the standard where-do-you-want-to-be-in-five-years query. The way it was framed drew me up short and made me think. My immediate answer was…
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What's On Your "Stop Do" List?
Rip Rapson, president of the Kresge Foundation, recently spoke to gathered YMCA’s and gave a chilling overview of the nonprofit sector: Early on in the crisis, we argued about whether the problem would be short- or long-term, about whether we could simply limp through to a resumption of what we’ve come to understand as normalcy.…
Brad Rourke 