“How puny my hugs and tears before the magnitude of a friend’s grief. Is this all my presence can offer? In my own helplessness, I remember Jesus’ words: ‘For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them’ . . . Maybe Jesus’ words are really true. Maybe our physical presence [...]
Cultivating new appreciation for an old friend
September 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment
It’s a hard sell, convincing board members to care about the annual fund — or what many refer to as “that black hole.” Yet sell we must because board appreciation for and participation in an organization’s annual giving program is essential to the success of the fund. And for most nonprofits, a successful annual fund [...]
Generosity in quotes
September 23, 2011 By 1 Comment
“True evangelical faith is of such a nature it cannot lie dormant, but spreads itself out in all kinds of righteousness and fruits of love; it dies to flesh and blood; it destroys all lusts and forbidden desires; it seeks, serves and fears God in its inmost soul; it clothes the naked; it feeds the [...]
360 degrees of misery
September 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A few posts back, I wrote about potential pitfalls in CEO evaluation, drawing upon advice I give to boards of theological schools. I stressed the importance of doing no harm – a caution that is reinforced in a recent issue of The Nonprofit Quarterly. Specifically, NQ takes on the ever popular, but potentially lethal 360° [...]
Have assignments, will travel . . . perhaps to a city near you
September 19, 2011 By 4 Comments
Just as the weather here in the northeastern U.S. is cooling down, my travel schedule is heating up. I have a wonderful mix of consulting and speaking assignments coming up — all of which give me opportunity to proclaim the good news that fundraising and board work are ministry too. I look forward to making [...]
Essentials of good faith governance
September 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Earlier this year, I took the first crack at bringing together into a single document the best of two decades of In Trust wisdom on the topic of good faith governance within the world of theological education. As you can appreciate, twenty years of teaching is a lot to condense into six essentials, plus commentary. [...]
Forget the stuff, give ‘em information
September 14, 2011 By 3 Comments
It started with a post from Oneicity. Blogger Steve Thomas claims that major donors stop giving not because they’re mad, but because we don’t give them reasons to do otherwise. The solution? Right now, before you get into the 4th quarter insanity…help some of your major donors understand the difference they are making. Don’t ask [...]
Generosity in quotes
September 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
“In the Lowcountry of South Carolina, there is an old Gullah term for early morning: dayclean, as in “Child, you’ve got to go to bed because dayclean’s coming.” The point is that every new day is ‘clean’ — a blank slate upon which the story of new mercies yet undiscovered might be written. If we [...]
Evaluator, do no harm
September 7, 2011 By 2 Comments
CEO evaluation in the hands of a well-meaning, but inexperienced, board is a fearsome thing. The nonprofit landscape – including territories occupied by faith-based organizations — is littered with the sorry remains of careers done in by performance reviews gone wrong. Yet evaluate boards must, which begs advice on how to do it right. When [...]
