One of these days, someone in the for-profit sector is going to look at what the folks over at Imagine Canada are doing with their new Standards Program and wonder why nonprofits are the envy of organizations everywhere with respect...
Back in my grad school days, I was in a seminar called ‘Public Intellectuals, Institutional Critique’ where, among many other things, we grappled with the embrace of all things “excellence” in the academy. As I delve deeper into my work...
How many times have you heard about climbing the career ladder? In the nonprofit sector, the top rung is most often the executive director. The typical nonprofit executive director is the expert generalist - they design, build and evaluate successful...
2012 will go down as something of a mixed bag of events and happenings for Canada’s nonprofit sector. Numerous changes, both proposed and now-enshrined, in law and policies for charities made for an interesting year. The good news is, we’re...
For a young person starting out in the nonprofit sector, the role of executive director can seem to be many things: impressive, exciting, inspiring. It may also appear daunting, exhausting and riddled with inefficiencies — a job one must become...
Leveraging funds. Capacity-building. Community-driven action. Enabling populations. Collaboration. Participatory action. Anti-oppression. Just some examples of a multitude of terms regularly thrown around by professionals in the nonprofit sector, these buzzwords can be reasonably categorized as industry speak, or just plain...
In the Dr. Seuss classic, the Grinch dresses like Santa, slinks down chimneys and makes off with all the gifts under all the trees and fireplace mantles in Whoville. This story came to mind last week with the news that...
In naming 2012 as the United Nations’ Year of Co-operatives, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Co-operatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility.” In recognition of the Year...
We’ve all gone out for lunch and complained about our bosses – “Oh, my boss is such a psychopath,” we say. Usually, this kind of gripe is just a means of letting off steam after a frustrating encounter, but sometimes...
