Nonprofit organizations do better when their board members and staff collaborate effectively. One of the board's biggest responsibilities is strategic planning. In most nonprofits, creating the annual strategic plan is a very time-consuming (and painful) process. It starts with a...
My nonprofit routinely hires the children of staff as summer students. Do you think this is ethical? Like any good ethics advisor, I often give answers of "it depends" because details matter, and I rarely have all the information. I...
In the last article, we discussed developing quality benchmarks to effectively evaluate the project when it is completed. The quality benchmarks can be internal standards defined by the project team or external standards recognized more broadly in the industry or...
We hear all the time how our world has become a global village, how we can reach out to people across the planet in a matter of seconds. This is true for charitable organizations as well, many of which focus...
What were you doing when you were a teenager? Founding a nonprofit organization? Heading up two successful business ventures? Discovering an effective and natural alternative to immunosuppressive drugs? Me neither! Yet, these are just some of the extraordinary activities that...
Why do we need to have so many meetings? Like it or not, meetings are necessary for decision-making, problem solving, communication, and team participation. Most organizations couldn’t function without them, so we should take deliberate steps to ensure that meetings...
Every charitable organization is governed by a board of directors, but these people aren't just figureheads. They are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the nonprofit they serve. Adam Aptowitzer, a lawyer with the Ottawa-based law firm Drache...
There’s an old saying that states “charity starts at home”. That may be so, but oftentimes, once the seed of charitable activity has been planted the branches quickly spread outward. So it is with the many people and organizations that...
The treasurer of my theatre company is a very close friend of the artistic director, and has used the finance committee to give the artistic director a huge raise. The executive director, who also reports to the board, will receive...
For many organizations, leasing an essential piece of equipment, such as a photocopier, can often make more sense than buying one. Why? Because unless you're Kinko's, making photocopies probably isn't the core reason your organization exists. It makes more sense...
