A Reader Wrote: “I have been looking around your web site/blog trying to find information about the role of employees in fundraising for an NPO. I see some information about the role of board members and volunteers, but I seem unable to find anything specific about employees….” It’s a “given” in the fundraising world that: …

You’ve gone through the steps. Your business plan is reasonably thorough. So there’s not much to worry about, right? Wrong. If it’s good, it will get you started. But it’s only a plan. The rest you’ll have to figure out as you go. Reality has an annoying way of interfering with plans.

Evaluating the impact of a social enterprise is often difficult to do. For most sectors, there are no agreed-upon metrics to rely upon to tell others how successful you have been. But you don’t have to start from scratch. Here are some perspectives and suggestions that might be helpful:

I wish I had a dollar for every article on the latest buzz-word that every board should worry about. Or fifty cents for every list of twenty questions board members should ask about the craze. I would hate to be on a board that was so easily sidetracked from their real concern; running the company so that it achieves what it was set up to achieve.

We talk about change as a process, but it is also the emergence of a new system from within the existing system. This systemic evolution occurs when we are unable to incorporate environmental discontinuities into the current Status Quo. As organizational Adaptive Strain increases, a cycle of change is induced. “How are we going to …

To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep. Joan Klempner It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward. Baltasar Gracian I am inspired by a recent weekend get-away to write about the spiritual and performance benefits of sleep and dreams. I got two good night’s sleep and felt …

The attitude “I don’t give a rip about my job” happens every single day. Employees get this way when they are bored with their job, feel like a faceless cog in a big wheel, or don’t know how “what they do” specifically contributes to the goals of their department or business unit. So what causes …

It might be a performance review, an interview, or an informal capability discussion. It could be a sales presentation or a meeting. Or a problem-solution discussion of any kind. Whatever it is, it calls on you to bring your best in order to make the communication a success. Here are 7 tips to help you organize and prepare for an important discussion.

“Sticky” means that once a visitor lands on your page, they want to stay and look around. Here are some tips - how to grab and hold your visitors’ attention and create a sticky site

Quake leaves residents looking to Prime Minister After an initial response slowed by the sheer magnitude of the disaster, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has stepped up to his role as the head of crisis management for the beleaguered country. Following yet another explosion at the Fukushima power plant, Kan took the reins, as described …