Mentors are a benefit for all parties involved and a GREAT case for KM in an organization.

In case you haven’t yet been there and done that, applying for and accepting a grant is the equivalent of signing a contract – in some cases, there really is a contract. The process is that grantors publish parameters for projects/programs they will fund, and you request funding for a project/program that is within their …

It used to be that there were essentially three choices: private, public, or nonprofit. Privately-held companies offer the most flexibility, without outside investors or the IRS constantly looking over your shoulders. A privately held social enterprise can choose to invest some of its profits into achieving social impact without anyone second-guessing those decisions. But if …

How involved in management should your board be? Experts often have very strong beliefs and feelings about what should be the extent of involvement of Board members in making top-level policies versus in implementing those policies in the day-to-day affairs of the organization. Those experts usually assert that Board members should attend primarily to the …

Depends. All too often, these two terms have become blurred. But they are different concepts. Here’s a good way to distinguish them, quoting from the Free Management Library’s strategic plan blogger, Carter McNamara: Strategic Planning Should Be Organization-Wide Strategic planning is best viewed as clarifying the overall purpose and priorities of the organization. There are …

Every day, thousands of non-profit organizations, believing that their financial problems are soon to be over, generate/send proposals that receive, at best, a brief reading. Contrary to popular belief and unlike the grants Mr. Question-Mark touts in the TV ads, grants to non-profit organizations are not free money. Grants come with a variety of obligations. …

However, if you are failing to recognize the informal learning structures as powerful teachers in your organization, you are making a mistake.

The First Step A Needs Assessment is a systematic exploration of the way things are and the way they should be. These “things” are usually associated with organizational and/or individual performance. WHY design and conduct a Needs Assessment? We need to consider the benefits of any Human Resource Development (HRD) intervention before we just go …

(Be sure to see “Musts” 6-10 in this blog, too) 5. Please, do not — you MUST NOT — write your own fundraising materials. And, if you insist on doing so, pay an experienced fundraising writer to review and comment on your writing. Writing for fundraising is an Art. Most fundraising letters, case statements, grant …

Help Thyself. It is the ‘it’ strategy these days. It makes good business sense. Outstanding content can divert call and email volume. It can improve the Customer Experience. As technology has evolved so have self-help presentation options. Long, static user guides are quickly becoming passé as quick guides, indexed documents and how-to videos become ubiquitous. …