National Volunteer Week is coming up April 19-25, 2009 (thanks to Joanne at About.com for the reminder!)  This could be a great time for your nonprofit to recognize, show appreciation for and step-up your volunteer organization efforts. For many groups volunteers are a crucial part of keeping the organization funded. Here are some articles with […]

“AHHH! What to do? Too many volunteers – Nonprofits are overwhelmed, volunteers underwhelmed!” that was the teaser Chris Jarvis posted to Twitter.  With a line like that I couldn’t help but follow the link he left.  And his blog post titled Six Reasons Why You’ll Never Volunteer Again did not disappoint. As Chris points out […]

In the first part of this series, I introduced the topic of how to handle bad behavior from your board members. With this continuation, I’m throwing out five more examples of how board members can hurt (rather than help) your non-profit and, of course, what to do about it. 6. The Board Member Doesn’t Respect […]

After reading Becky McCray’s great article on How to find people to help you with your business at Small Business Survival, I started thinking about the professional help that many nonprofit organizations need. Many of the same services are needed by nonprofits just as they are in the for-profit world.  Like many small businesses, small […]

After having spent many years working with non-profit boards, I know enough not to be personally disappointed by any one individual board member. Non-profit board service is a volunteer gig, and it’s tough to get down on someone who is giving of his or her time. Besides, as a leader of a non-profit, we are […]

“You can’t teach a cat to bark!” That was the comment from one of the board members. It was a tough meeting. The volunteer board members were discussing with their executive director an important paid staff member who wasn’t meeting the job expectation. They had sent him to training workshops, mentored him, coached him, re-written […]

Today I’m focusing the roundup on how non-profits can connect with Gen X and Gen Y (aka Millenials). By definition these two groups combined encompass a wide range from age 10 to 43. Though some generalizations about even this range of ages can be made. For example, many people younger than the boomers want to […]