The call to serve

The coming Independence Day weekend gets me in a mood to cogitate on democracy, freedom, and all things core to the American political ideal. I was a political science major in college, so I read tons and tons of books, essays, and treatises on American government (as well as other forms). After all that though, [...]

Back at it!

The end of May and beginning of June was a pretty momentous time for me and for NCNA. In those couple of weeks, two major projects that I (we) have been working on for many, many months finally culminated: the Nonprofit Congress National Meeting and publication of Work With Me: Intergenerational Conversations for Nonprofit Leadership. [...]

The Power of a Good Ask

I’ve read many a post from Katya Andresen and Nancy Schwartz about the power of good marketing and its connection to fundraising and donor engagement. Each time I’ve read those posts I’ve nodded my head and said to myself, “sure, that makes sense.” Last night though, I actually had a chance to experience it as [...]

Dissecting my brain, Part II

Note: This entry is a continuation of a series I began a few weeks ago. 
Project LEAP classes
We began with an exploration into our personal leadership styles. This was accomplished by a very long, slightly confusing 360-degree evaluation survey that we filled out along with supervisors, peers, and ‘direct reports.’ I don’t have any direct reports [...]

Dispatches from Pennsylvania

I, like Elizabeth, got the chance to travel to a meeting hosted by one of NCNA’s members, the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations (PANO). I was also very excited to get the chance to actually see a Town Hall meeting up close and in person (though it did involve getting on a train at 5:02am—that’s [...]

Dissecting my brain, Part I

Note: This is the first entry in a series. Stay tuned for future episodes.
It’s taken me a few weeks to get to this post reflecting on my experience with Project LEAP, partly because it’s been so busy around the office (only 66 days until the Nonprofit Congress National Meeting!) and partly because reflection doesn’t always [...]

Living the Martyr Lifestyle

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that many of us in the nonprofit sector tend to gravitate toward the martyr lifestyle. We work long hours, we worry about work when we’re not there, sometimes, we even dream about it. To some extent, I think that it’s perfectly natural for us to be like [...]

Get Over Yourself and Ask

There’s been some buzz in the blogosphere and in some newspapers about the new Ready to Lead? report published this week. The report details findings after a survey of almost 6000 nonprofit employees. The simple conclusions: most (2/3) younger leaders either aren’t sure about or definitely do not want to step into the role of [...]