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The Hardest Job YOU Ever Had
About a month ago, I wrote a blog post entitled The Hardest Job I Ever Had. I have to admit that I was unprepared for the outpouring of emails and phone calls from CEOs and EDs that followed. They told me how the article resonated with them, recounted the variety of activities they do on a d…
Read MoreThe Balancing Act in the New Normal
“Imagine you are at your office, but it’s better. Breathe in. And exhale. Your office is clean. Your left eye no longer has an involuntary twitch. You don’t look like someone on the verge of stabbing the next person who says you look tired. Because you don’t. You do…
Read MoreLet’s Talk More About Being At Our Best
My first-grade son was recently asked to make a Venn diagram for class. I am pretty sure I did not know what a Venn diagram was until college, but I digress. One of my favorite Venn diagrams is the one with the circles representing the following: What you are good at What you love doing…
Read MoreWorking From Home: A Lesson We Can't Unlearn
There are some pandemic behaviors we cannot unlearn. From a professional perspective, working from home tops the list. Whether you love working from home or you hate it, it is now a thing. To be fair, we all know that working from home existed before the pandemic, but not widely in the nonp…
Read MoreThe Hardest Job I Ever Had
With respect to work, I am what author Po Bronson calls a journeyer in his book What Should I Do with My Life? For me, that has meant pursuing several different – and at the time, fulfilling – careers. These include having spent significant time as a management consultant, inform…
Read MoreDo Not Lose Sight of What Matters Most
I recently reconnected with a very close childhood friend for a long overdue catch-up conversation. Things started out with the standard check-ins about kids, jobs, and who else in our friend group we had seen lately. But as the conversation went on, we moved into deeper, more important stor…
Read MoreAt Our Best
At our best. It’s the basis of many of my favorite questions: Who are you at your best? What is this program at its best? How does our team engage at our best? What does our organization look like at our best? If you have ever been in a staff or board retreat that I have…
Read MoreZiplining or Hang Gliding - What Fundraising Adventure Will You Choose?
Would you call yourself a risk taker? An adventurer? Would you describe your nonprofit as adventurous and determined? As the world opens up to the vaccinated, many of you are making vacation plans. You are ready for new adventures, to travel, to spend time with loved ones you have not been a…
Read MoreThe Six Thinking Hats
Have you ever known that something is important, and you know you need to process it, and you just aren’t sure how? That is how I feel about this last year. So much has happened in the last year to change who we are, the organizations we are part of, and the world we live in. Have …
Read MoreFundraising: The Good, The Bad, and The Future
Last week the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP), a partnership of the Association for Fundraising Professionals, #Giving Tuesday, and some donor software companies, released its Q4 2020 and full-year 2020 fundraising report. Since 2005, FEP has analyzed over 176 million donation transa…
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