upswept The nonprofit sector has been using a word for decades as a substitute for thinking. The word is sustainability Ask a board member what it means. Diverse revenue. Ask a funder. Reducing reliance on grants. Ask an executive director working her third straight weekend because payroll is three weeks away. She won’t have an answer … Read more
A quick note before we start: this is the third piece in a series. The first two — Well-Being Theatre and The Sector Has a Language Problem — It’s Just Not the One You Think. This one says the things people have been waiting to argue with. There is a conversation happening in this sector … Read more
How’s That Working Out? Let’s start with what you got right. You already know the number: $1.5 trillion. You found it, you put it in your pitch deck, and you used it to make the case to your board that the nonprofit sector was an underserved market worth entering. You identified 1.8 million U.S. organizations … Read more
This piece is the second in a series. The first, Well-Being Theatre, made the case that the sector’s language around rest and sustainability is exactly that—language. The title was not an accident. Neither is the word “theater” in this one. If you haven’t read it, the argument that follows will make more sense if you … Read more
What Nonprofits Get Wrong About Tech — and How to Fix It (Especially When You’re Small and Stretched) Most nonprofits think they have a technology problem. They don’t. They have a decision problem. I’ve spent more than three decades in this sector. I started in organizations that tracked donors on 3×5 cards — literal boxes … Read more
The nonprofit sector talks about rest. What it rarely does is build the conditions for it The nonprofit sector has become very good at talking about burnout. It has been far less willing to stop causing it. Over the past several years, the nonprofit sector has become remarkably articulate about burnout. Conference sessions on sustainable … Read more
What Nonprofits get wrong about Technology — and what to Do About It Here is the number that should be on every technology vendor’s whiteboard: $1.5 trillion. That is the nonprofit sector’s annual contribution to the U.S. economy — roughly 5.3 percent of GDP. The sector employs nearly one in ten American workers. It is … Read more
The most dangerous language in the nonprofit sector isn’t hostile. It’s warm. “We’re a family” is the most dangerous lie in nonprofits. It sounds generous. It sounds human. It sounds like care. It is, more often than not, a convenient fiction. The nonprofit sector doesn’t have a language problem. It has a courage problem. The … Read more
The sector calls acquisition a growth strategy. It’s a distraction dressed up as ambition. Let’s start with the math, because the math is damning. It costs the average nonprofit $1.50 to raise a single dollar from a new donor. Retaining an existing one costs $0.20. That’s a 7.5x cost differential — and most organizations are … Read more
The sector calls it wisdom. Most of it is unexamined habit with a budget line. The nonprofit sector has a comfort problem. Certain fundraising practices have been wrapped in so much tradition, emotion, and institutional inertia that questioning them has become professionally dangerous. The sector calls this wisdom. Most of it is scar tissue — … Read more