What Boards Approve and Donors Pay For The sector just hit a record $617 billion in charitable giving. Donor participation fell again. Both of those things are true, and most nonprofit leaders are only paying attention to one of them. That’s not an accident. That’s a choice. The Setup I’ve watched some version of the […]

The problem is the development director who hasn’t made a thank-you call in three weeks because she spent the afternoon in a meeting about a tool that costs more than her stewardship budget — a meeting she was in because her executive director wanted to know why they aren’t doing what some other organization just […]

At the start of 2025, I made six predictions about where the nonprofit sector was headed. Now, halfway through 2026, it’s time to hold myself accountable — and tell you what I see coming for the rest of the year. Nobody in this sector likes to be wrong. And I REALLY don’t like it. But […]

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 […]

It is June. For most organizations operating on a calendar fiscal year, that means one thing: the gap has arrived. Not the gap between what was planned and what was possible. That one has always been there. The gap between what the board approved in January and what the organization actually needed to make it […]