Five simple measurements to track your small nonprofit's health in 2018
Nutshell: Track five "indicators" to measure the health of your small nonprofit in 2018: Board participation Client referrals Donation/volunteer follow-up turnaround time Donor/volunteer crossover engagement P/L report According to Google, the #1 New Year resolution for Americans is to "get healthy." In my last post, I shared that I chose HEALTH as my theme for 2018. That theme extends to Voices for Earth Justice, the small nonprofit I started leading last September. How do w
Sometimes you need to get smaller to grow bigger
About three months ago, I became executive director for a little nonprofit called Voices for Earth Justice. After four years of contract project management for big nonprofits, I was eager to get back to the kind of high-impact local work a small nonprofit can do. Voices for Earth Justice formed in 2002 when two Catholic women, Patty and Sister Janet, saw that nobody was helping the faith community engage in environmental issues. Over the next 15 years, Patty and Sister Janet
Is your small nonprofit trying to get in with the cool kids?
This is embarrassing. Back in college, Friday nights were a big deal to me. Something fun was happening somewhere and my mission to find it started around Tuesday. Now, here's the embarrassing truth: What was happening on Friday night was not nearly as important to me as with whom. That meant getting the "coolest" kids to invite me to hang out with them. SMH. I developed a little system I used each week to get with the coolest crowd on Friday night. I called it "keeping my op
