NonprofitEye

"I don’t understand these fundraisers, …they waste all this money…why don't they just give the money to …the sick people?" "…you know what? They don’t! They throw a party so rich people like me can spend $10,000 on a table and then they give it to the sick people!" ...that’s how it’s done ! Joan Cusack to Jennifer Aniston in "Friends with Money" Alright, let's get this over with folks: Fundraisers are a Lie! Yes that's right you heard me. A few months back, I attended a luncheon to raise funds for a school for the deaf. Yes, it was luncheon and a fashion show and a fundraiser all in one. First there was the obligatory silent auction, then (during lunch) the not-so-silent auction, and then after lunch when the plates were taken away, we were asked if we would like to purchase the Orchid Centerpieces! Hadn't they got enough from us? Let me think-No! Easy as it is to lampoon a fundraiser, that is not where I am going today. One of the ladies w...

Last November, in a post called " The Limitations of Dashboards " I wrote about my disappointment with the promise of electronic "dashboards". But when I was about to waive the white flag, I found him. Who? The Dashboard Spy , that's who. And who is this spy guy? Nobody knows, and nobody has to really care either (see spy bio at the end of this article if you really want the scoop). The point is, he introduced me to some very inspiring applications of what a dashboard can do for a nonprofit (or the community in general). Let's get down to specifics. Whatcom County's Community Dashboard uses red-yellow-green gauges as indicators of everything from Annual voter turnout, to Suicide Rates. They have gauges for women owned firms, violent crime, domestic violence incidence rate, rental affordability, releases of carcinogens into the air. And more! A girl who loves data might find her match here. The site does offer the raw data, and drills down to...

Thinking Clearly by pam ashlund Remember Hobbes describing life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"? Well how about this quote from the critical thinking website: "much of our thinking...is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or downright prejudiced." Critical Thinking Website I'm thinking about nonprofit effectiveness today (again). Why is it one of my favorite topics? Because...IF WE AREN'T EFFECTIVE WHY ARE WE BOTHERING???? It seems even Bill Gates Senior is asking this question. I have to paraphrase him here (from a talk at a small gathering). The essence of his statement was this: Historically most efforts to cure social problems had little or no effect or (this is the frightening part) only made them worse . What a disturbing claim; even more so because of how it resonates. In a February post I wrote about the counterintuitive nature of social problems . That article (more than many) has influenced (haunted?) my thinking ever sin...

It was back in April, 06 that I first got "blog-itis". Finally a technology that conformed to my need. I don't know why, but I've always "choked" when I try to write; but a blog post let me capture an insight without overwhelm (after all, you can always write another post). I started out with a copycat approach. I used my friends blog as a template. I took the easy road with Blogger. And then the fun began. I covered this journey in Birth of a Blog way back when. So today I just want to give props to the bloggers that gave me that critical guidance, resources and inspiration to get me going: Beth Kanter's Beth's Blog Allen Benamer's Non-Profit Tech: Confessions of an IT Director Michelle Murrain's Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Blog Michael Stein's Non-Profit Technology Blog Technorati Tags: Blogging , MetaBlog , Nonprofit , NPTech

"Since untruths can be unintentional, the truth must be intentional" Arline Belton The greatest obstacles to truth telling are: "time is limited" and fear that "truth will hurt us, or someone or something we care about." Arline Belton I'd never heard of an "Organizational Healer" before. That is, until I read Erline Belton's article Truth or Consequences? in the NonProfit Quarterly. I offer an executive summary of the article, but highly recommend reading the real thing. Arline is the CEO of the Lyceum Group in Boston. She has been identified by clients as an organization healer, and feels honored to be of service as she practices organization development from her heart and head. It seems like honesty would be a given in the nonprofit sector; afterall we're the good guys right? Yes and No. Arline identifies barriers to telling the truth : Groupthink (you are a team player AREN'T YOU ?) Imaginary Conflicts Hidden Age...

Last week I wrote a "hate" post and created a del.icio.us tag " IhateMeetings "; Today I offer an antidote: a new del.icio.us tag: " Icouldn'tsayitbetter " I've tagged articles (and blog posts) that are so well put that I'm left humbled. These authors write what I've felt for so long, but could not articulate. When you're feeling overwhelmed by the insanity in the nonprofit world, here are some ideas that will help you find your way back to sanity (some already becoming "classics"): 1) Clara Miller talks about why the "normal" rules of accounting get very weird when applied to nonprofits in: The Looking-Glass World of Nonprofit Money: Managing in For-Profits' Shadow Clara steps "through the looking glass" asking (and answering) the following true/false questions: Rule 1: The consumer buys the product. Rule 2: Price covers cost and eventually produces profits, or the business folds. Rule 3: Cash is ...

This year, the Oscars have been knighted the  "Green Academy Awards".   I'm not going to go into "Leo" driving up in a Prius (wanna bet Toyota gave him that one? also, if his was modified to go 100 mph, why didn't he have it souped it up to give it some umph while he was at it?). I know, I know, get to todays subject, so here it is: I am (as you may have noticed) a "facts and figures" girl. I believe in numbers. There is no more perfect a world. I depend on them. That is why I was thrown for a loop when I attended the Los Angeles Economic Development Commission's (LAEDC's) 2007 Economic Forecast and Industry Outlook this week. And the outlook wasn't so good. A bit of the local entertainment industry tanking, a bit about a slipping housing market, a bit about defaults and how to hedge your bets in the old investment department (I took notes on that last). When Jack Kyser, Sr. Vice President and Chief Economist, LAEDC gave his pr...

Nonprofit Series: Burnout, Tech & Fraud Detection by pam ashlund Just finished a rant on "blogging about blogging". Took a look at the topics I write and found close to 10% of my posts on blogging & tech. Sigh. On Blogging and Tech: THE TEMPORALITY OF DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE I WILL NOT BLOG ABOUT BLOGGING... ANTI-SOCIAL BLOGGING CARVING OUR WAY TO DISASTER RECOVERY TAG YOU'RE IT: NONPROFIT TAG SYSTEMS I BLOG THEREFORE I AM BIRTH OF A BLOG NONPROFIT OPEN SOURCE DO I DARE DISTURB THE UNIVERSE? ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: ERROR 404 FILE NOT FOUND Burnout & Balance: NONPROFIT BURNOUT: IS YOUR ADVENTURE WINDOW CLOSED? DYSFUNCTION & NONPROFIT BURNOUT OR A BALANCED LIFE? NONPROFIT BURNOUT? NONPROFIT HALL OF SHAME APPLYING KARMA YOGA TO THE NONPROFIT WORKPLACE Accounting: JUST THE FACTS MA'AM: ALLOWABILITY, REASONABLENESS & ALLOCABILITY! OH MY! NONPROFIT IMAGE PROBLEM: FLAWS IN FRAUD DETECTION DEVELOPMENT & FINANCE: A BROKEN MARRIAGE? ...

I was so steamed I forget to include my most fundamental complaint about blogging in my last post ! I publish a post You write me a comment I'm notified of your comment by email I respond to your comment Question: How do you know I've written a response? Answer: You don't! (unless you come back again and again until you see the reply and who has time for that????) How could it be that in a Social-bookmarked-Wiki-Folksy-World that our most popular tool (the Blog) isn't social? ????????????????????????????????????????????? Good, now that that is off my chest, I think I'll go listen to a podcast on podcasting! Technorati Tags: NPTech , Blog , blogging , Folksonomy , Podcast , Podcasting , Social Bookmarking , Wiki , iPod

Who can put Jesus, Confucius, Dr. Strange, Emma Goldman and Eliza Doolittle all in the same thought? Read on as a Nonprofit Eye reader (Janet) responds to last weeks post: Applying Karma Yoga in the Workplace : Ah grasshopper, with the dawn of awakening knowledge comes the morning fog of obscured certainty save for one truth: all is karma. Or, as they put it in the Fram oil filter commercials: pay me now or pay me later . It may be possible to use a Calvinist metric to evaluate one's life choices: those who make the best choices are demonstrating their closeness to nirvana. Or not. Is the path to enlightenment so easy to discern? If only it were so. We look at choices others make and then compare our own actions and motives. It is strangely remarkable that very few of us , in our own estimation, ever live up to the standards we esteem in others . We mistake the simple answer and the shortest route as the one true path: the person who washes the dishes or cleans the toilets without ...

Part II: The Yoga Series Continues How can we change the world? Let me count the ways! Just as I thought I was forging new ground on Yoga and Nonprofits, a source sends me a lead on a group called " Yoga For Good ". Guess I haven't killed my ego just yet. Check out the PaloAlto Online story: Bad Girls Doing Time Learn Art of Yoga for a story of how yoga is transforming the lives of incarcerated girls. Another program helping incarcerated youth and at-risk teens and "transitional age youth" GETTING OUT BY GOING IN © is a non-profit organization that educates and rehabilitates incarcerated and at-risk individuals by providing essential tools needed to make stronger decisions. "I use the breathing technique at night to block out the sounds around me." --C.F., Inmate, Terminal Island, 2005 "On helping children? Love and attention, take the kids out of the hood and show them that there is something else than that hopeless hole."- E.A.C. Technor...

Part I in a series examining nonprofit service and "doing good" What does karma OR yoga have to do with nonprofits?" If you think of yoga as an exercise class with a bit of de-stressing meditation, then the answer would seem to be "nothing". Bear with me on this one. I think we'd all agree that nonprofit work is based on the principles of doing good.  The reality is that our work may be driven by political goals, seeking funds, getting paid and getting noticed (publicity). Where does Karma yoga (Sanskrit: कर्म योग) fit in? Karma Yoga is one of the four pillars of Yoga, consisting of entirely selfless service, in which the Ego is given up. It is the path of doing the right thing, of following ones' personal Dharma and accepting destiny. In less abstract terms, Karma Yoga might be cleaning toilets or washing dishes. Doing any type of service without seeking any remuneration in the shape of wealth, satisfaction, name or fame. So this got me thi...

art institutions are a severely limited arena of reception for ideas about public issues --Robbie Conal If I can't take my coffee break, Gone is the sense of enterprise ...something within me dies. -- How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying I was born with a "Question Authority" bumper sticker metaphorically stuck on the back of my car. I grew up with that expression (and what it represents) as my moral imperative. But I've been worried lately. I've been worried because it doesn't seem to be turning out the way I thought it would. Seems a QA attitude is not necessarily conducive to civil society. It all depends on who's the authority I suppose. I seem to have the easiest time applying it to government and politics. But at what point do the concepts of "questioning" and the notion of "participating" intersect? Becoming a manager was a pivotal point in my life. A place where I had to make the transition from "hating t...

Nonprofit Burnout by pam ashlund PART IV - NONPROFIT EYE BURNOUT SERIES Cross posted from a differnt perspective in my El Loro blog in the post Don't Want to Work for the Man Don’t it always seem to go/You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone — Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell Somethings comin’ something good…who knows? — Westside Story I've written about Burnout (see series at end of article) before. Certainly, burnout is not unique to the nonprofit sector, but it has indirectly been on the radar recently re: the changing of the guard, the baby boomer effect of nonprofits, the "are we mentoring a group to replace our current leaders as they retire? Who wants to talk about that? Normally not I because I still find the prospect of my own retirement (and mortality in general) depressing. The truth is, that even now (possibly 20 years before retirement), I feel worn out. Words to the effect of “my soul is dying” come to mind. Of course I mainly have these feelings in the...

Whistle-Blowing - Keep it in Perspective by pam ashlund I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - ' I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! ' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it! -- Howard Beale during his nervous breakdown, Network, 1976 I've blogged about whistleblowing, about fraud detection, about Enron, about Sarbanes Oxley...for gods sake I've blogged about blogging! I've pondered the subject from many an angle and then...I lost interest. Why? Because there's only so much to say. Hey, somebody does something wrong, somebody else tells on them. Then?...

Government Funding for Nonprofits: Don't Eat Your Young by pam ashlund It's like a jungle, sometimes it makes me wonder How I keep from going under -- Grand Master Flash I have a bad feeling. The same bad feeling I had when I heard about the Homeland Security Act, or the infamous "weapons of mass destruction" speech. My spidey-sense is screaming "Something is going horribly wrong with Nonprofit Accountability". I'm not usually a trend watcher, but me thinks I smell a trend. Seems the fall-out from Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley has finally hit the nonprofit sector. Visits from individual government funding sources are on the rise. OMB A-133 was supposed to protect nonprofit agencies with multiple funding sources from being drowned in a wave of audits. One "Single Agency-wide Audit" would keep everybody happy. Ha! Government agencies found a loop-hole. "We aren't doing an audit, we're just doing a fiscal review". At last count one o...

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery? or Great Minds Think Alike? by pam ashlund Karl Jung had a theory about why people all seem to have the same myths and dreams, even people and cultures that have no contact with each other. He called it the collective unconscious. It still gets called psuedo-science by some. Today I'm wondering.... In my spare time I write another blog about life in my neighborhood in North East LA. I've had a series of surreal experiences there lately. One: a coyote sighting in front of my apartment and another: coming across a red flashing sign advertising the LA Coroners office. Three weeks after writing about my experience I noticed two other nonprofit bloggers writing about the same thing. I jumped to the conclusion that this was a case of copycat-itis. That was, until...a friend said "I think I read that somewhere else". I looked around and low and behold, one of the most popular blogs (if not THE most popular blog) Boing Boing...

Faith in Social Change? by pam ashlund Let's face it, so much of the nonprofit world has its foundation in activism. Not counting such venerable institutions as the Red Cross and the YMCA, so many nonprofits were born in the '60's & '70's. It's always struck me as odd that the very reasons people are motivated to create change, are the same reasons that make them vulnerable to attack. I presume that were government funding not involved, none of this would have been an issue. Where did we get this idea that neutrality of ideas was a prerequisite for the use of public monies? Ironically, this notion was successfully challenged by faith-based organizations. It's gone in and out of vogue, but in some years pushing a religious agenda, requiring a prayer for service, would exclude an organization from the use of federal funds. Politics found a way to justify this. At the same time that the faith-based organization was placed squarely on the legitimate table, n...

Where in the (nonprofit) World Are You: What Google Analytics Tells Us by pam ashlund Willkommen, Velkommen , Welkom , Bienvenue , Beinvenidos , Benvenuto, Bonvenon, Kalosorisate, Vitame Vas ,Vitejte, Woezor, Akwaaba, Kalos ilthate, E komo mai Swaa-gat hai , Selamat Datang, Cead Mile Failte , Failte romhat, Kia Ora , Dzieñ dobry, Bem Vinda, Muito Bem Vindo, Multumesc, Greuz i, Mabuhay, Akwaaba, Laskavo prosymo, Hush kelibsiz, Dobrodosli Where in the world are readers of the Nonprofit Eye visiting from? Here are the stats: US 1771 93% Canada 52 3% UK 35 2% India 12 1% Australia 8 Ireland 8 Spain 7 Singapore 7 Malaysia 7 Technorati Tags: Google Analytics , Nonprofit

We've talked about the scary repercussions of trying to reach unrealistically high performance measures before.... I just came across an article that's apparently been around since 2003, How I Cooked the Books and Why . Written under the pseudonym "Phil Anthrop" (which is funny by itself), Phil tells the harrowing tale of good values going horribly wrong. I highly recommend this article to anyone managing nonprofit service contracts. Maybe when our funders ask us to meet some unreasonable metrics we should all just quote Nancy Reagan and "just say no." After all the same contracts require compliance with the Drug Free Workplace Act (product from the same administration). The article comes from a back issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly (which I am obliged to plug once again). Please be assured that no payment has been received for this nod (and I have no financial interest, etc)! I just love and admire that rag. Further reading from the " Eye ": ...