I lead two nonprofit workshops this week; one on the use of technology and one on how to communicate your impact. I always begin my workshops with a similar theme: understand your organization and take a serious look at your values, vision, and mission. Once that is clear, you can more clearly identify the goals and actions to take your organization where it needs to go. Seems simple but in most cases, these are extremely hard conversations to have and even harder to reach consensus. As I was leaving my Forefront workshop in Galesburg, Illinois, I drove past a construction crew working on a house and had to capture the image. The signs read "Every action of creation is first of all an act of destruction " by Pablo Picasso . Genius and true! If you want to build strong buildings and organizations, you first have to tear them apart, see what you're dealing with, come up with a plan for improvement and then build it. This also reminds of nonprofit...
I blog about issues facing nonprofit managers and organizations as a former Executive Director and current nonprofit researcher, professor, and consultant. I am passionate about building up the sector, about claiming the value nonprofits provide to the world.