Recovering Executive Director

“The public library is a center of public happiness first, of public education next.”  ―  John Cotton Dana ,  A Library Primer  (1903) .  Libraries have been, and will likely always be, a large part of my life.  My library at Holy Name Catholic  School was my first volunteer experience, at the age of 10.   By volunteering in the library, I could come to school early before the other students arrived, and sort and shelve books.  I remember feeling peaceful while my classmates arrived on buses and on foot, filling the grounds outside.  At the first bell, the silence would end, and I would have to go to my classroom.  I started a classroom library in 7th grade, complete with our very own card catalog.  On weekends, I would go to the Pembroke Public Library , finding a quiet corner usually on the second floor and escape in books, the outside world fading away to barely a hum.  I spent many hours in that Public Library ...

Be Fearless! I have been thinking a lot about the work I do, to help organizations improve their plans or think about what they can measure for example. What is the common thread?  Well I really think it has something to do with "resilience". I work with nonprofits to sometimes face a crossroads, sometimes to even keep going at all; sometimes the organization needs clarity, to refine their mission; other times they need to be able to better measure what they do and demonstrate the impact they are having. Last year, Beth Kanter wrote about nonprofit resilience in her blog .  She wrote about it in the individual sense, that people who work in nonprofits have a high degree of stress and can burnout. Therefore, we need to think about the resilience of nonprofit staff. I use the term resilience in a broader sense, in terms of the whole organization. Organizations may change and morph over time, adapting to the world around them, or may stay stuck in an earlier time, ...