10 measurable New Year’s resolutions your nonprofit or foundation can totally achieve in 2019

Posted on by Vu
[Image description: An adorable little squirrel with puffy cheeks and big eyes, staring directly at the camera. They have mixed orange-gray fur, with a white tummy. Their paws are touching, held in front of their chest. This squirrel has nothing to do with this post and is only here as clickbait. It worked. You clicked. Pixabay.com]
Hi everyone. If this is your first day back from the holiday break, make some coffee and read last week’s pep talk “Welcome back to work, you stunningly brilliant and attractive world-changer, you!” followed by “12 tips to ensure you don’t stab anyone on your first day back from break.” (Tip 9: Take a short walk. To your car. Drive home. Watch Netflix.)

It is 2019, a brand new start! Take a deep breath. What you smell is the aroma of change, of possibility, of hope! Or maybe leftover food or rotting compost that should have been thrown out before the weekend, but I’d like to think it’s the former. As many of us make our personal resolutions to improve ourselves, so should our organizations. Unfortunately, many resolutions fail because they are either too lofty or too nebulous or involve exercise.

Here then are some tangible, relatively straight-forward resolutions all of us, whether we are nonprofits or foundations, should make to ensure that we and our sector have a kickass 2019. They are in no particular order, do not encompass everything we need to do, and I might expand on some of them in future posts: Continue reading “10 measurable New Year’s resolutions your nonprofit or foundation can totally achieve in 2019”

Welcome back to work, you stunningly brilliant and attractive world-changer, you!

Posted on by Vu
[Image description: A beautiful grey striped kitten peeking out from a pink box. This kitten thinks you are an amazing person who is making the world better! Pixabay.com]
My friends of the nonprofit sector. For many of you, this is your first week back at work after a much-deserved but all-too-brief period of rest. It is not a fun feeling, and not helped by the perky morning people in the office who probably should not talk to me until noon unless they want to get their faces splashed with lukewarm coffee. I don’t even drink coffee, but I will make some coffee and keep it nearby just to splash on perky morning people. I don’t care what your resolutions are, Neal!

You may feel the same way I feel, which is basically the way your office plants currently look. Your heart may too palpitate in thinking of the list of all the stuff you have to do—if you have a list and it’s not just a bunch of things you wrote on your hands days ago and are now desperately trying to remember. Continue reading “Welcome back to work, you stunningly brilliant and attractive world-changer, you!”

How to quiet your overthinking brain enough to enjoy your holiday break

Posted on by Vu
[Image description: Close up on the face of a sleepy light brown chihuahua that’s lying down. Their eyes are half-closed, looking at the camera. This looks like one tired puppy who needs a break. Pixabay.com]
Hi everyone, before we begin, check out this delightful video made by the Human Services Council in New York City. Similar to this NAF post, the video envisions a for-profit, here a pizza place, being treated the way nonprofits are; it brings to light the absurd stuff we have to deal with (NAF gets a shout-out in the end credits).

Many of us are preparing to take some time off for the holiday break. I wrote about the importance of giving your team and yourself some time to recharge in “A Call to Inaction: Nonprofits, Give Your Staff a Break.” Giving people time off, now or later in the year, is a relatively inexpensive way to boost morale, increase effectiveness, and make it more likely that you’ll get one of those coveted “Best Boss in the World” mugs that I’ve only heard about. 

For many of us though, even when we are not at the office, we’re not exactly on a break. This is due to several reasons. Our field tends to attract people who care a lot about others; nonprofit work does not end when we go home; and the complexity of the work combined with the fact that we care about people means we’re always trying to read up on the latest research or model or thinking of new strategies or whatever. There are always more things we could and should be doing. Continue reading “How to quiet your overthinking brain enough to enjoy your holiday break”

10 things progressive funders must learn from conservative ones, or we are all screwed

Posted on by Vu
[Image description: A black-and-white close-up shot of the head of the Statue of Liberty and part of her arm. Image by Fabian Fauth on Unsplash.com]

Hi everyone, this post is going to be very serious. The last few weeks have been difficult. The images of women and kids being tear-gassed at the border haunt me. It makes me think about how effective we nonprofits and foundations are, and what’s keeping us from being able to stop these horrible things from happening.  

I know many of us are having similar thoughts. Last week, I had the opportunity to interview Edgar Villanueva, the brilliant author of Decolonizing Wealth, a critical book that highlights something we actively avoid talking about: the history of philanthropic dollars, which is rooted in the genocide of Native peoples, slavery, and other abuse of and extraction from marginalized communities. I highly recommend the book. And it is an encouraging sign that foundations have been at least willing to engage with the topics that Decolonizing Wealth, along with Anand Giridharada’s Winners Take All, have been courageously bringing up.

But there is a potential challenge that I can see: The public embrace by foundations of these two books—and other forms of criticisms—is at danger of being another form of intellectualizing, with the reflection generated by these important books serving as a self-congratulatory proxy for actions, as has happened over and over. How many more books need to be written? When will we see fundamental changes to how philanthropy operates? Continue reading “10 things progressive funders must learn from conservative ones, or we are all screwed”

Our default organizational decision-making model is flawed. Here’s an awesome alternative!

Posted on by Vu
[Image description: A tired orange-striped cat with their eyes closed, on a black background. This kitty is probably tired making decisions in our flawed, top-down decision-making model. Pixabay.com]
Hi everyone, before we launch into today’s post, my friend Oz recorded my Guided Meditation for Nonprofit Professionals. Check out Oz’s soothing voice as he guides you to the Land of Sustainability in this free 12-minute relaxation exercise. “Breathe in and out […] Your desk is completely clutter-free and not a coffee-stained dumpster fire of chaos and broken promises.” (Original written meditation here)

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One of the things EDs and CEOs have noticed is that we get “decision fatigue,” and one way it manifests is in our frustration at having to make even small decisions when we’re at home. The other day, for example, my partner (who also directs a nonprofit) was hungry and asked which of two packages of ramen I recommended she eat. I was unable to answer. “I’m torn!” she said, “Just make the decision for me!” I stared at her for several more seconds before hissing like a cat and scampering into the living room to hide behind the couch.

Decision fatigue is real, y’all, and it has sometimes led to fights and arguments in our household over the most ridiculous things. (“Which movie should we see?” “Hisssss!”) It is also symptomatic of the weakness in our society’s default decision-making philosophy. This philosophy is basically top-down and hierarchical, where the people who have the most power have the most decision-making authority, even in areas where they have the least amount of knowledge and experience. The ED/CEO makes the final decisions on everything. Staff who challenge the decisions get into trouble. And the board sometimes vetoes the staff’s decisions. Continue reading “Our default organizational decision-making model is flawed. Here’s an awesome alternative!”