25 things awesome board members do

Posted on by Vu

beyond-1157000_960_720Hi everyone. A colleague asked me to write about what board members can do to be helpful to staff. Nonprofit board members are critical to the success of organizations. We rely on y’all for so many important things and are deeply grateful for all the time, skills, connections, and resources you give, especially considering that the majority of board members are volunteers.

However, boards are also the direct cause of 39% of brain aneurysms in the sector, according to statistics that I made up. So I asked the NWB Facebook community to help develop a list of what awesome board members do. This is not a list of board roles and responsibilities, which you can google, or find at BoardSource, but actual, down-to-earth, sometimes seemingly minor stuff. One colleague writes this of one of her board members:

“When your fundraiser is on the same night as an ice storm, he personally salts the sidewalks and parking lot. Then when all the salt runs out he goes to the gas station down the road and buys more salt to finish the job. He also demands car keys from me and coworker at the end of the night to defrost and scrape our car windows. And somehow in the midst of all that he also pays several hundreds of dollars on an auction item and poses for tons of pictures with the kids. #oneofthebest“ Continue reading “25 things awesome board members do”

Hey tech people, stop thinking only you can save the world

Posted on by Vu

laptop-1176606_960_720Human beings are amazing. Our achievements in various fields throughout history, when we are not busy fighting one another, are breathtaking. Our achievements in technology are things our grandparents, and even ourselves, may have never dreamed about. Soon, most of us will be using an app to get fuel delivered to our cars, until we invent a car that runs on water or the omnipresent energy of the universe or whatever, we’ll travel long distances by Hyperloop, and our phones can be charged wirelessly from anywhere by having packets of electricity beamed from satellite. My partner and I just hooked up a smart light switch in our kitchen and can control the light from anywhere using our phones. I’ve been using this technology to scare my toddler into eating his veggies: “If you don’t finish your carrots, the Light Monster will get so angry…”

With technology having such a huge presence in our lives and work, it has become tempting to see it as the solution to all our problems. Every once a while, I start daydreaming about inventing an app, one that would be so successful that it would generate enough income for my organization so that I don’t have to wake up in cold sweat once or twice a month screaming, “Cashflow! Oh God, our cashflow!” Maybe a Tinder-like app, called Fundr, that allows organizations and foundations to quickly and mutually choose one another (“Hm, has leadership development as a priority, focuses on equity, program officer looks friendly. Wait, doesn’t like to pay for staffing? Cute, but obviously clueless. Swipe left.”)

Continue reading “Hey tech people, stop thinking only you can save the world”

Hey foundation trustees, come get a beer with us

Posted on by Vu

cheers-839865_960_720Hi everyone. You may have noticed that NWB now has ads. I tried to hold out for as long as I could, but with increased traffic comes increased costs to maintain this blog. I’ll try to make sure the ads are as unobtrusive as possible, and maybe even relevant, so be on the lookout for ads for donor management software, wholesale sticky dots, and carpal tunnel braces (#OxfordCommaForever).

Every time I talk to program officers about how to make the funding process more effective and equitable, I often get this response: “Vu, I agree with the stuff you’ve been kvetching about, you unconventionally sexy vegan, you. But…it’s the trustees at my foundation. It can be challenging to convince them to do things differently.” Continue reading “Hey foundation trustees, come get a beer with us”

21 irritating jargon phrases, and new clichés you should replace them with

Posted on by Vu

mallard-ducklings-938666_960_720Hi everyone. Thanks for buying NWB merchandise this past week (it pays for the hosting of this blog. And also grant-rejection tequila). Sorry if you’ve emailed me or left a voicemail, tweet, or Facebook message and never got a response from me. I am going to blame having a two-month-old. I’m pretty much in a constant state of hallucination. I’ll get back to you, but it may be a while, especially if these pterodactyls keep dropping 990 forms on me. Get away from me; you’re extinct!

Let’s talk about jargon. We have so many clichéd phrases and concepts in our sector. Many of them we’ve adopted from the for-profit sector; and some of them, we invented. More people are talking about jargon and how to avoid them, like this article, and this great infographic. But no one offers alternatives to jargon. And it is my philosophy to never offer a critique without offering potential solutions, unless I’m lazy. So I made up new jargon that you can use as alternatives. Try them out. Hopefully, these new clichés will catch on so that we can make charts to complain about them later: Continue reading “21 irritating jargon phrases, and new clichés you should replace them with”

So, you don’t think you directly benefit from nonprofits

Posted on by Vu

sn,x1313-bg,f8f8f8.u1Hi everyone. Before we begin today’s post, new NWB merchandise! The Nonprofit Unicorn Mantra line of products! Also, I got comments from non-nonprofit readers who felt left out, so here is some “I am a social justice unicorn” merchandise.

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This week, my awesome smart audio speaker arrived. It’s really cool. I can use my voice to ask it to play music, forecast the weather, read news headlines, set the timer, add things to my calendar, and—with other devices linked to it—control the lights and other appliances in the house. Her name is Alexa, and she’s a lifesaver when I have a newborn screaming in my ears and a three-year-old dangling from my leg. Alexa also spouts pick-up lines upon request, although “Hey girl. Are you a high chair? Because I want to put a baby in you” did nothing to calm the children down.

Why do I bring this up? Because I am amazed and grateful for all the incredible stuff people come up with. I appreciate inventors and manufacturers and retailers and am happy to pay money for useful gadgets that make my life easier. For-profits are critical to society, and we nonprofit folks understand that. I don’t know a single nonprofit that makes vodka. Continue reading “So, you don’t think you directly benefit from nonprofits”