Beware the Perfectly Average Nonprofit
Typical capacity building focuses on fixing nonprofits' weaknesses. It instead should start with the premise that every organization has core strengths on which it can build.
Organizational Development - Most Popular
Innovative approaches to internally driven, organization-wide efforts to achieve strategic goals (more)
Excerpt
Leading Systems Change
An excerpt from Leading Systems Change explores how to create and sustain community engagement over time.
A ‘Balancing Test’ for Foundation Spending
Instead of plugging numbers into a traditional formula, taking another look at foundation spending policies is an opportunity for an engaged board to grapple with central strategic questions.
Lessons From the Front Line for Nonprofit CEO Successions
Boards typically aren’t prepared to replace their chief executive. But new research shows this doesn’t have to be the case.
New Year’s Resolutions for Leaders of Social Change
A list of SSIR articles to help your team define and achieve its goals for doing better in 2020.
Excerpt
Obstacles to You Becoming the Leader You Want to Be
An excerpt from a new book explains the range of factors that challenge leaders’ ability to lead effectively.
Asking Questions About Sustainability, Scale, and Systems Change
When nonprofits try to plan for scale, systems change, and sustainability at the same time, they can find the expectations for achieving each at odds with each other. The answer is a flexible approach that focuses on the mission.
Equity, Power-Sharing, and Renewal of Civil Society
The United States can restore the trust that allows civil society to flourish by emphasizing the values that have long bound us together and by adopting the newer values of shared power and racial equity.
Big Enough. Simple Enough. Cheap Enough.
Daunting social problems need scalable solutions. Here’s how to know if you’ve got one.
How a Portland-Based Nonprofit Scaled From 5 to 20 Locations in 7 Years
A commitment is only a start. After that, it takes strategy, performance management, data, planning, investment, and a relentless desire to improve.