July 06, 2023
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January 26, 2022Can you imagine an organization said to support Black people with no or just one Black person on the board? It’s like a panel discussing women’s rights with no women (which also happens). It makes no sense. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair,” is a famous quote by Shirley Chisholm I often hear in advocacy groups. I still believe it’s sound advice, but it also doesn’t capture how hard it can be for some people to carry around their chair everywhere, all the time. And it takes the pressure off the others at the table — they don’t have to change a thing. They are comfortably sitting in their chairs and don’t even have to acknowledge your chair is different or how much effort it took for you to bring it to the table. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair”
June 08, 2022Many facets of society have been severely impacted by the pandemic and non-profit support has been hit very hard by lack of volunteerism, lack of fundraising opportunities and lack of corporate engagement. As we look at next steps where businesses are starting to open up, staff are starting to reimerge out of their home offices and companies are looking to get back to business…this may be a great opportunity to look at what corporate volunteerism means to the company, the employee and the non-profit organizations.
June 09, 2022Let’s simply skip all of the platitudes about the challenges of COVID and move straight to the learning; what did you learn about your organization during COVID? As we slowly (and perhaps prematurely) start to see the light at the end of the tunnel for COVID, each and every type of organization, and this especially includes non-profits, should take advantage of the opportunity to debrief the COVID chock and what it taught us about each of our organizations. There are lots of learning opportunities during COVID. Warren Buffett, in an admittedly different context, said that when the tide goes out, you get to see who has been swimming naked. COVID exposed the naked parts (and personnel) of a lot of organizations. However, COVID also exposed a lot of people who were wearing brilliantly and beautifully designed swimwear (to stretch the saying). COVID exposed the fact that organizations had inner strengths that were previously unacknowledged, underappreciated, and likely underutilized.
