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Leadership
Leadership
Peter Drucker - influential writer and management consultant – said that "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Great leaders possess social intelligence, a passion for change, and a vision that allows them to set their sights on the "things" that truly merit attention. There are leaders at every level of your organization from board to executive to front line staff. These articles and resources are tools to use in building and re-energizing your leaders.
How Committees Can Help Prevent Volunteer Burnout
Source: Lexian Management Associates Rick Szilagyi and Lauriane Lebrun of Lexian Management Associates share their framework for volunteer committees that work well without burning out.
Posted on: July 10, 2019
Topics: Board | Leadership | Sustainability | Volunteer Management MindEdge Learning Professional Development
The Center has partnered with MindEdge Learning, a leading provider of online higher education and professional development, to offer their full suite Management and Nonprofit Management certificates and courses. These on-demand, self-paced courses provide an alternative to the Center's existing opportunities and members of the Center can request a discount code for 10% off the normal price.
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Posted on: October 10, 2018
Topics: Online Tools | Cost savings | Featured BoardSource
Discounts on membership and board self-assessments
Center members can save 15% on organizational membership or $200 on BoardSource's board self-assessment service. BoardSource members get complimentary access to BoardSource's collection of white papers, webinars, and more. They also get member discounts on their print or digital copies of their books, such as Board Fundamentals: Understanding Roles in Nonprofit Governance and The Source: Twelve Principles of Governance That Power Exceptional Boards.
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Posted on: January 29, 2018
Topics: Featured Leading with Intent: A National Index of Nonprofit Board Practices
Source: BoardSource Who serves on today’s nonprofit boards? What matters most when it comes to the board’s roles and responsibilities? What impact are they having on organizational performance? How do boards conduct their work? How well are they fulfilling their many important roles and responsibilities? How are boards composed and organized? Leading with Intent: BoardSource Index of Nonprofit Board Practices answers these questions as the latest in BoardSource’s series of studies tracking and analyzing trends in nonprofit board leadership since 1994.
Posted on: January 27, 2015
Topics: Best Practice | Board | Data & Research | Leadership How to Approach a Proposed Merger of Nonprofits
Source: NH Business Review Don Crandlemire, shareholder at the law firm Shaheen & Gordon, writes for NH Business Review on the difficulty of nonprofit mergers and some specifics to the merger process in NH.
Posted on: November 14, 2014
Topics: Collaboration | Leadership | Legal When in Crisis, What Should Boards Do?
Source: Nonprofit Quarterly In recent weeks and months, there have been a series of crises in organizations ranging from data breaches at Target, Michaels, and Chase to the sexual abuse scandals at Penn State and domestic violence in the NFL. In many of these cases, although the boards of directors were not blamed directly, they often came under fire for not having paid close enough attention to see the crises coming or for reacting too slowly. It is no surprise, then, articles have begun to appear addressing how a board should act before, during and after a crisis.
Posted on: October 9, 2014
Topics: Board | Board Roles & Responsibilities | Leadership Why Ethics Training Doesn’t Work
Source: NH Business Review Annabel Beerel, president and CEO of the New England Women’s Leadership Institute, on why current methods of ethics training don't work.
Posted on: February 3, 2014
Topics: Accountability (Ethics) | Leadership Five Tips for Building High-Performing Nonprofit Leadership Teams
Source: Bridgespan Many of us have been members of a leadership team, and if we were lucky, we’ve been on a great one or two. Sadly, most of us recount unsatisfying experiences too. The reasons cluster around a few themes: ineffective leadership, uneven talent, dysfunctional interactions, and lack of alignment or focus. Leading a productive team requires some higher order skills.
Posted on: December 13, 2013
Topics: Leadership The Delegation Dilemma: How Nonprofit Leaders Can Learn to Let Go
Source: Bridgespan To understand why nonprofit leaders often have a hard time delegating, says Jerry Hauser, CEO of The Management Center, you need to understand the personality traits that got them where they are. Nonprofit leaders, he says, are often incredibly strong individual performers who rose to their positions by being highly talented, deeply committed to their work, and dedicated to very high standards. "They have a really high bar," he notes, "and that adds up to leaders who are often control freaks."
Posted on: November 21, 2013
Topics: Collaboration | Executive | Leadership NPO Leaders: Your Absence From Social Media Costs Your Organization
Source: Bloomerang In a guest post for the Bloomerang blog, Natasha Golinsky of Next Level Nonprofits describes a fruitless search for a nonprofit executive's LinkedIn account, highlights why it's important for nonprofit leaders to have a personal online presence, and shares six tips for anyone not yet using social media.
Posted on: October 18, 2013
Topics: Executive | Leadership | Social Media Here We Go Again: The Cyclical Nature of Board Behavior
Source: Nonprofit Quarterly An examination of the cyclical nature of board behavior, it's various stages, and what they mean for the organization.
Posted on: October 7, 2013
Topics: Board | Leadership Leading into Discomfort: Social Sector Leadership in the 21st Century
Source: Nonprofit Quarterly In a time where hot button issues are more the norm than the exception, this article looks at how leaders are thinking about the political moment, and how are they and their organizations responding in terms of taking leadership?
Read the article from Nonprofit Quarterly.
Posted on: May 2, 2013
Topics: Leadership Making Organizational Learning Stick
Source: Nonprofit Quarterly All nonprofits can benefit from internal knowledge capture, surfacing and sharing good ideas and practices. Some organizations engage in external sharing across their fields or to advance learning as a whole. Whether your goals are internal, external, or both, here’s how you can put the right combination of technology- and people-powered processes in place to meet them.
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Posted on: March 14, 2013
Topics: Leadership Board Self-Assessment Questionnaire
The Board Self-Assessment Questionnaire—available as an online tool—allows nonprofit boards to assess their effectiveness in 12 aspects of governance, ranging from board-staff roles to external relations practices. This tool has been used by hundreds of boards and thousands of board members throughout the US and abroad since 2009.
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Posted on: March 1, 2013
Topics: Online Tools The Sustainability Formula
Source: TCC Group The Sustainability Formula: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Thrive in the Emerging Economy released by the TCC Group in 2013 is based on the results of an analysis of the factors that predict sustainability for approximately 700 nonprofit organizations that were surveyed using its Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT).
Posted on: February 27, 2013
Topics: Leadership | Sustainability Distinguishing a Board’s Steering and Rowing Work
Source: Nonprofit Quarterly As described in the book Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards, to govern comprehensively, boards work in three modes: fiduciary, strategic, and generative. To use a metaphor in which an organization is a boat, boards can make two distinct types of contributions: steering and rowing.
Posted on: January 30, 2012
Topics: Board | Board Roles & Responsibilities | Leadership 
Do you conduct an exit interview with departing board members? Consider what you could learn! Get a list of intriguing questions from NonprofitNext
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