Writings

Build Your Organization’s Capacity To Make More Progress

Making progress on a worthwhile mission is where it’s at – it’s the bottom line of a nonprofit just as…

Community Philanthropy: Strategies for Impacting Vulnerable Populations

“Disparities are usually caused by complex interacting forces, making it almost impossible for just one program or organization to fix.”…

Problems With Using A Single Measure of Success

At the risk of sounding pedantic, not all pounds of food are equal.  There’s a problem with using a single…

Community Philanthropy in Central and Eastern Europe – A New Introduction

This handsome primer is for people interested in learning about the role that community philanthropy organizations can play in strengthening…

A “Dignity Gap”

Dignity is kind of an old fashioned concept and isn’t talked about much. But we all know what it feels…

Use Advocacy to Promote Social Change

Advocacy includes promoting changes to public or private policies to reduce the flow of victims from unfortunate circumstances (or from…

How Nonprofits Are Set Up to Fail: Ghosts from Our Pre–Colonial Past

A favorite maxim of mine is that “the fish will be the last to discover water.” We fish can’t easily…

Successful Neighborhood Self-Help: Some Lessons Learned – A New Introduction

This is not a how-to paper on organizing a neighborhood, nor is it a how-to paper on managing a neighborhood…

The Confluence of Philanthropy, Justice, and Evaluation

Where all three themes flow together … I’ll write on how we can know when societal institutions, drawing on the…

Pathways to Progress: Focusing Philanthropy on Racial Equity and Social Justice – A New Introduction

Focusing philanthropy on racial equity means, we found, pursuing six different pathways, sometimes one at a time, sometimes together. Focusing…

Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble

Take risks. Be a bit more bold than usual, within yourself and then beyond with others. Dare to reach a…

The Choices We Make as Evaluators: You Gotta Serve Somebody

Those of us with research training already know how to do studies that embrace principles of science.  We could begin…

CF – The Magazine for Growing Community Foundations

A strong national network of growing community foundations is good for communities.  Community foundations can be a constant source of…

Happy Birthday, America!

Let’s celebrate our independence by sending birthday gifts to those organizations that are trying to change the system so the…

Indicators of Freedom: Examples From the Film, “12 Years a Slave”

I turned my list of indicators of enslavement into their more positive form, calling them “indicators of freedom.”  Consider them…