After months of speculation and the defendant’s posturing, six weeks of stunning revelation followed by stunning revelation during the trial, and eleven days of acrimonious jury deliberations, former New York State Senator Pedro Espada was finally found guilty of charges that he looted the nonprofit he founded, ran, and kept alive with a steady stream [...]
The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox wins 2012 AFP Research Prize
I am pleased to share the official announcement that The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox has won the 2012 Association of Fundraising Professionals/Skystone Partners Research Prize Each year since 1990, the AFP Research Council awards the Skystone Partners Prize for Research to the author of a book that contributes substantially to the knowledge and understanding of fundraising [...]
NY Attorney General Announces New Nonprofit Initiatives
Another small step toward tighter control over how nonprofits operate in New York was taken yesterday when the state’s Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, announced a package of initiatives intended, according to his press release, to “revitalize and reform” New York’s nonprofit sector. This is no small matter, given that the report contains the eye-opening facts [...]
Cuomo and the Nonprofits
Well…it has, I admit, been a while since I’ve written in these pages; and for that I apologize. I plead two contributing factors. The first is that I have been (thankfully) busy, mostly in Texas where Barry Silverberg, the president of the Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations, has had me traveling to the Lone Star [...]
Head vs. Heart Based Giving
Ken Berger and I respond here to a piece Ruth McCambridge had in the Nonprofit Quarterly…. Ruth McCambridge’s December 5th article on the Nonprofit Quarterly’s Nonprofit Newswire page, “Donors Give LESS When More Analytic Say Researchers,” is certainly provocative; but it misses a serious point and could give donors, both large and small, the wrong [...]
Why Outcomes?
On December 12th I will be presenting at the inaugural session of the Nonprofit Texas Leadership Institutes in Austin, sponsored by the Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations and the Center for Community-based and Nonprofit Organizations of Austin Community College. Preparatory to that event, Barry Silverberg, President of TANO, asked me to pen an article for [...]
Cuomo Orders Review of Nonprofit Compensation, Part 6
A strange –some might say “disquieting”- silence has settled in on the Nonprofit Task Force announced by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo amidst much fanfare back in August. It will be recalled by readers of these pages that quickly following a New York Times story that recounted how two brothers, Phillip and Joel Levy of [...]
Outcomes Toolbox on WOR radio in NYC
If you’d care to hear it, my appearance on Denver Frederick’s Business of Giving radio show on WOR 710AM in NYC last week -where we discuss nonprofits, outcomes, and my Outcomes Toolbox book- is now available in the archives
Cuomo Orders Review of Nonprofit Compensation, Part 5
While it is still too early to tell precisely what the exact focus of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s new Nonprofit Task Force will turn out to be –it was initially announced that it would be looking into executive compensation at nonprofits that receive state funding- by virtue of the last item in a 40+ question survey [...]
Clouds on the Horizon
Advertising guru Elmer Wheeler once said that the best way to close a deal was to “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Unfortunately, the nonprofit sector has, for the past 50 years or more, largely applied that thinking to its management, its reporting, and, most especially, its fundraising. The result is a sector that largely [...]