Weekly News Alert: Haiti, Leadership and Collaboration

Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Thu, 01/21/2010 - 15:54

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On Nonprofits and Haiti...

The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania publishes an article explaining how donors can most effectively help in Haiti. The Center has created a chart documenting the phases of effective philanthropic support and they offer tips to donors about what to look for in different charities. Donors should focus on organizations that have a large impact rather than those that place emphasis on not spending money on overhead and they should look at nonprofits that have the capabilities to have a large impact. They also offer a list of charities that they believe have those capabilities.

On Leadership...

Harvard Business Review asks a question: Are you Committing Leadership Malpractice? The article’s definition of leadership malpractice is “wasting the lives of those we lead” but this definition doesn’t only encompass obvious errors. Examples of leadership malpractice also include sponsoring a project that isn’t ready for prime time, overloading the star performer, managing jobs rather than careers, among others.
Recently business schools (along with companies and nonprofit organizations) have prized quantitative skills over qualitative skills and, as a result, critical thinking has become less of a looked-for attribute in the hiring process. However, for leaders, critical thinking is as important as ever especially given the complexities of the struggling economy. John Baldoni of Harvard Business Review shares his thoughts about how we can adopt new attitudes that support and encourage critical thinking.

On Collaboration...

Peer production or user-created content is becoming trendy in the nonprofit world. The method requires both collaboration and leadership but many have expressed concerns about the quality of the products. The European QMPP project has developed an approach to ensure the quality of user-created products. The challenges of quality control and possible solutions are discussed in a paper by Ari-Matti Auvinen.
Collaboration has stayed on trend in recent years because “it works,” according to Fast Company blog. To ensure that collaboration is an integral part of an organization the article recommends workshops. Also included in the Fast Company article are different workshop activities like “the hat trick” and “cut it out” which encourage both leadership and collaboration.

On Fundraising...

We like to think that when people donate to charities it is because they support what the charity does and who the charity serves; the cause, in other words, is what draws in the donors. However, Gift Hub publishes a post about the changing nature of philanthropy. To succeed now charities cannot only rely on their cause but they must also think about what will help the donor. Those charities that do not adapt, the blog says, will become “merely another casualty of this economic downturn.”

On Innovation...

There is a lot of talk about innovation but it is difficult do know how exactly to begin innovating. Blogging Innovation posts a list of small things every organization (or individual at an organization) can do to get the process started. Included in the list are documenting trends, observing customers and brainstorming.

On Technology...

Network for Good publishes 3 steps nonprofit organizations can take to improve their website. The steps are based on the ideas that the organization should feel reachable, there must be a common ground between those serving and those giving and the website needs to be aesthetically pleasing.

On Events and Courses...

A video and wrap up of the Tactical Philanthropy Forum (held Wednesday night in the Bay Area) is posted on the Tactical Philanthropy blog.
Heather Carpenter of the Nonprofit Leadership 601 blog will be co-teaching a course on Nonprofit Finance at the University of San Diego. The course contains an introduction to nonprofit financial terms, internal controls, identifying and interpreting nonprofit financial statements, nonprofit financial ratios, and the budgeting process.

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