Newsletter

Leading in Turbulent Times | Step 5 of 5: Energize Exceedingly

The best leaders offer emotional support and provide encouragement to those around them, especially during difficult times. These are the precise characteristics you’ll need to display with your team if you expect your charity to survive a crisis and ultimately thrive later on. Verbal affirmation is essential to establishing secure emotional bonds with your team, directors, and supporters. In turn, these bonds deliver security, stability,…

Leading in Turbulent Times | Step 4 of 5: Engage Purposefully

Fires, floods, pandemics, lawsuits, and technology failures are just a few disruptions with the potential to send shockwaves through your organization. Regardless of the specific crisis, there’s one absolute truth: The nonprofits that will get hurt the most are the ones that haven’t assessed their new environment, named their priorities, and adapted their operations accordingly….

How to Maximize Year-End Giving

1. Deduct $300 without itemizing This year only! You can deduct $300 of charitable gifts without itemizing. The $300 limit is one per tax filing unit. (So, married couples filing jointly don’t get $600.) This must be a cash gift paid to an operating nonprofit. (So, not to a donor advised fund.) 2. Deduct up…

Leading in Turbulent Times | Step 3 of 5: Elevate Continuously

By committing to using hard data, you’re harnessing one of the most powerful strategies for successfully navigating rough waters. There are five key metrics in particular that you’ll want at your disposal. Let’s take a closer look at each. Metric 1: Operating Cash on Hand The first metric — and…

Leading in Turbulent Times | Step 2 of 5: Execute Decisively

Communication Is KeyThe first step to effective execution is communication. In times of crisis, communication needs to happen early and often. Figure out which of your stakeholders need what information, and communicate in a 360-degree manner. Everyone from your board to your cleaning crew needs to understand how they’ll be…

Leading in Turbulent Times | Step 1 of 5: Establish Immediately

Get Lean When crisis hits, the first thing you need to do is pare down your organization’s goals and priorities to the 3-5 that are the most mission-critical. When uncertainty surrounds our professional and personal lives, things become less familiar and less predictable. And when things become less familiar and…

5 Tips from Jean Zimmerman

On job descriptions What a job description should really do is give someone a sense of what their zones of responsibilities are going to be. Focus more on how the person will fit within the organization and how they’ll connect to everyone else. Don’t make a job description pages and…

5 Tips for Resilience from Best-Selling Author Danny Bader

1) Be alive.I write about this a lot, the difference between just living and being alive. Just living for me is going through the motions — getting up every day, not really engaged in life, a lot of things going on, complaining a lot, not having a belief in something…

Envisioning Your Remote Work Culture

In this issue of High Impact Insights, we will walk you through a strategic planning exercise adapted to consider remote work and the challenges you will have building an organizational culture to support your vision. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many organizations were quickly forced into new remote-work situations. We…

Remote Work That Works

The relationship between you and your remote staff members is central to the success of your organization —especially during these challenging times. Your job as a leader is to ensure that there is a mutual understanding and agreement of the job’s requirements, expectations, and necessary accomplishments between you and each…

Mindset Matters: Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude

Even in the best of times, life can be worrisome. Will I get sick? What will I do if I lose my job? Do I have enough resources to get through this? How can I help my parents? What does all this mean for my family? In this issue of…

Optimism: Life is Better When the Glass is Half Full

It’s been said that optimism is a force multiplier—it can energize entire groups of people to look for the good in a situation. And when people are looking for the good, anything is possible. We absolutely believe this to be true. In this issue of High Impact Insights, we’ll share…

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