Comments for Jonathan Poisner

Comment on Why Organizations Go Off Course: Lesson 2 by Time is your most precious commodity « Jonathan Poisner

Time is your most precious commodity « Jonathan Poisner — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:01:11 +0000

[...] I recently wrote an article about the perils of chasing money and other shiny objects. [...]

Comment on How Not to Run a Board Meeting by Good telephone board meetings « Jonathan Poisner

Good telephone board meetings « Jonathan Poisner — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:30:29 +0000

[...] I previously wrote about how not to run a board meeting. [...]

Comment on Why Organizations Thrive: Lesson 8 by Don’t make these mistakes in selecting a donor database « Jonathan Poisner

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:00:55 +0000

[...] are some further thoughts I previously wrote about investing in information management systems. Share and [...]

Comment on Why Organizations Go Off Course by On the perils of chasing money « Jonathan Poisner

On the perils of chasing money « Jonathan Poisner — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:43:25 +0000

[...] Why Organizations Go Off Course [...]

Comment on Why Organizations Thrive: Lesson 9 by How often should your board meet? « Jonathan Poisner

How often should your board meet? « Jonathan Poisner — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:24:21 +0000

[...] Of course, if you go to longer board meetings, it does place a higher burden on the Executive Director to come up with other means between board meetings to maintain communications with the board. I’ve written about the subject of ED-Board communications previously. [...]

Comment on When do you hire a Development Director? by jonathanpoisner

jonathanpoisner — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:21:22 +0000

Jeff — glad you find the set of questions useful. I agree wholeheartedly that planning is essential for the reasons you suggest, and worth doing whether you can bring in an outsider to help or not.

Comment on When do you hire a Development Director? by Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:41:31 +0000

Nice set of questions, JP! I would especially echo the point about having a plan drafted first. If you get a good self-starter, they will adapt the plan quickly – but I think ideally you want to spend some time, and perhaps some outside consulting money, up front to develop a plan and projections and to really ground truth those projections and assumptions with some outside folks.

Sometimes developing a capacity building proposal is the best format (and excuse) for going through this kind of exercise, but I think folks would be well advised to do it even if they are not required to.

-J

Comment on Paying attention to the institution by Allen Hancock

Allen Hancock — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:56:14 +0000

Thanks for your postings Jonathan. As a major donor I am surprised that some organizations just send me their regular funding appeal every year and don’t invite me to make a gift on an annual basis–let alone ask me to increase my gift. If they’re not asking me to maintain or increase my giving they’re probably not asking other major donors either–which makes me wonder if they have an effective fundraising plan that will serve the organization’s needs in the future.

In some cases I’ve stopped funding organizations that don’t seem to really care whether I give each year or not and directed that money to organizations that are actively engaged in fundraising.

Comment on Why Wisconsin Matters by Carl Rittenhouse Larson

Carl Rittenhouse Larson — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 04:27:53 +0000

Wonderful article. I’d like to add something:

Good is the enemy of great. With unions, we have a *good* method of combating the corporate oppression we experience in the United States. But let’s face reality – unions are a 19th century method of fighting this fight.

Look at what’s happened in Egypt, and the rest of the middle east. A corporation is no match for 40,000 angry, peaceful marchers.

Out society must undergo profound, fundamental change in order to be healthy. Unions aren’t going to even come close to fixing this problem, so let’s throw them out. We’re drowning, and if we ban unions, we’ll just sink lower; hopefully low enough to touch the bottom of the pool with our foot, kick off, and get back to air faster.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Jonathan, I totally agree with you about where we need to go, I just disagree about how we’re going to get there.