After the Merger: Getting to “Yes” is Only the Beginning
The integration process following a merger agreement is essential to achieving success.
The integration process following a merger agreement is essential to achieving success.
With its professional management class and army of consultants, the nonprofit sector can sometimes seem isolated from the messiness of civil society, and a new Philanthropic Beltway may have sprung up. But it wasn’t always that way, and it may be time to reclaim an earlier identity as the “volunteer sector,” which is inherently democratic.
Like all of civil society, the American nonprofit sector is a living thing. Its recent evolution has created a large and diverse force for good, but faces distinct challenges ranging from identity to sustainability.
The history of America’s Hispanic community shows how civil society can create a refuge for those excluded from society at large. But allowing such demarcation lines is never good enough. For a civil society to be effective, sustainable, and worthy, it must tie together all who reside in that society.
Driven by a confluence of powerful secular trends, Americans’ trust in civil society has declined to alarming levels. Without addressing these trends and reversing the loss of trust, the ideal of private action for the public good could be at risk.
Funders are calling for more program evaluation, but nonprofits are often collecting dubious data, at great cost to themselves and ultimately to the people they serve.
Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, not the isolated intervention of individual organizations.
For NGOs, impact comes in different forms and to track the cycles of social change work, we must think across the tangibility and the speed of emergence of change.
With an understanding of these 10 funding models, nonprofit leaders can use the for-profit world's valuable practice of engaging in succinct and clear conversations about long-term financial strategy.
Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers.