In many smaller nonprofits the people involved are too busy to make communicating to the public a consistent priority. Yet by simply outlining a plan for an entire year, it all gets much easier. This episode is about the 'how' to talk about the 'why' of your organization.

Give Big is a statewide effort in Washington to get alll the nonprofits involved in a short sprint for gifts. It has morphed into something that I believe is destructive for healthy nonprofits. It's creating a dependence on a big organization and making the Scarcity Mindset the paradigm. We need to break that. Listen in to my totally biased take on this!

Jim Mueller of JMuellerandassociates.com is a consultant in Florida who has published a book all about defining the roles you need on your board, finding the right people, then assuring they have a good experience on the board. It's a great read, and Jim tells us a few gems in this interview.

There is risk of all kinds that we must prepare for. Risk can be not only bad, but also good. We should be prepared for anything that may come the way of our organization. Let's plan ahead!

For fun, I hammer out a few annoying clichés in this episode, and then focus on the real reason we do strategic planning: because we can't afford not to.

How do you do strategic planning with your board, staff, and stakeholders when the future is so unpredictable? Plan for a lot of different possibilities - both the bad ones and the good ones!

How are you relating to your donors? Are you doing it on their terms or on yours? You'll have a lot more success if you listen to donors... and then tell their story to the rest of the community. Donors need to be engaged on their own terms, and it really helps when we listen to what they have to say about our organizations. You'll hear why they love you, not why you love yourself!

Risk management is a really important part of what a board should be doing. We need to think of what CAN go wrong, not what might go wrong that we're pretty sure we can manage. The pandemic has shown that we need to think about the worst, and build it into our future plans.

This is the Covid-19 episode. 

How to you move ahead now? What can your organization - staff, board, and funders do to get to the other side of this unimaginable chasm? This episode will give you a few ideas to get people unstuck and start moving.

Bonus content: soothing creek soundtrack in the background.

I tend to err on the side of kindness - I presume everything is going okay. What I know, however, is that we have to be on the lookout all the time for problems on the horizon. In this episode I investigate what it means to be a board member skeptic. A guardian of the mission and protector of the good. Sounds pretty righteous. Check it out!