Governance Q&A: Serving businesses and helping nonprofits in the community

I am an independent consultant serving businesses in my community. I would like to help some nonprofits too. Can you tell me about some ethical ways to help? Thank you for wanting to help local nonprofits. Most business consultants have...

Name your pain: The why and what of projects

This article is the first in a series that will look at some of the issues related to managing projects within the not-for-profit and public sectors. It focuses on providing you with more practical tips and tools that can be...

Governance Q&A: My executive director is not managing professionally or treating me with respect

My executive director is not managing professionally or treating me with respect. I am a hard-working, productive employee. Don't staff members who work in charities, for less than market rates in most cases, deserve better? Poor human resource management practices...

Governance Q&A: Putting an ED’s personal work ahead of the organization’s work

I am secretary to an executive director of a medium-sized charity. Although I am very busy, he keeps asking me to handle his personal correspondence, completely unrelated to the charity. He knows how to use his email and the fax...

Data reporting for funders

The information in this article is current as of April 7, 2004. Most nonprofits providing human services get financial support from some formal funding body such as government, a foundation or a centralized fundraiser like the United Way. All of...

Keeping your strategy vital

Strategic fatigue is something that can happen to any organization at any time. You know that your organization has fallen into strategic fatigue when: Committees designed to implement specific actions (that haven't been realized) aren't meeting as much or not...

Policy-based governance – What works and what doesn’t

Introduction There is an ongoing discussion or debate about "policy governance" and "administrative governance" and which one is better than the other. This discussion sometimes misses the point; rather than deciding which is better, the focus should be on what...

Succession planning and management

Introduction Many organizations define "succession" as the grooming of a small number of replacements for top executives, typically with one replacement per position. An executive director of a not-for-profit, with the help of the board of directors, would choose a...

Scenario planning: A key to better understanding strategic risks

Most organizations view strategic planning as the development of a single strategy to which they allocate incremental resources. The concern with a single strategy is that if it's wrong it could cripple the organization through the misallocation of limited resources....

A strategic approach to successful compliance under PIPEDA – focus on enforcement and remedies

Further to the substantive analysis of the policies and principles imbedded in the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (hereinafter referred to as 'PIPEDA'), the purpose of this follow-up paper is to examine the rather comprehensive remedial sections...