Pulled down by an embezzlement scandal and a lightning rod for right-wing attacks, the deeper tragedy at Acorn is how Wade Rathke turned community organizing into a personality cult that prevented the emergence of a new generation of leadership.
Changing priorities at two foundations affect funding for hundreds of small scale advocacy groups across the US. It looks as though free lance advocacy is losing out to the broader strategic objectives of political campaigning.
The new president of the Ford Foundation commits to continuity, while the organization remains best known for projects it sponsored a over a generation ago.
He confesses that an anonymous accusation that he fibbed on his résumé was correct and loses a month's pay as punishment. But the nonprofit organization that took over the zoo from the city remains in a fight for its life without an assured funding source.
Strategic planning, a management technique long ago rejected by for profit businesses, thrives in the charity industry mostly because funders insist on it. And the exercise has drifted from both strategy and planning to emphasize consensus-building instead.
Anemic dues structure will hamstring the new 140-member association. My analysis suggests that the members have much more capacity than they are willing to commit to the organization.
The state embraces a model where nonprofit support is a joint responsibility of corporations, donors, and government—but working human service nonprofits have their own, separate organization.
A historian of charities and a lawyer revive interest in charity organizations that combine national and grassroots perspectives in a federated structure.
A handful of chapters prefer to launch out on their own rather than accept consolidation into larger units as part of a strategic plan to encourage larger donations.
