Standards for Excellence Seal Holder, The Valley Medical Center Foundation, is working hard in the Silicon Valley to meet vital community health needs for the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, O’Connor Hospital, and St. Louise Regional Hospital—check out their blog here. To our friends at the Valley Medical Center Foundation, we are proud of the amazing ways you are serving.[…]

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, nonprofits across the country are facing challenges that none of us have ever had to ponder, let alone tackle, before. Issues related to assisting those we serve, our staff, and volunteer teams are perhaps more pronounced than ever. Along with all of the new challenges and difficulties, there are a host of vital management and operations tasks that have always been on our plates—and continue to be on the proverbial “to do list.” Certainly, issues[…]

Moving Ahead with Board Orientation?In this time when we are all struggling with so many issues related to the pandemic, some of the more “regular” issues (tasks that we typically address annually as part of the regular flow of business) also surface as unexpected challenges.  We know that for many nonprofits, the spring is the time when important onboarding takes place for incoming board members.  Can this occur in the midst of the pandemic with stay-at-home orders and no in-person meetings? […]

In the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic, many nonprofits are faced with tough choices related to raising the necessary resources to meet their missions and support the great needs of the communities they serve. The Standards for Excellence: An Ethics and Accountability Code for the Nonprofit Sector provides guidance for how organizations should act when planning resource development and states, “An organization’s resource development program should be maintained on a foundation of[…]

Nonprofit leaders around the country are working hard to continue to meet their important community missions in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. With this in mind, we’ve been engaged in analysis around which aspects of the Standards for Excellence program could play a role in helping prepare a nonprofit for the turbulent and uncertain times that we are all facing. We’ve heard from nonprofit leaders that they are grateful that the Standards for Excellence program helped them to develop policies,[…]

 Like so many of you, I’ve recently made the change from working in my somewhat cluttered but beloved office to working remotely all the time. I have been a regular remote worker for one day a week (or one day every other week) for a number of years. This once-a-week opportunity to slip into my home office so that I could savor the peace and quiet, getting important “thinking and writing projects”  checked off the ever-present “to do” list, feels a lot different from my current full-time work[…]

This is part of a special series, brought to you by the Standards for Excellence Institute, to provide nonprofit leaders with a brief nonprofit governance and management tip weekly over the course of 2020. We hope these short tips will be helpful to you and the nonprofits you serve. If you have suggestions for future topics, please forward these to acmadsen@standardsforexcellence.org.I recently read an article “Nonprofits Decline Gifts With Too Many Strings or Misaligned Values, Survey Finds” […]

This is part of a special series, brought to you by the Standards for Excellence Institute, to provide nonprofit leaders with a brief nonprofit governance and management tip weekly over the course of 2020. We hope these short tips will be helpful to you and the nonprofits you serve. If you have suggestions for future topics, please forward these to acmadsen@standardsforexcellence.org.At the end of last year, due to term limits, I ended my service as the chair of the finance committee of a[…]

This is part of a special series, brought to you by the Standards for Excellence Institute, to provide nonprofit leaders with a brief nonprofit governance and management tip weekly over the course of 2020. We hope these short tips will be helpful to you and the nonprofits you serve. If you have suggestions for future topics, please forward these to acmadsen@standardsforexcellence.org.Not a week goes by when we don’t hear about some nonprofit that is tackling the impact of some type of disaster. […]

This is part of a special series, brought to you by the Standards for Excellence Institute, to provide nonprofit leaders with a brief nonprofit governance and management tip weekly over the course of 2020. We hope these short tips will be helpful to you and the nonprofits you serve. If you have suggestions for future topics, please forward these to acmadsen@standardsforexcellence.org.Earlier this week, I answered my home phone and a paid fundraiser working for a nonprofit that my family and I[…]