Treehouse was the winner of the 2018 Stand for Your Mission Award for successfully advancing its mission through establishing advocacy as an expectation for engaged and effective board leadership. In this post, we learn how the organization continues to achieve its goals through advocacy. 

Happy new year! Everyone here at BoardSource is excited for another year of supporting and helping organizations like yours to advance your mission, but before we move into 2019, let’s take a look back at some of the great blogs we posted in 2018. Maybe you missed them when they first published, or...

Earlier today, Anne Wallestad shared her thoughts on four assumptions made in a recent fundraising report entitled “Pennies for Charity” in an opinion piece published by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. We summarize her viewpoint here but encourage you to read “Deeply Flawed ‘Pennies for Charity’...

We’ve all heard that familiar quote about continuing to do something the exact same way you’ve done it in the past yet expecting a different result. It’s like a dog chasing its tail. Is your nonprofit constantly chasing elusive solutions?

Eight-Minute Read

Unfortunately, most of the 1.5 million nonprofits in the U.S. live a hard life and struggle just to keep their doors open. Often, staff suffer from low pay, high stress, and burnout; technology is underutilized; and board members and other volunteers are disengaged, misaligned,...

Last year, BoardSource’s board formalized an organizational commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity. That commitment was the result of more than a year of focused work with our board, and was informed by growing evidence over many years that boards are struggling to live into what they say...

Anne Wallestad and Aaron Dorfman, president & CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), shared their thoughts on lessons learned from the recent turn of events at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in a blog post featured on the NCRP website. We summarize “Reflections...

Two-minute Read

Consider this scenario: You are a relatively new board member.  At the last meeting, a long-time board member suggests it is time for a new strategic plan. 

I worked on my family’s dairy farm through high school and college, but the twice-a-day milking routine never came easy for me. Summers were stifling hot; winter mornings at 3 a.m. were often below freezing.