I have long thought that it is usually better to have shared leadership.  Like any successful partnership, leaders should complement each other not be clones. "Opposites attract" is a cliché that may or may not be necessarily true, but does make sense.  In most organizations in which I have worked, I have had the luxury of a second-in-command.  I usually identify the person (although in one instance they were identified for me...it didn't work) or persons who I think can step in for me and...

This post by Mario Morino from Venture Philanthropy Partners raisies some important questions about our obsession with efforts to implement outcomes thinking. Do we risk failing to keep our eyes fixed on the ends we are trying to advance? I share his belief that our dialogue on outcomes should be 95% about mission and 5% about metrics.

"The main reason the dialogue on social outcomes is off track is because we have failed to keep our eyes fixed on the ends we are trying to advance. Every ounce...

Interesting post from John Brothers in the Stanford Social Innovation Review:

When my colleagues discuss nonprofit organizations, often they use a variety of analogies and comparisons. Sometimes an analogy is made between a nonprofit and a hospital, often discussing the nonprofits challenges with words relating to "surgery" or at times "life support." Sometimes they are compared to a car, comparing the…

When I looked at these characteristics I began thinking about the earlier classroom analogy...

This paper from the Monitor Institute titled Working Wikily 2.0: Social Change with a Network Mindset has very important implications for our thinking about collaboration and networks.There is also some good stuff in here about how funders can democratize grant decisions using networks:

Networks are also allowing some funders to experiment with the idea of de- mocratizing decision-making, decentralizing the authority to make grants and bringing grant decisions closer to those working on the...

I think a lot of opportunities for collaboration within organizations are missed because not enough time is available and/or dedicated to discussing what we are working on and thinking about. After infrequent opportunites to hear about the work of others, Its common to hear statements like: "wow, I had no idea that was what your team was doing, thanks. There are probably ways we can work together on this." So how do organizations (and inter-organizational collaborations or coaltiions for that...

Author Claudia Shifton writes about empowerment in the Community Development Journal and her main points are summarized in the Human Rights Reader. She offers a rough taxonomy of what to look for in the well established community development approaches of Service Delivery, Capacity Building, Advocacy and Social Mobilization when assessing the degree to which they (can) really empower people. Here's an exerpt of her take on empowerment in "service delivery":

"Service delivery can be characterised...

News Release, American Association for Cancer Research, Dec 8, 2009

HOUSTON - Regardless of an individual's dietary and lifestyle risk factors, living in a poorer or more socioeconomically deprived neighborhood may increase a person's risk for death, according to data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, held Dec. 6-9, 2009.

Researchers conducted the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study and found that people living in poorer...

Empowering change

Several members of local community nonprofit groups participated in the School of Education's Second Annual SPEC Conference last Monday on the University of Miami's Coral Gables campus. School of Education Dean Isaac Prilleltensky addressed the group during a morning session, at which five nonprofits that are participating in the SPEC project discussed future strategies to improve their organizations from within. SPEC is a model that attempts to promote strength-based,...

Forces for Good--love this book. A sentence I read recently is dominating my thinking, from Gloria Steinem on her 75th birthday (yes, 75), that a fundamental new understanding will have entered our culture in the next 25 years: Since the means we choose are the ends we get, we know that war doesn't create peace (Ms, Fall 2009, p 44). Its the part about the means we choose are the ends we get that I am reading in the Forces book.  Marketing like entreprenneurs leaves me a bit worried (ch 3) but ...