Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing weekly series, each Friday we invite a nonprofit expert to highlight a research report or study and discuss how it can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

At Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), we use financial data every day in our work with nonprofits and their funders. One source of data informing this work is our annual State of the Sector Survey. Throughout the year, I’ve been blogging about key trends from our 2011 survey, which was completed by nearly 2,000 nonprofit leaders nationwide. They told us about their organizations’ financial outcomes from 2010 and speculated on what 2011 would bring. As we look back on what was certainly a challenging year, I thought it would be interesting to revisit some of their expectations.

Nonprofit leaders told us about planned changes to their service offerings in 2011:

Although contributed revenue was generally down from public and private sources alike, a majority of nonprofits indicated that they actually planned to add or expand their offerings in 2011. Many anticipated expanding the geography they serve or partnering with another organization in order to meet the…

In the business world, mergers and acquisitions are fairly commonplace. Those that are successful tend to benefit all involved, but the process is usually long and most will face problems and resistance along the way. The same is true for nonprofits.

The following is a combination of results from analysis I conducted last year on the 50 Collaboration Prize submissions that related to mergers, as well as two case studies from recent church mergers in the metro Phoenix area.

Redemption Merger: Similar Vision, Differing Models & Audiences

East Valley Bible (EVB) was a large, well-established 20-year-old church located in the East Valley which comprised a single campus with multiple services. EVB had well-established programs for children, families, and older adults.

Praxis was a rapidly growing church with campuses in Tempe and a brand new one in Arcadia. Praxis was not only a young organization (5-years-old at time of merger), but it also had congregations primarily made up of people in their 20s and 30s. Initially, Praxis had been moving the Sunday speaker back and forth between both its locations every Sunday. Due to the logistical challenge, they were exploring a video campus model. They ended up going with a model which used separate live speakers at each of their two campuses but which had a single support and administration team.

Jake Johnson, Praxis' Executive Pastor, said…

Paula couldn’t figure out why things had stopped running smoothly. As the CEO of medium-sized business, she was admired for her decision-making ability, moral conscience, and close coordination of staff activities (“Paula Front-and-Center,” they called her). But recently she was overhearing aggravated remarks from staff: she wasn’t paying attention to them, she was missing appointments, and forgetting to discuss important points at meetings.

Conscientious Paula was shocked to uncover these frustrations, and only stumbled on the solution by accident. Paula’s secretary Amy directed all of the traffic in and out of Paula’s office, but Amy had recently gotten so burned out from work that she couldn’t handle the traffic anymore. She failed to pass along calls, snapped at visitors, and passed along incomplete messages that made it look like Paula was being sloppy. Paula knew that helping Amy de-stress was step one of getting things back on track.

Let’s pull back the curtain.

The story above is about how your brain works. Your brain has a part called the Prefrontal Cortex, or “PFC” (remember “Paula Front-and-Center”?). The PFC is basically what makes you act like a human and not a salamander. It directs our attention, is responsible for moral decision-making, allows us to empathize with others, and helps coordinate the thousands of signals rushing around your brain. If your PFC stops functioning, you’re in trouble. There are two ways this…

Serving on nonprofit boards has been some of the most rewarding and frustrating work I have ever done. It gives you a chance to have significant impact on the direction of an agency and issue you are passionate about. I have experienced the amazing work they can do when they at their best, as well as felt the disillusion when they don’t. While I’m no Yoda in the wisdom column, I hope I have picked up a couple tips that could be useful for those looking to serve or already working on a board.

We will start with a bit of a shocker. It’s a job (no really, it is), and like any job it deserves the proper time and energy required to do it right. The agency you are assisting is no less deserving of your best than your employer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you go Office Space on your employer. Living off Jack’s “Value Menu” isn’t desirable, but your board work shouldn’t be kicked aside out of convenience either. So, make sure you understand the time commitment (about 16 hours a month) and alert your employer of the new commitment.  Employers can be supportive of this work when they realize the benefits in terms of skills and increased moral that can come with service.

In order to make this commitment, you have to understand your reason for serving. Nothing disengages a new member quicker than a mismatch between their expectations and reality. An organization can create job descriptions and express expectations, but it doesn’t matter if you…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing weekly series, each Friday we invite a nonprofit expert to highlight a research report or study and discuss how it can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice. We welcome your comments and feedback.

Not long ago, I had a need to find a friend, Bob, with whom I had not been in contact for a number of years. To the rescue: LinkedIn. My experience searching for Bob is concrete evidence of the helpfulness of various social networking sites (SNS) like LinkedIn and Facebook. So, I was intrigued with a report from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project about the social impact of widespread use of social networking sites.

This research post is based upon the Pew's social networking site survey of October 20-November 28, 2010. The study attempts to "disentangle whether people's varying social behaviors and attitudes are related to the different ways they use social networking sites."

And the findings are, indeed, interesting. First of all, for this survey 79% of American adults said they used the internet, and 59% of these use at least one SNS. A few days ago, Pew released a new study that pushes the number of SNS users even higher, to 66%. (In 2008, 26% of adults used an SNS.) In 2010, over half of all adult SNS users are over 35…