What is your nonprofit doing right now to attract my money? As a 20-something, I have encountered few nonprofits that reach out in a meaningful way for my charitable dollars.

Understandably, most nonprofits (and probably yours) design fundraising campaigns for my parents and grandparents knowing that they indeed have more charitable dollars than I do. But I would argue, Generation Y or “millennials”, those born in the 80’s and 90’s, are poised to be the next big thing in charitable giving. Establishing relationships with millennials today can yield immediate results and is absolutely vital to the long-term success of your nonprofit.

Going after the charitable dollars of millennials may seem like “small fish,” but keep this in mind, millennials are now the largest generation in terms of population. Today, there are 79 million millennials in the US, compared to 76 million boomers. Additionally, as my generation moves out of their dorm rooms (or, more aptly, into their parent’s homes) and into the professional world, we will quickly have the kind of incomes that merit your nonprofit’s attention.

Being an Executive Director of a small organization, I often get asked how I recruit board members and where I find them. I think my tactics can be applicable for any geographically-based nonprofit, a start-up organization, or any smaller nonprofit seeking new members.

When I am seeking new board members I start with our own volunteer base. I sit down with the Board President and Volunteer Coordinator to identify those individuals who are going above and beyond their volunteer duties, are passionate about our mission, and have proven to the staff that they are committed to our organization. These are the individuals who often express their gratitude to the staff every time they stop in, they walk in with a huge smile on their face, act as a community advocate, and believe in our mission. These are the unsung heroes of the organization that deserve to have a larger role because they are exactly the type of board member that you want.

Dysart Community Center is located in the Northwest Valley, so when recruiting new board members, we look local. It does not make sense for us to recruit individuals from East Phoenix because it is a rather long drive for a volunteer commitment. Therefore, we focus our efforts on those who live west of the I-17 and look for other community groups with community-minded individuals. For example, we seek out local service groups such as Kiwanis, Rotaries, etc., and…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing series, we invite a nonprofit scholar, student, or professional to highlight current research reports or studies and discuss how they can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

It is not often that public policy intended for the publicly traded-corporate world directly impacts the nonprofit corporate world. So … when the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was adopted by Congress in 2002, there just wasn’t much history to help nonprofits understand its impact – on them. A decade has now gone by, and, according to research by Tamara G. Nezhina of DePaul University and Jeffrey L. Brudney of Cleveland State University, a base for the future has been identified from this short period of history. Their study reviewed literature about the effect of SOX on nonprofits as well as surveys and other basic research implemented by the authors. The result of their work? The identification of intended – and unintended – outcomes that had both positive and negative impacts on nonprofits.

The goal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was to curb financial abuses among publicly-traded corporations. Further, it was intended to enhance transparency, which, for the nonprofit sector, is an imperative. Are these goals being achieved? And, at what price?

Two of several requirements were binding upon most corporations and nonprofits. These require…

The ideology of being colorblind within youth service provisions suggests an agency, and by extension, the agency’s service providers, do not consider the color of a youth as a precursor to participation in any unique services or programs. It further suggests an agency which strictly adheres to colorblindness does not provide segregated services, which were in large part eliminated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While the prevention of discrimination based on color may have been the initial intention of the concept of colorblindness, this concept has commonly been extended to include other physical and social characteristics such as ethnicity, culture, age, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. Within nonprofit agencies which provide youth services, there are, however, exceptions to the colorblindness rule. When a specific characteristic conflicts directly with the mission of the service provider, agencies have been allowed to use the respective characteristic as a criterion for participation in their programs and services.

In essence, the ideology of being colorblind is viewed as a critical practice when ensuring equality of both access and, ultimately, service outcomes for youth participants. Every youth is treated equally; everyone gets the same service, has the same access to services, and thus is expected to have the same outcomes from participating in the respective programs.

In principle, colorblindness is an…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing series, we invite a nonprofit scholar, student, or professional to highlight current research reports or studies and discuss how they can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

Models of Collaboration, by professor Mark Hager and Tyler Curry, identifies and describes types of nonprofit collaborations from an analysis of the 177 nominations submitted in 2009 for the prestigious Collaboration Prize. Recently, Professor Gordon Shockley and I reviewed and re-coded the nominations. We noticed that a great deal did not fit neatly into any one model outlined in Models of Collaboration. Instead, they were often blends that involved different levels of partnership and sharing. From this, we developed an alternative list of ten types of collaboration, organized by increasing levels of integration, and which can be combined to make hybrids.

PARTNERSHIPS

The left side of the spectrum represents partnerships. By definition, these are formal agreements between two or more organizations that wish to work together to achieve a goal. In their purest form, they involve little to no direct sharing of overhead, though some efficiencies might be seen in the long term. There are four types of partnerships, as originally laid out by Hager and…