News & Views

A blog for those interested in what affects, motivates and drives the New York City Nonprofit Sector — written by CRE’s crackerjack consulting team. We hope you use this space to share your thoughts, ask questions and engage in conversations about our city, social justice and the nonprofit sector.

CRE’s Current View of the Nonprofit Sector and What’s Needed Today

  By Holly Delany Cole and Valyrie Laedlein, CRE Co-Directors: It’s grim – politically and economically – for nonprofits, including CRE, and more significantly, for the people nonprofits are working with and issues that are important to them and us. CRE sees five key issues facing the nonprofit sector in the Fall of 2011.   Read more >>

How Answering a Few Questions Can Make Your Organization More Effective

By Louisa Hackett - The following is a continuation of a previous blog post introducing the Five Questions Driving Organizational Effectiveness.

Strategic plans come in many shapes, serve a variety of purposes and always take time.  Read more >>

5 Questions Driving Organizational Effectiveness

By Louisa Hackett - What makes an organization effective? Sure strong managers, high performing staff, visionary leaders, sufficient resources and up-to-date technology all play a part. But a critical element, maybe the most critical, is clarity of purpose. Without knowing fundamentally what an organization is striving to accomplish and for whom, the chance to have the most effective programs is lost and muddled, diffuse programming can follow.  Read more >>

3 Things Coaching Can and Cannot Do For a Nonprofit Leader

 By Mohan Sikka - The recent Daring to Lead survey of non-profit leadership reveals some interesting facts about the use and efficacy of coaching as a professional development strategy. While Executive Coaching has the highest effectiveness rating amongst a range of strategies, it also appears to be underutilized -- only 10% percent of national leaders were currently working with an executive coach. In the New York region the utilization was even lower, compared to, say, workshops and conferences, which were attended by almost 90% of leaders.  Read more >>

Succession Planning and Performance Evaluations: Two Sides of the Same Coin

 By Jean Lobell - In an earlier post, I outlined Three Key Issues in Succession Planning. Today’s post is a continuation of the insights I shared on the key elements of a successful succession planning process.  Read more >>

What's An ED To Do?

 By Valyrie Laedlein, CRE Co-Director - I’d been looking at data from the Daring to Lead 2011 study about how Executive Directors spend their time – and how they THINK they should be spending their time – and was preparing to write a blog about what prevents us from focusing on “what matters.” Simultaneously, of course, I was reading articles and analyses about the debt ceiling agreement that has been reached in Washington and finding myself increasingly incensed by how the decisions being made by every level of government are impacting our communities, the nonprofits that serve them, and the impossible quandary about just what should get our attention as nonprofit executives.   Read more >>

What Works In Leadership Development

 By Mohan Sikka - An intriguing finding of the latest Daring to Lead study is that non-profit executives rate "non-didactic" professional development strategies very highly. The highest rated activities are "Executive Coaching" and "Peer Networks", which are predominantly non-didactic. The next highest rated activity was "Leadership Development Programs". When well-designed like our Leadership Caucus, this also includes multiple non-didactic elements.  Read more >>

Three Key Issues In Succession Planning

 By Jean Lobell - The talk about succession planning tends to be fraught with some anxiety, some confusion, and some misconceptions. My experience is that this can be avoided or at least minimized, if we got clear about three things:   Read more >>

One Size Does Not Fit All Boards

By Valyrie Laedlein, CRE Co-Director - The recent publication of Daring to Lead 2011, the national survey of over 3,000 nonprofit executive directors about their organizations and experiences in leadership, makes plain the nature of the challenge in getting a Board of Directors to make a solid contribution to the nonprofit it governs. The small to medium nonprofits participating in the survey (roughly 2/3 of respondents had organizational budgets of under $3 million) face a particular set of constraints.  Read more >>

A Bone To Pick About Government Contracting

By Holly Delany Cole, CRE Co-Director - There is a lot to talk about in the recently released Daring to Lead Report. We chose first to talk about what the report points to about the sustainability of the nonprofit model in the current environment, given the behavior of its most frequent funding partner.   Read more >>


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