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.

The Power of Collaboration and Why Evaluation Stinks Part II

By Michael Hickey, Independent Community Development Consultant - Just recently I attended a very compelling conference put on by The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, and my alma mater the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, entitled The Power of Collaboration. The title of the event comes from the very engaging article “Collective Impact,” published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Its authors make the argument that only through collaborative efforts can funders and nonprofit providers rise above the fragmentation of their service niche. The lay out a helpful framework include the following four components of effective collective action:  Read more >>

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>

Daring to Lead: A National Study on Executive Leadership

By Jean Lobell - The Daring to Lead 2011 National Report is here!  Community Resource Exchange (CRE) is happy to be a partner in this national study of nonprofit executive leadership.  As you read the report, the picture that emerges is the remarkable steadfastness and resilience of our sector’s leadership.  For CRE, the results affirm our own commitment to high quality and accessible leadership development opportunities Read more >>

Do I Have The “Right” Staff?

By Pavitra Menon - As managers, how often do you feel like you just do not have the “right” staff to help move the work forward? And by “right”, managers mostly allude to job performance. This is a very frustrating and stressful situation to be in as a manager because if you do not have staff performing adequately and sharing the workload it means YOU end up doing it all.  A lot of the work I do with clients deals with situations where managers and staff just don’t seem to be able to work it out.   Read more >>


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