Blog

The news this week, whether the financial markets, the Syrian government’s next steps, the Greece/Spain/Italy saga, the riots in London, or the Horn of Africa, all offer one common theme: highly complex uncertainty. This blog is a short plea for non-profit organisations and anyone working with them from governments to individual and institutional funders to the beneficiaries of their services: don’t lose track of the need to manage uncertainty in all areas of the organization. (more…)

This blog offers practical recommendations on the hot topic of the use of ratios to assess non-profit organizations. Part II of this blog will address current research on the relevance (or irrelevance!) of ratios. The non-profit sector, including rating and certification agencies, has become increasingly focused on two key ratios: (i) the cost of fund-raising (i.e., the amount spent to raise funds, sometimes expressed as cents per dollar raised spent on fund-raising) and (ii) the relative amount of revenue allocated to administrative costs and program costs. (more…)

Alicia Clegg’s recent article in the Financial Times (Watching the executives, June 7, 2011) highlights corporate moves to improve compliance and image by hiring ethics officers. The issues are identical in non-profit organizations, despite the fact that the budget for such positions is almost always lacking. With due respect to the overall excellence and best efforts in the non-profit sector, culturally and organizationally rigorous integration of ethics policies and practices at all levels is often lacking as well. (more…)

The focus of this blog is Harvard Professor Joseph S. Nye, Jr.’s new book The Future of Power.[1]  Professor Nye defines “smart power” as “the combination of the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of persuasion and attraction.” This blog focuses on soft power and, in particular, the use of soft power by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other non-profit sector participants. The analysis applies in large part to other non-state actors (e.g. corporations and high net worth individuals) and is internationally applicable. I do not address negative soft power of non-state actors (e.g. terrorist groups). (more…)

Recently there was an interesting article in the Financial Times called “Spotlight on ethics for new rankings” (Alison Smith, Companies section, UK edition, April 6, 2011). The crux of the article is the relevance of companies’ social, environmental, and governance concerns and efforts for asset owners and managers. However, a few quotes highlight a key issue that should be of parallel concern for non-profit organisations: the identification, management and communication of risks. One quote states that despite the increasing attention to rating companies in these three social responsibility areas, investors are “concerned with two things: getting a return as good...