Volunteer Fatigue: What Impact on the Future of Volunteerism?

Volunteer burnout was the term coined years ago to mean asking those faithful volunteers to do more and more to the extent that they actually burned out, left the organization, and likely stopped volunteering altogether. This was likely the beginning of serious recruitment issues: instead of recruiting new volunteers, those who could be depended on were asked for more time. A new phenomenon is surfacing; it is more than just burnout as it involves another dimension. More

Understanding Cookies and Their Effect on Your Privacy

As you view Web content, software on the Internet is recording - and often sharing - information about you, including what sites you visit, what ads you click on and what you buy, view or listen to. It does that in large part by using cookies. Learn how to choose the right cookie settings for your nonprofit security needs. More

Communicating Clearly: It’s Not What You Say, It’s How Others Hear You

We all know that relationships require trust. And trust requires communication. If you can’t communicate successfully with others, then you won’t work successfully with them. Communication isn’t just a matter of sending and receiving messages. Instead, communication creates a common understanding of those messages, or shared meaning. Shared meaning happens when the “picture in my head is the same as the picture in your head”—and when we each know how the other feels about that picture. But getting to shared meaning isn’t always easy or obvious. This article gives you a process for creating shared meaning that you can use in all your work. More

Formal Volunteering by the Elderly: Trends, Benefits, and Implications for Managers

The United States is undergoing a sweeping change in population demographics. The burgeoning aging population will impact the scope of older adults in the volunteer arena. These changes in demographics, as well as the mindset of the impending baby boomers, will influence how managers of volunteers will interact with and manage older volunteers in the workplace. This article encompasses issues related to volunteer activity among the elderly population. More

10 New Year’s Resolutions

As an entrepreneur, the responsibility for the success of your organization falls on your shoulders--but the burden is not yours alone. You hired highly skilled employees. They are your most essential assets and are fundamental to the profitability and viability of your company. You need to enlist their help to succeed. Learn how to manage, motivate and encourage your employees to make the new year the most successful yet for your business. More

Why Managers Make Poor Decisions

The current economic mess we're faced with has its roots in what are, in retrospect, some pretty horrendous decisions made by CEOs such as Lehman Brothers' Dick Fuld and Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch. What led these seemingly brilliant men to make such lousy calls? Finkelstein has identified four internal biases that often lead to bad decisions: inappropriate prejudgments; inappropriate experience; self-interest; and attachments. More

The Case for Online Document Management

IAlex Charfen was in a bind. He was minutes away from addressing a roomful of real estate agents and his laptop wouldn't start, and the PowerPoint slides he had prepared for the presentation were locked inside. "I was standing in front of 75 people who had paid $500 apiece to be there," said the principal of the Distressed Property Institute (DPI). "What was I going to do--call tech support to come in and fix my computer?" Thinking on his feet, he borrowed a laptop from one of the attendees. Five minutes later he was back in business. Charfen's PowerPoint presentation was stored on the Web in a document management site called Xythos on Demand. "All I had to do was sign in and get it," he said. More

Novel Fundraising Idea: Docs Posed and Exposed

Some Botsford Hospital surgeons and anesthesiologists wanted to poke light-hearted fun at themselves for a good cause. So, they posed for a 2009 calendar to benefit the new Botsford Cancer Center, which is located on the historic Botsford Inn property on Grand River in Farmington Hills. From brawny to slim, most of the docs at least partially exposed their chests, as they suited up for the theme of the month - whether it was a leprechaun outfit for March, a raincoat for April or beach accessories for June. Could a similar calendar at your hospital raise funds...and gift shop sales? More