When I was growing up in St. Louis, MO, I played a lot of sports: basketball, volleyball, and softball in the Catholic Youth Council (CYC) league. Of all the sports, in the Catholic community at the time, basketball was the most important. It’s like Texas and football.

Anyone who works in the profession of nonprofit management, especially in the area of membership associations, accepts the requirement that we are mandated by law to have a Board of Directors. According to the Google Search AI bot this is why it is mandated:

One of my favorite spiritual guides is the “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu. Loosely translated, this means the Way of Virtue. It includes the concepts of integrity, self-control, and inner knowledge. The Tao Te Ching is the main text of Taoism which believes in the basic tenet that all things should live in balance with the universe.

In the nonprofit management profession, we know the importance of communication. It is vital to use the best communication tools for the target audience we want to reach, and to use appropriate messaging. For example, we don’t want to promote a certification to those in the profession we serve if they don’t qualify yet, but we may want to promote an upcoming conference to that group.

As a proponent of ethical behavior, I understand that we are imperfect beings. No one does it right all the time, and yes, ethical people likely did some unethical things in their past that they are not proud of and cringe whenever they think of it. That “icky cringe feeling” is great motivation not to do it again, but also a reminder that we usually know when we are doing something wrong.

There’s a lot of words people might use to describe me, but helpless is not one of them. Whether friend or foe, you know that I am a “can do” kind of person that is self-reliant and does my best to help others. As a solopreneur, I am always on the go whether writing, speaking, managing the business, or leading courses (just to name a few things I do outside the newsletter and podcast).

Author’s Note: I’m out of the office this week so I thought I’d reshare this take on Boards of Directors from March 2023. All 501c organizations are required to have a board of directors – what outcomes we achieve is directly related to board culture.

Let's face it -- Volunteer onboarding is not always what it should be. When it comes to connecting people with information and the systems that support their work, we often find good intentions but a lack of clarity. There are two words that are key to volunteer onboarding: Clarity and Connection.

While I always write about my own opinions and views of the world, I don’t often write about myself. I’m with me all the time so I don’t think there is much of interest to share; I already know this stuff. Some of it I’ve had to get past so I don’t think about it because I’m not that person any longer.

If you are taking the May CAE Exam, you probably have a lot of nervous energy this week. You worry about a lot of things right before the exam, like “Did I study enough?” “Did I study TOO much?” “I didn’t finish the reading . . . “ “Will I remember everything?” What about the MATH QUESTIONS??”

Recently I saw a post in an ASAE Collaborate community seeking information about consulting fee estimates for a wide-ranging technology project. The person posting the query, an association staff member, noted that she was just seeking an estimate for a board meeting report and was not yet seeking proposals. In her post, she noted that consultants she asked were hesitant to give an estimate for the work.

I was surprised to receive a message from ASAE giving me another opportunity to pay to be in their CAE Registered Provider program. I have made my position very clear and public on the changes they made and I am not seeing any significant changes at this time (despite the message saying changes have been made).

Bias exists in many forms, and unfortunately, we here in the nonprofit management community perpetuate it like everyone else. While we try to follow each other’s good examples, we tend to copy the bad ones more often because “that is what everyone else does.” One of the biases we continue to perpetuate is anti-consultant policies for membership and event registration. These policies were established decades ago and many associations adopted them like these are a best practice.

I was on a networking call one evening this week, and I ended up staying on to talk to a friend of mine who also happens to be a woman. One of the things we had discussed in our networking call was funny examples of negotiating deals or contracts. As I wrote about in last week’s article, “Women, Ask for What You Want,” negotiating is just that – ask for what you want.

As a young person with a political science degree and an interest in policy, I moved to the Washington, DC area with my husband (another poli sci graduate) to change the world. We all think we can change the world until we are about 32, then we realize it’s more than one person can handle. But the enthusiasm of youth drives us forward, and I found myself interviewing for my first job in DC. I was excited to be considered for an entry-level position at the US Chamber of Commerce.

The other day I was talking with my friend Michael Butera (who is one of our Rogue Tulips Expert Partners) about the overall state of the world, and we talked about the state of the nonprofit management profession. It seems to be stuck in a rut and holding onto the past rather than living in the world we are in now.

We all hang on to things longer than we should. Whether it’s an emotional attachment, force of habit, or “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” humans love to keep things around that aren’t really useful any longer.

Being from Missouri, I tend to be skeptical about movies, books, and television shows (to name a few cultural icons) that EVERYONE raves about endlessly. That list includes people too – when people go on and on about “how wonderful and awesome” So and So is, and how everyone “loves them” I know it should be questioned. Why? Because no one is universally loved, not even The Drake from the “Seinfeld” television series.

I earned the ASAE Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation in 2015. It took ten years of waiting because the CAE Commission didn’t allow Consultants to take the exam in previous decades; they decided to change that rule in 2014, which meant the May 2015 exam was the first opportunity for consultants to give it a shot. I took that shot and I was one of the candidates who passed the first time.

As regular readers know, I have written about my fascination with con artists (“Lessons from the Long Con”, April 1, 2022). The reason con artists interest me is that I don’t understand why people fall for it. But I’m from Missouri; I’m a born skeptic so if it sounds too good to be true, I KNOW it is.