Tag: mission
When Navigating Social Commentary and Being of Service Collide
You can find thousands of people who agree with almost anything. Once you find them, technology will help you find more of them. Algorithms learn what irritates us, excites us, frightens us, and affirms us. They learn what keeps our thumbs moving.
Before long, what began as an opinion begins to feel like reality — simply because we encounter it repeatedly.
This concerns me because social commentary doesn’t stay on social media. It eventually shows up in our institutions, relationships, organizations, policies, workplaces, churches, schools, and homes. It shows up in the lives of children, in families, and in the work of people trying to serve them.
The Work Needs You, But It Can’t Consume You
Self-care isn’t limited to vacations, massages, fishing trips, or quiet weekends. Sometimes self-care means scheduling the examination, confronting the diagnosis, taking the medication, changing what you eat, speaking with a therapist, addressing grief, protecting your sleep, or admitting that your body has been asking for help.
And for seasoned leaders, self-care must also include succession. We must learn how to care for the person carrying the vision and prepare the vision to outlive them.
Leaders can’t rest if they leave every decision, relationship, and idea inside their heads. We can’t step away if no one else understands the vision well enough to carry it forward.
Passion Isn’t a Business Plan: What 36 Years in Nonprofits Taught Me About Serving
Over the years, Fathers Incorporated has operated through economic downturns, COVID-19, changing administrations, shifting federal priorities, fleeting philanthropic interests, the loss of key personnel, new technology, and evolving public conversations about fathers, families, race, gender, marriage, parenting, and social policy.
Our survival has never meant that we predicted every disruption. It meant that we built enough organizational muscle to adapt when disruption came.
That’s business. And business, in this context, isn’t a dirty word.
The Hard Truth About Federal Funding and Philanthropic Giving
Nonprofit leaders must build organizations strong enough, deep enough, and clear enough in purpose to ensure that no funding source — federal, philanthropic, or private — ever becomes the author of their mission.
Atlanta Teen Produces Documentary to Advocate for Girl’s Empowerment in Ghana, Africa
Atlanta, GA— A Queen’s Discovery: A Young Girl’s African Journey To Find Her Greatness Within” was submitted for the 2016 International Film Festival hosted by the Atlanta Alumnae Chapter […]