3BL Blog

Sustaining Relevance

The juxtaposition of several events last week had me dwelling on that most current of challenges - how to define what "sustainability" means to people in a corporate enterprise. 

If you've ever attended a talk, panel session, or conference on the subject of "sustainability", you know that sometime within the first hour, someone will provide a definition of the word.  They'll usually start with the famous Brundtland definition "Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs".  People who haven't

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6 myths about microfinance charity that donors can do without

Is microfinance a good bet for a donor? We feel the answer is complicated, and that the many extreme exaggerations of microfinance’s impact get in the way of making an informed decision.

This post summarizes the differences between the stories you’ve probably heard and the reality according to available evidence.

Myth #1: the way microfinance charities help is by giving people loans to expand businesses. Success stories like

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How to Build A Better Nonprofit Board: It's About the Board Chair

Yes, positioning the right person as the board chair is key. Because the chair has the greatest influence on how the board uses its time in meetings and in between meetings, who will be on the board, and who will be groomed for future leadership.

I have seen organizations rise or fall, depending on the board chair's effectiveness. Even the most extraordinary nonprofit CEO cannot achieve the enterprise's fullest potential without a good board chair.

Here's how an effective chair uses her time for

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Getting Our Hands Dirty

When I was a freshman in college, I rallied a group of new friends from my dorm to go volunteer one afternoon. It was early in the school year, and I wanted to prove to my hall-mates that community service was a fun, easy, low-impact sort of way to give back and feel good. Minimal commitment, quick pay-off, done-in-a-day – a perfect fit for college students!

The community service day was actually organized by my school, so once each of us signed up we were sent to work on different projects throughout the area. In hindsight, I don’t remember what project I worked on that day. But I...

Motivating or Crushing Team Spirit: What We Can Learn from Nonprofit Boards

In training and placing business executives and professionals on nonprofit boards, I see which board environments motivate people to perform their best, and which environments crush the spirit right out of well-meaning, enthusiastic, and generous board members.

You see, nonprofit boards are revealing environments because people are there voluntarily. Board members don't have to be there nor do their best in order to earn a living. They are there primarily to serve their communities, to learn, for the

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How to Market Your Cause to Skeptical Consumers

We all know that the business value of cause marketing is directly proportional to the degree to which stakeholders know about the cause program. However, all too often corporations are leery of broadcasting their cause initiatives because they’re afraid of being seen as inauthentic by skeptical consumers.

Since 2007 Self magazine has been conducting research to explore women’s emotions resulting from the good a consumer perceives she does by purchasing socially responsible products and brands. As reported in Advertising...

Are charities helping? We don’t know

In a recent debate, David Hunter’s article on the nonprofit sector has taken heat for its assertion that “While nonprofits work incredibly hard, with passion and dedication, and

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Short Term Profits Equal No Long Term Goals.

Businesses have an equal responsibility to the environment.  In the quest to “take while you can and no thought of the future,” businesses have seen profits and then folded when the heat was on due to illegal acts. (Take your pick or examine the coal mining business.) With multiple sites on the net that promote awareness to the environment and how beautiful it is, plus the benefits of reduce, reuse, recycle – why, oh why are profits still so important?  Are businesses banks?  Nope. They just want a piece of the pie and willing to justify a means to an end.

The other day a question...

You’re Sure You Want to Eat That?

A couple of weeks ago, the folks I follow on Twitter (a terrific bunch of CSR and social enterprise experts) were all abuzz about a New York Times article that told the story of a young woman from Minnesota. What was all the fuss?

Well, it turns out that this woman, 22 year-old Stephanie Smith, ate a bad hamburger – made from E.coli-laden beef – and it paralyzed her.

We’ve all heard about...

When It Comes to Boards, Are For-profits Just Catching Up to Nonprofits?

Once I started training and placing business executives on nonprofit boards sixteen years ago, they began asking me to help their boards to become more effective; moreover, simply "training" them was not sufficient. Neither was board "self-assessment." So, I developed a board assessment and development model and mentored others how to do conduct the process as well. Elements of my approach are described in Leveraging Good Will, and in...

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