SMART goals end. Adding Evaluate and Revise keeps them moving with the organization and the times.

It's the one month we're allowed to talk about the scary stuff. Three real nonprofit near-disasters, and what fixed them for good.

Early in my career, I watched a managing director close out an opening night still wearing his tuxedo. Guests had gone home, the reviews were being written, and he was in the rehearsal studio with a mop, cleaning up spilled champagne so the actors wouldn't slip during the next morning's rehearsal. Nobody asked him to do it. He just noticed the floor was wet and the mop was closer to him than to anyone else. I've carried that image for over twenty years, because it taught me s

Summer has a way of handing you exactly what you need, right when you need it. This year it handed me two of my favorite weeks back to back — well, almost back to back. There were three glorious days in between, and I've come to think of them as the best kind of gift: just enough time to catch my breath, unpack a suitcase, do a load of laundry, and repack it again before diving into the next thing. The first stop was TLCC — the Tessitura Learning & Community Conference. If yo