Last week, I went on a road trip with some of the board members and staff of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (MCN). I serve on the board and we were carpooling in a giant van to Fairmont, Minnesota, for a board retreat. Because MCN’s St. Paul office is about two-and-a-half hours from Fairmont by car, we planned to make one pitstop during the drive. Prior to the trip, our parking lot conversation led to…
The inimitable Vu Le has written another thought-provoking blog post at Nonprofit AF. The post is called “The default nonprofit board model is archaic and toxic; let’s try some new models.” In it, Vu posits that 1/3 of nonprofit boards are helpful, 1/3 are useless, and 1/3 are harmful. That’s a lot of bad nonprofit boards. Vu suggests this isn’t necessarily about individuals who serve on boards; it’s more about the structure of nonprofit boards.…
The Importance of an Accurate Census I recently attended a board retreat in Rochester, MN, for the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (MCN) having joined the board this year (2019). During the retreat, there was a panel entitled “Census 2020: Nonprofits Take Action.” When it comes to the United States’ democratic republic, we hear a lot about getting people out to vote in elections. However, one of the main foundations of having proper representation for the…