There seems to be an endless list of myths about nonprofit businesses and the nonprofit sector – and a few of them really make my blood boil.

Yes yes, it’s true. I am a fiercely loyal advocate for nonprofit leaders but I am not close to naive about their challenges.

But here’s a myth that really drives me nuts:

Nonprofit businesses are not as well run as for profit companies.

Are you kidding me right now?

Corporate America is the holy grail? Holy smokes. It’s a pretty cold day in hell when we can say THAT with a straight face.

Just talk to organizational expert Jim Collins – you know, the “Good to Great” author — he will say that while some business concepts apply, many don’t actually apply to the nonprofit sector. It’s an entirely different ballgame when profit is not the motive and when meaning and purpose are.

I came from corporate America into the nonprofit sector and learned as many gems about leadership and management from the nonprofit model as I brought with me from my corporate executive gig.

It is time to STOP with the nonprofit vs for profit comparisons.

Time to stop belittling the nonprofit leaders as well-meaning folks (“God love em” is what my mother would say) and see the sector for what it is — a vital cornerstone of every town and state…of every civil society. In fact, it is these organizations that make our society civil.

Here are five additional myths. Let’s tease them out. What you will find interesting is the extent to which nonprofit leaders themselves perpetuate some of these.

Let’s make it our business not just to debunk them but to escort them to the door.

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Picture this: You run an animal shelter and a donor offers your org a huge gift to fund a program to train all the animals in your shelter to be circus animals…

Is this an example of mission creep? (Select one)

1. Totally
2. Kinda

Note that I didn’t offer you a “no” option. Why not? Because the problem about this whole mission creep thing lives in that one word: kinda.

Here’s what I mean…

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We did it, nonprofit leaders. We made it to the last month of the year.

You’ve gone above and beyond all day long, all year long. That was true all day long, all year long last year, and in the years before as well.

But right now, you might be feeling like you are running low on fuel.

With the holiday season in full swing, I can not stress enough how important it is for you to take advantage of any time you have right now to rest, recharge, and replenish your energy.

I recently had time to do this as we began our yearly celebration of Hanukkah in my household. And as I took some time to reflect on the story behind this special time, I realized that there is a very important lesson for every nonprofit leader in the miracle of Hanukkah.

So if you have been feeling the nonprofit burnout creeping in lately, I invite you to watch this video to learn what it is. No matter what holidays or festivities you participate in during this time of year, this lesson just might be the inspiration you need to keep your passion for the work fully ignited.

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It was my first day on the job at GLAAD. I sat down to meet with our then Director of Finance, and he nearly wept as I pulled my HP 12c calculator out of my backpack.

Why so much emotion?

At that moment, I didn’t know if it was because he could see that I knew numbers and that maybe, just maybe, I could help save the place…OR if he was thinking, “Holy smokes – she knows numbers. She’s going to get one look at these and get on the next plane back to NY.”

Turns out it was the former.

Now I want to be clear: I did not have a background in Finance… but I didn’t have math anxiety either.

That’s because thanks to a most excellent boss over at MTV Networks, a really nice and awfully smart man named Mayo Stuntz, I learned something very essential — numbers tell a story.

Back then, numbers told us a story that led us to create the MTV Video Music Awards and then its Merchandising Program (pretty darned good stories they were too!).

These days, I meet at least quarterly with my business manager. As she ticks and ties the numbers, I ask tons of questions that usually go something like, “So what’s the story this year-to-date P&L tells me? What’s going well? Where are the red flags?”

When you ask the right questions and learn how to get to the bottom of the story, budgeting actually becomes really simple. Like a finance person I once worked with told me a while back, “It’s only a budget.” I laughed then (odd words coming from the lead bean counter), but now I get what she meant by this:

A budget is just a benchmark. A good, solid set of numbers that reflect what you know and what might be terrific estimates (as well as a few shots in the dark).

And as a nonprofit executive director, it is your job to make your best effort to create this set of benchmark numbers and then (here’s the really important part) tell the story behind the numbers in a way that all board members, regardless of financial literacy, will really understand.

To help you to do that, I have developed an easy-to-use nonprofit operating budget template. You’ll find a bunch of them on the internet but they are just that — templates. What I’m going to offer you is a basic template and also some advice on how to best use it to tell the story behind the numbers. Because as I said above, the numbers tell a story — but you need to learn how to tell it.

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You’ve all heard it: “Sure, we can do a retreat, but PLEASE no icebreakers!”

These words were probably uttered by a board chair or executive director whose sharing skills are about as good as mine were 15-20 years ago. That was around the time when I led my first nonprofit retreat as an executive director — I wasn’t big on sharing.

So you can imagine how terrified I was when I heard the request, “Tell us something the rest of the group doesn’t know about you.”

My heart thumped. My mind raced. Would anyone care about my vintage baseball collection?

Then, a staffer volunteered to share first, “I’ve decided to transition to become a man.”

I figured out two things at that moment. First, I learned that icebreakers can be very powerful. Second, I learned that I had to do better than my stinkin’ baseball card collection.

When it comes down to it, there are two big reasons why nonprofit leaders (and people in general) hate icebreakers:

1. Most icebreakers are terribly, horribly awful. (read: they suck.)
2. People don’t understand why they matter (and how powerful they can be).

The good news is that we can fix both of these in just one post! Seriously.

You see, these two problems are related. Once you figure out why they matter, you can design icebreakers that don’t suck and that meet their intended goal.

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