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designed to give NGO leaders the opportunity
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Community Investment Loans In Tight
Times
By Mark
Hrywna
It took a Nobel Peace Prize to
get microfinance on the map -- or at least in the mainstream --
even though the idea had been around for decades. Community
investment notes started well more than a decade ago but
you might have a hard time finding people who know what they
are.
The Calvert Social Investment
Foundation launched community investment notes in 1995 with the
help of foundations like Ford, MacArthur and Mott, and in recent
years has received support from the Gates and Dell foundations,
as well as the Omidyar Network.
To read
the complete article click here... |
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Legal ...
Implications of
moral development
Just
as growing up brings freedom, it also brings the burden of
responsibility -- being licensed to drive a car also means
handling it in such a way as to avoid an
accident.
Growing up can bring its own pains to a nonprofit, as
Patricia J. Harned and Frank J. Navran pointed out during the
AICPA Not-For-Profit Financial Executives Forum held in
Anaheim.
Growing up doesn’t just mean growing. It also
involves moral maturity. Harned and Navran said that
organizations assessing their moral development should recognize
four implications to encourage its
continuation.
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Following law and regulation, just like following
parental authority for humans, can become an organizational
focus on compliance. But this fosters a “compliance
mentality” among employees that can stymie the moral
development of both the employee and the
organization.
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Best practices, comparable to
adolescent peer reference, can be limiting because what is best
practice can vary from one industry to another and within an
industry.
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Social responsibility, parallel
to the grown-up’s social contact, has a continually
evolving definition and requires continuing ethical evolution by
organizations, just to say where they are, relative to
society.
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There is still room for moral
growth, the moral imperative, such as the approach of the mature
responsible adult. Even when a society has not settled on what
is the right thing to do, organizations can rise to a level or
morality whereby they and their leaders know what is
right.
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Human Resources ...
Managers need more than
charisma
We all know what we want in a
leader: vigor, assertiveness, the ability to cut through the
truth and go straight to the b.s., someone who will start a
battle with a competitor without being hampered by the burden of
deliberation.
In their book Leading With
Kindness, William F. Baker and Michael O’Malley
acknowledge the value placed on charismatic leadership. But,
they assert that the signature characteristic of a great leader
is kindness.
This characteristic has six
ingredients, which they identify as:
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Compassion. Compassion in
the workplace matters because it provides employees with that
extra amount of strength they need to perform, with overcoming
either personal problems or job-specific
challenges.
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Integrity. The
distinguishing feature of organizations that espouse integrity
is that they make it clear that it really matters and they are
prepared to act on their principles. (Think of Enron, which
boasted of rectitude while ripping off
shareholders.)
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Gratitude. To be grateful is
to realize that one’s life story includes many important
characters, good and bad, and that one has benefited from the
sacrifices and goodwill of others.
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Authenticity. Kind leaders
behave in a way that reflects how they truly think and
feel.
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Humility. Humble leaders
learn, they are realistic and they are charitable instead of
self-centered.
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Humor. Laughter is the
reminder that our lives are supposed to be more pliable, playful
and creative and not relentlessly burdened by the presumed
seriousness of everything.
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You can create more
lucrative corporate alliances with help from the Cause Marketing
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Finance ...
Using your Form 990 for
marketing
opportunities
Your Form 990. If you’ve
been able to keep reading without screaming, you have
demonstrated strength and courage, nearly as much as you needed
to deal with the Form 990 in the first place.
At the AICPA Not-For-Profit
Financial Executive Forum held in Anaheim, Diane Cornwell and
Geralyn R. Hurd, both CPAs, said rather than being only a
burden, the Form 990 can be a way for nonprofits to promote
themselves, to let the world know about the good they are
doing.
Cornwell and Hurd said that
one way by which nonprofits can help themselves is remembering
that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and individuals in the
public are usually looking for different things from an
organization’s Form 990.
The IRS, for example, is
looking at such areas as governance, compensation and conflicts
of interest. The public, on the other hand, is looking for
answers to the following questions:
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Do you deserve the benefits
of exempt status? Is the organization conducting activities
consistent with its application for exemption, or have
activities strayed?
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Are donor dollars going to
promote the exempt purpose? This includes fiduciary
responsibility, accomplishment of exempt purpose, excessive
investment income and maintenance of the endowment corpus vs.
promoting the exempt purpose.
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Is there appropriate
governance and oversight? This includes legal compliance and
public disclosure, effective governance, strong financial
oversight and responsible
fundraising. |
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