dot-org

This blog is about being a non-profit business professional. Folks looking for grand theorizing -- pardon, the prioritizing of high-leverage strategies -- are probably not in the right place. This is about the business we're in, about getting it done each day. Hopefully while saving the world we can avoid taking ourselves _too_ seriously...

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

On hiatus

Dot-org hasn't gone dead, my attention span isn't (quite) that short. I am on hiatus however; my personal life is undergoing signifi...

Friday, June 01, 2007

Making it plain in dot-edu land

In March I wrote that the highly-progressive pricing of college in the U.S. was heavily masked behind jargon and codewords -- but actually ...

Saturday, May 26, 2007

A spectacular new idea

A while back I mused about a new basic category of non-profit , something like "macro archives". A couple of weeks ago a spectacul...

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Updates: corporate giving, poetry, and another Smithsonian problem

Some updates today on past topics, in no particular order: Say I bet you've heard the conventional wisdom about corporate charitable giv...

Saturday, May 19, 2007

The "non-profit leadership deficit": are we still this silly? Really?

If you're on staff at a U.S. non-profit organization or foundation you have likely heard something about “ The Nonprofit Sector’s Leader...

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

More problems at the Smithsonian, while PBS waffles

The Smithsonian Institution's troubles just keep on giving ...turns out that a few years ago they fired a curator for blowing the whistl...

Saturday, May 12, 2007

A national consolidation goes awry

While the Girl Scouts of America's national consolidation process seems to be going forward as planned (with clusters of 4 to 7 local ...

Saturday, May 05, 2007

The IRS is making non-profit news

Late this past week came two significant news items regarding the Internal Revenue Service: that the agency is finally going to revamp the c...

Thursday, May 03, 2007

A quick rogue's gallery

The head of the New Jersey chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving ( MADD ) and his wife have been charged with bilking the group out of $1...

Monday, April 30, 2007

The graying of the non-profit arts sector? On what planet?

A large and generally very smart foundation recently published a really silly report . The basic premise is that non-profit arts organizati...

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Where are the donations going?

It's commonplace in dot-org land to hear professionals quote as unquestioned fact things about charitable giving in this country that ar...

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Volunteers are being drawn to youth and community

The Corporation for National and Community Service has released their annual survey of volunteerism in the U.S., showing a small drop in v...

Monday, April 16, 2007

Counting on being "too big to be allowed to fail"

Two high-profile arts non-profits on the East Coast are right now engaged in a familiar sort of public brinkmanship, with a distinct odor in...

Friday, April 13, 2007

The joy of giving

The great charitable-giving boom we're in nowadays has caught the attention of neurological researchers. Several studies have concluded ...

Monday, April 09, 2007

Donor cultivation conversation, part II

Albert Ruesga, proprietor of the excellent White Courtesy Telephone , posted a thoughtful response to Saturday's little rant here about...

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Are we going to drive donors crazy online, too?

NonProfit Times recently ran an article on how non-profits deal with online small donors. A columnist donated $15 each online to 62 differe...

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Is public radio fading into irrelevance?

It feels broadly as if public radio in the U.S. is undergoing some degree of paradigm shift . Whether it's ultimately for better or wors...

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Baby steps towards a stronger sector

I'm most of the way through Joel Fleischman's book on foundations , and it's clear that he and Trent Stamp are preachers in the...

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Private colleges may be getting it

Last week I was in full finger-wagging mode at American colleges and universities, but fair's fair: on at least one very big issue they...

Monday, March 26, 2007

Alberto Gonzales is saying, "at least I don't work at the Smithsonian..."

It just keeps getting worse for America's national museum. Revulsion over the pay and spending of Smithsonian chief Lawrence M. Small h...

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About Me

Paul Botts: I'm a career non-profit manager. After more than a decade with two environmental organizations (including 8 years with The Nature Conservancy), I spent four years as an executive director in Chicago professional theater. In 2005 I jumped to the other side of the fundraising table to a prominent Chicago foundation. The foundation supports land conservation and the arts, a mission combo for which my schizophrenic work history was a perfect fit. Hopefully it's obvious that no organization I have ever worked for has any responsibility for anything expressed here.

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