It is back-to-school time – that ritual of getting ready and gathering the things kids need for success. But what about you? What do you need in your backpack to succeed right now as a leader in your work? Unfortunately, a well-organized teacher is likely not handing you a list of those things, nor are all the items that we need available at the store. Still, let’s look at seven essential items that may help you be ready for what comes next in your role. First, let’s just consider your backpack. In this case, it is a state of mind, but it could also be literally the bag you take with you to work. For those in the state-of-mind category, I think of a backpack as the things I carry… Read more »

Celebrate with us! Celebrating anniversaries, unlike birthdays, are often fraught with date possibilities. In new or young love, an anniversary may be marked by the month rather than a year, and in other relationships there are a number of possibilities – the first date, the date of the engagement, or the date of a marriage. Nonprofits don’t differ as we have so many date options to call our anniversary. We have the moment the idea was conceived, the date the mission was drafted, the first official board meeting, or even the date of federal recognition. These dates for some, including Foraker, have almost a decade from conception to formal recognition, so picking one perfect date is in the eye of the beholder. We have chosen this moment to mark our… Read more »

Whew! Decisions. Every day in every way. Life changing and insignificant. Each one is called the same thing, but wow are they different! Sometimes their sheer volume can make even the insignificant feel hard. As humans, of course, we are always making choices – even choices that do not feel like a choice. For many of you, your choices have an immediate impact on people’s lives or on the stability and longevity of your missions. These are the choices I am thinking about at the moment – when our responsibility is always to “leave it better than we found it” – when all is as it should be – bigger than a person, a point in time, or a single idea. In our volatile and uncertain world, these are the… Read more »

Note: Most of Alaska’s nonprofit workplaces are fairly small. Only one-third of Alaska’s nonprofits have staff, and more than 85% of those with staff have fewer than 50 people. As you read this article, note that the trends we see in staff we also see in boards and volunteers. So, keep reading, and if your organization has no staff, the ideas will still hold, perhaps with slight adjustments to make the tools work for your unpaid team. In the last six years, we have gone through The Great Resignation, The Great Reshuffle, a workforce shortage, and now what I might call The Big Decision. All these trends have taken place against a backdrop of shifting generations in the workforce, which amounts to more multigenerational employee groups operating together. The Great… Read more »

“What yesterday we might have called obstacles, today are opportunities that make us unstoppable.” –Amanda Gorman, UNICEF Ambassador, from her new poem With This Bright Voice In Alaska, we know all too well about earthquakes and harsh weather events. They can be unexpected, jarring, and full of significant consequences for people and places we care about. “Lifequakes” are similar to those natural events with their uncertainty and impact, but they are more personal. Lifequakes can result from a shift in our professional or home life and can disrupt us alone, our family, our community, or the world. No matter the magnitude, these earthquakes and lifequakes get our attention and can propel us into action. 2025 had plenty of quakes to rattle our days as they shifted the ground beneath our… Read more »

There are times in everyone’s life that feel especially difficult. These experiences can be unnoticed by many, even while they feel intense and all-consuming to the people experiencing them. Then there are times when we have a more collective experience of hardship. In these moments, it may not be something you experience directly, but you are still drawn into it in ways that spur you to action and help you pause to consider the ramifications. This is such a time. During the pandemic, I often reflected that we are all in the same ocean, but we are not in the same boat. Indeed, depending on one’s geography, health status, age, and many other privileges and complications, the pandemic felt very different at a personal level. Nonprofits also had a varied… Read more »

October has brought us snowy mountains, golden leaves, and a government shutdown. Many may remember the federal government shutdown of 2018 – it lasted 35 days, with far-reaching negative impacts for people, businesses, nonprofits, and the government itself. Now, another shutdown is underway. A federal government shutdown translates to real, potentially devastating impacts on people, communities, and the nonprofits that Alaskans rely on every day. Simply stated, during a shutdown, federal agencies cannot spend or obligate congressionally approved funds, including funds for paying employees, meeting grant obligations, and operating federal programs. Based on previous shutdowns, this one will have immediate and longer-term impacts on Alaska nonprofits and the people we serve. That’s because many of our nonprofits will see an increased demand for services while experiencing decreased funding. Previous shutdowns proved in… Read more »

Right now, as the nonprofit sector, and as individual leaders, we are doing our best to navigate the twisting turns that lay in front of us. There are lions, and tigers, and bears, and a lot of “oh my” every day. That is, if lions are impoundment, tigers are rescission, and bears are the threat to nonprofit nonpartisanship, and the are all sitting against the backdrop of executive orders, that makes us exclaim another “oh my!” This journey is sometimes loud, often confusing and even dizzying, and a lot to take in on any given day regardless of whether you agree with the actions or not. Honestly, it is so much all at once, one could just get overwhelmed without a full understanding of the whole story. Let’s take impoundment,… Read more »

In November 2022, when the world seemed to be emerging into a new pandemic-intense reality, I spent some time talking about the decisions we make every day or more specifically, what tools we can access to make those decisions just a little bit easier. Today, in a very different world, one where some in political power see our sector as “a problem” instead of part of a “solution” as we were in the pandemic, the impact of the choices we make feel a little heavier. That said, right now we are noticing what I am calling the “eye of a storm.” Metaphorically, I have been trying to put my finger on the strange energy I have felt and heard our team reflect on recently. I hear words like “stuck” and… Read more »

The nonprofit sector is changing – more than the usual flux we expect for a sector that meets communities’ needs and responds to gaps that government either can’t or won’t fill. We expect that. We see that. But based on new federal policies and the state’s shifting priorities, changes will be and already are monumental. How it settles out is unclear. There are hundreds of lawsuits still to play out. The new federal budget bill will take years (in some cases until 2028) for the full impacts to be felt and many decisions are already taking their toll. In the article, It’s Personal: Why Nonprofits Matter to Everyone, we explored all the quiet ways nonprofits make our communities, our society, and our democracy work. Most people don’t notice but that’s… Read more »