Nonprofit Best Quotes

Let's be clear. The debate over health care in this country is not a debate about medical treatment or the best way to prevent disease. It is a debate about economics and class politics. Either we maintain a profit-driven health care system whose main function is to enrich certain individuals and institutions, or we develop a nonprofit, cost-effective system that provides quality health care for all people as a right of citizenship.

The non-profit industry itself, “the most dysfunctional $300 billion industry in the world,” as he saw it. Mullaney had come to believe that too many philanthropists engage in what Peter Buffett, a son of the über-billionaire Warren Buffett, calls “conscience laundering”—doing charity to make themselves feel better rather than fighting to figure out the best ways to alleviate suffering.

I run Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that recruits dozens of our country’s top graduates each year and places them in startups and growth companies in Detroit, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Providence, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and other cities around the country. Our goal is to help create 100,000 new US jobs by 2025. We supply talent to early-stage companies so that they can expand and hire more people. And we train a critical mass of our best and brightest graduates to build enterprises and create new opportunities for themselves and others.

The key to competitive success—for businesses and nonprofits alike—lies in an organization’s ability to create unique value. Porter’s prescription: aim to be unique, not best. Creating value, not beating rivals, is at the heart of competition.

As we lead organizations—businesses, nonprofits, and churches—size doesn’t matter as much as another crucial factor. The biggest difference between leaders of large organizations and small organizations isn’t their location, the size of their building, the scope of the vision, the number of staff members, or their talent. In fact, some of the best leaders I’ve ever met have small organizations. But in all my consulting and conferences, I’ve seen a single factor: leaders of larger organizations have proven they can handle more pain.

Have you ever been in a place where history becomes tangible? Where you stand motionless, feeling time and importance press around you, press into you? That was how I felt the first time I stood in the astronaut garden at OCA PNW. Is it still there? Do you know it? Every OCA campus had – has, please let it be has – one: a circular enclave, walled by smooth white stone that towered up and up until it abruptly cut off, definitive as the end of an atmosphere, making room for the sky above. Stretching up from the ground, standing in neat rows and with an equally neat carpet of microclover in between, were trees, one for every person who’d taken a trip off Earth on an OCA rocket. It didn’t matter where you from, where you trained, where your spacecraft launched. When someone went up, every OCA campus planted a sapling. The trees are an awesome sight, but bear in mind: the forest above is not the garden’s entry point. You enter from underground. I remember walking through a short tunnel and into a low-lit domed chamber that possessed nothing but a spiral staircase leading upward. The walls were made of thick glass, and behind it was the dense network you find below every forest. Roots interlocking like fingers, with gossamer fungus sprawled symbiotically between, allowing for the peaceful exchange of carbon and nutrients. Worms traversed roads of their own making. Pockets of water and pebbles decorated the scene. This is what a forest is, after all. Don’t believe the lie of individual trees, each a monument to its own self-made success. A forest is an interdependent community. Resources are shared, and life in isolation is a death sentence. As I stood contemplating the roots, a hidden timer triggered, and the lights faded out. My breath went with it. The glass was etched with some kind of luminescent colourant, invisible when the lights were on, but glowing boldly in the dark. I moved closer, and I saw names – thousands upon thousands of names, printed as small as possible. I understood what I was seeing without being told. The idea behind Open Cluster Astronautics was simple: citizen-funded spaceflight. Exploration for exploration’s sake. Apolitical, international, non-profit. Donations accepted from anyone, with no kickbacks or concessions or promises of anything beyond a fervent attempt to bring astronauts back from extinction. It began in a post thread kicked off in 2052, a literal moonshot by a collective of frustrated friends from all corners – former thinkers for big names gone bankrupt, starry-eyed academics who wanted to do more than teach the past, government bureau members whose governments no longer existed. If you want to do good science with clean money and clean hands, they argued, if you want to keep the fire burning even as flags and logos came down, if you understand that space exploration is best when it’s done in the name of the people, then the people are the ones who have to make it happen.

Knowledge is key, without knowledge, leadership, and action plans that fit the actual challenges, all of our businesses and organizations are lost. By providing training, offering moments to come together and exchange best practices all of us can stay on top of our field.

I want to watch Shloe’s movies and I want to see Mark’s musicals and I want to volunteer with Joe’s nonprofit and eat at Annie’s restaurant and send my kids to schools Jeff has reformed and I’m just scared about this industry that’s taking all my friends and telling them this is the best way for them to be spending their time. Any of their time.

      •   Show your commitment to community by Liking nonprofits in your city or county and demonstrating how the nonprofit addresses local needs. If you do this, you will find new bonds with your fans.

The best managers inspire passion and dedication among their staff, they cultivate a culture of success, and they make their team feel valued and supported. And the best managers enable their employees to perform beyond their own expectations.

LO3 is far from the only player in this space. Another important driver of blockchain ideas for energy is Berlin-based Grid Singularity, which has formed an alliance with the Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit renewable energy advocate, to accelerate the commercial deployment of blockchain technology in the energy sector. Grid Singularity focuses on how it can be used to securely read and interpret massive amounts of data from thousands of independent devices to give power system managers granular knowledge of how power is being used so they can best manage local and public grids.

In an ordinary organization, most people are doing a second job no one is paying them for. In businesses large and small; in government agencies, schools, and hospitals; in for-profits and nonprofits, and in any country in the world, most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding. We regard this as the single biggest loss of resources that organizations suffer every day. Is anything more valuable to a company than the way its people spend their energies? The total cost of this waste is simple to state and staggering to contemplate: it prevents organizations, and the people who work in them, from reaching their full potential.

The audience for Channel 28, the PBS station in Los Angeles, was demographically perfect for Trader Joe’s. In those days, however, PBS did not accept overt commercials. Alice had been quite active as a volunteer at the station. Through her contacts, we made arrangements to sponsor reruns of shows that tied to Trader Joe’s, such as the Julia Child shows, The Galloping Gourmet, and Barbara Wodehouse’s series on training dogs, which proved very effective! These reruns were not expensive compared with sponsoring first-runs and they had very good audiences. All we got was a “billboard” announcing that Trader Joe’s was sponsoring the show, but this was a cost-effective way of building our presence in the community. Another way we promoted ourselves on public TV was to “man the phones” during pledge drives. Our employees, led by Robin Guentert who was running advertising at that time (Robin became one of the most important members of store supervision after 1982, then President of Trader Joe’s in 2002), would show up en masse at the station. They loved being on TV, and we got the publicity. Promoting through Nonprofits Most retailers, when they’re approached by charities for donations, do their best to stiff-arm the would-be donees, or ask that a grueling series of requirements need to be met. In general they hate giving except to big, organized charities like United Way, because that way they escape being solicited by all sorts of uncomfortable pressure groups. At the very beginning of Trader Joe’s, however, we adopted a policy of using non-profit giving as an advertising and promotional tool. We established these policies: Never give cash to anyone. Never buy space in a program. That is money thrown away. Give freely, give generously, but only to nonprofits that are focused on the overeducated and underpaid. Any museum opening, any art gallery opening, any hospital auxiliary benefit, any college alumni gathering, the American Association of University Women, the Assistance League, any chamber orchestra benefit—their requests got a very warm welcome. But nothing for Little League, Pop Warner, et al.; that was not what Trader Joe’s was about.

All bois, except one, become grownups. They go to college or work in construction. They sign domestic partnership, civil union, or even marriage certificates. Some bois become artificially inseminated, have top surgery, or work in an office or as PE teachers. They go to law school or work in non-profits. Growing up happens to the best of us, even when we’ve said it wouldn’t.

the best workplace learning and performance leaders are always open to ideas for the next learning opportunity they need to oversee, and they work hard to avoid being hindered by obstacles.

YOU MUST DETACH FROM THE WHEN. You send things into the universe and they come back to you, but they don’t always come when you expect or want them to. You have to know WHAT you want. If you are too attached to the WHEN, you will be fighting the natural flow of the universe. You may think you need a new job within the next three months, or that you need to launch your nonprofit by the end of the year, or that your greatest desire must be fulfilled now, but the universe already has the best plan. It knows the exact right moment everything needs to happen. That is not something you can control. Maybe you aren’t as prepared as you think. Maybe the universe—which is a more informed version of yourself—wants you to develop your foundation before it gives you what you want. Maybe being delayed will mean that the market is more open or the economics will have shifted in your favor. Don’t get caught up in the WHEN. Just know the WHAT.

For example, upon becoming aware of the Black maternal health crisis in the United States, a white woman told a Black woman I know that she wanted to set up a nonprofit to tackle the crisis. This desire, though seemingly well-meaning, completely disregards the fact that there are already Black women and people leading this work and that as a person with white privilege, a better way for her to support the healing of this crisis would be to do her own antiracism work and approach these organizations to ask them how she can best support them. The

P3 - ten minutes of that movie, or indeed of any movie whose message is similarly dystopian about a post-aging world (Blade Runner), you will see that they set it up by insinuating, with exactly no justification and also no attempt at discussion (which is how they get away with not justifying it), that the defeat of aging will self-evidently bring about some new problem that we will be unable to solve without doing more harm than good. The most common such problem, of course, is overpopulation - and I refer you to literally about 1000 interviews and hundreds of talks I have given on stage and camera over the past 20 years, of which several dozen are online, for why such a concern is misplaced. The reason there are 1000, of course, is that most people WANT to believe that aging is a blessing in disguise - they find it expedient to put aging out of their minds and get on with their miserably short lives, however irrational must be the rationalizations by which they achieve that. Aubrey has been asked on numerous occasions whether humans should use future tech to extend their lifespans. Aubrey opines, "I believe that humans should (and will) use (and, as a prerequisite, develop) future technologies to extend their healthspan, i.e. their healthy lifespan. But before fearing that I have lost my mind, let me stress that that is no more nor less than I have always believed. The reason people call me an “immortalist” and such like is only that I recognize, and am not scared to say, two other things: one, that extended lifespan is a totally certain side-effect of extended healthspan, and two, that the desire (and the legitimacy of the desire) to further extend healthspan will not suddenly cease once we achieve such-and-such a number of years." On what people can do to advance longevity research, my answer to this question has radically changed in the past year. For the previous 20 years, my answer would have been “make a lot of money and give it to the best research”, as it was indisputable that the most important research could go at least 2 or 3x times faster if not funding-limited. But in the past year, with the influx of at least a few $B, much of it non-profit (and much of it coming from tech types who did exactly the above), the calculus has changed: the rate-limiter now is personnel. It’s more or less the case now that money is no longer the main rate-limiter, talent is: we desperately need more young scientists to see longevity as the best career choice. As for how much current cryopreservation technology will advance in the next 10-20 years, and whether it enough for future reanimation? No question about the timeframe for a given amount of progress in any pioneering tech can be answered other than probabilistically. Or, to put it more simply, I don’t know - but I think there's a very good chance that within five years we will have cryo technology that inflicts only very little damage on biological tissue, such that yes, other advances in rejuvenation medicine that will repair the damage that caused the cryonaut to be pronounced dead in the first place will not be overwhelmed by cryopreservation damage, hence reanimation will indeed be possible. As of now, the people who have been cryopreserved(frozen) the best (i.e. w/ vitrification, starting very shortly immediately after cardiac arrest) may, just possibly, be capable of revival by rewarming and repair of damage - but only just possibly. Thus, the priority needs to be to improve the quality of cryopreservation - in terms of the reliability of getting people the best preservation that is technologically possible, which means all manner of things like getting hospitals more comfortable with cryonics practice and getting people to wear alarms that will alert people if they undergo cardiac arrest when alone, but even more importantly in terms of the tech itself, to reduce (greatly) the damage that is done to cells and tissues by the cryopreservation process.

Just as important as creating a governance model that allows board members to fulfill their fiduciary obligations, best-of-class CEOs are asking their boards to focus on the pressing organizational challenges of the moment, knowing that they will benefit from the boards’ input.

Through the years, many people have asked me why I set up Khan Academy as a nonprofit. After all, my previous career was very for-profit, and I live in the middle of Silicon Valley, where scalable tech-enabled solutions can be worth a lot of money. Many have been skeptical whether a nonprofit could even compete with for-profit companies. There were two notions I couldn’t get out of my head, however. First, I tend to believe in market forces, but there are a few sectors—namely, education and health care—where the outcomes of market forces don’t always align with our values. Education and health care are two areas where our shared values tell us that, ideally, family resources shouldn’t be a limiting factor in accessing the best possible opportunities. Most of us believe that every mind and life deserves to reach its full potential.

Nonprofits compete to show that they are the best organization to win a grant. To win, nonprofits want to make their work look legitimate to the funder, which means working according to the funder’s beliefs about the causes of and solutions for a particular problem rather than challenging those beliefs. For example, the funder may favor nonprofits that make sobriety a condition of receiving a spot in a homeless shelter, because rich people would rather believe that homelessness is caused by poor people’s drug use than that it is caused by a capitalist housing market.

Generally, the best way to determine the relative benefit of drugs is through comparative effectiveness studies, in which all drugs, or a representative selection, are compared. In the United States, the nonprofit Consumer Reports is dedicated to such unbiased testing of consumer products, but no equivalent exists for medicines. After a drug is approved by the FDA, there is no process for tracking how it stacks up against other medications currently in use." ― Jeff Lieberman, Malady of the Mind: Schizophrenia and the Path to Prevention

Philanthropy Advantage provides the best nonprofit business consulting in Kansas city, USA. As a leading Microsoft Dynamic CRM consultant in the Kansas city, we are specialized in providing high end MS CRM solutions for Nonprofit and foundations.

The most enduring and galvanizing ideas and values of our civilization are embedded in our stories, from those of Homer, […] and Virgil, […] and to Jesus. It seems to be in our genetic makeup to capture our best ideas in stories, to enjoy them, to learn form them, and to pass them on to others (25)

How to scale and enter the risen path was largely unknown. It all might begin in darkness, but it cast a shadow that, when viewed from the ground, was too bleak. Demolition was once a question not of “whether, but when,” until one photographer spent a year on the trail documenting what was there. 4 The scenes were “hallucinatory”—wildflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, irises, and grasses wafted next to hardwood ailanthus trees that bolted up from the soil on railroad tracks, on which rust had accumulated over the decades. 5 Steel played willing host to an exuberant, spontaneous garden that showed fealty to its unusual roots. Tulips shared the soilbed with a single pine tree outfitted with lights for the winter holidays, planted outside of a building window that opened onto the iron-bottomed greenway with views of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty to the left and traffic, buildings, and Tenth Avenue to the right. 6 Wading through waist-high Queen Anne’s lace was like seeing “another world right in the middle of Manhattan.” 7 The scene was a kind of wildering, the German idea of ortsbewüstung, an ongoing sense of nature reclaiming its ground. 8 “You think of hidden things as small. That is how they stay hidden. But this hidden thing was huge. A huge space in New York City that had somehow escaped everybody’s notice,” said Joshua David, who cofounded a nonprofit organization with Robert Hammonds to save the railroad. 9 They called it the High Line. “It was beautiful refuse, which is kind of a scary thing because you find yourself looking forward and looking backwards at the same time,” architect Liz Diller told me in our conversation about the conversion of the tracks into a public space, done in a partnership with her architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and James Corner, Principal of Field Operations, and Dutch planting designer Piet Oudolf. Other architectural plans proposed turning the High Line into a “Street in the Air” with biking, art galleries, and restaurants, but their team “saw that the ruinous state was really alive.” Joel Sternfeld, the “poet-keeper” of the walkway, put the High Line’s resonance best: “It’s more of a path than a park. And more of a Path than a path.” 10

Not satisfied with the status quo, fundraising leaders are change makers – they see ahead to what the organization could accomplish to fulfill its mission and set a path toward attaining it. They are influencers in the best sense of the word as they draw upon their communication skills to share their vision for the future.

Julia is the co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, a nonprofit that runs workshops on improving reasoning and decision-making.

Anne Kihagi For Animal Enthusiasts Looking for Off-Beaten Path Discoveries, consider: Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery The Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery stretches over six miles off of California’s Highway 1. It is a part of the non-profit organization Friends of the Elephant Seal, which strives to educate the public and protect the seals. Stop at any of the viewing areas located on the highway to see over 17,000 elephant seals that use the area for birthing, breeding, and resting. The viewing areas are open year-round and are free of charge to the public. You have the best chance of glimpsing the seals between December and March when they visit the area due to inclement weather. If you are interested in learning more about the seals, Friends of the Elephant Seal has a visitor center and gift shop. It is a short, eight-mile drive away from the rookery and located within the Plaza del Cavalier in San Simon. Other area attractions include the Piedras Blancas Light Station, Hearst Castle, and the Coastal Discover Center at San Simeon Bay. Friends of the Elephant Seal also offers tours for children in third grade and higher. The group hosts school field trips, as well as organizations like Girl and Boy Scouts. Tour instructors provide students with explanation while they are viewing the seals at the rookery. People of all ages can enjoy the live action feed of the seals located on the Friends of the Elephant Seal’s website.

I’m half as gracious, brave, and encouraging as my mother was—my whole family, for that matter. And as my travels would tell: attempting to live in a new place is one of the best ways to bust out of one’s comfort zone. The places that feel like home Koo’s Cafe, Costa Mesa, CA—September 1997

Electronics: Spend money on upgrading your system instead of buying a new one. Donate computers, printers, or monitors (any brand) to a nonprofit or participating Goodwill location for refurbishing (some charities repair them and give them to schools and nonprofit organizations). For unrepairable cell phones and miscellaneous electronics, locate a nearby e-waste recycling facility or participate in a local e-waste recycling drive, or make a profit by selling them on eBay for parts. Best Buy collects remote controllers, wires, cords, cables, ink and toner cartridges, rechargeable batteries, plastic bags, gift cards, CDs and DVDs (including their cases), depending on store locations.

As a result, a core competency of today’s nonprofit leader is the ability to build trusting relationships. Leaders who can bring out the best in others and make people feel their voices, concerns and actions matter are most likely to build successful organizations.

Your group is decades out of compliance with IRS requirements for nonprofits. Everything I've seen from you suggests your nonprofit is a sham. And Butyl and Dowidge doesn't represent sham organizations." I paused, letting this sink in. "Even if you hadn't been trying to kill Reggie from the moment you first contacted my firm, you're still the worst client I've ever had." As I spoke, Richardson simply stood there, processing everything. "How much trouble are we in with the IRS, exactly?" "A lot," I said. "Though it's hard to say exactly how much. Best-case scenario, they'll dissolve your nonprofit." I shrugged. "When that happens, you'll be getting a bill for back taxes you won't be able to pay, given your nonprofit's annual budget. And the worst-case scenario..." John Richardson leaned forward, hanging on my every word. Excellent. "What is the worst-case scenario?" I waited a beat before answering so my next words would have maximum impact. "Worst-case scenario is the IRS finds that you intentionally withheld taxes you owed. You could face time in jail." There. The closest thing to a mic drop any accountant ever got. I leaned in closer, readying myself for the kill. "Unless, of course, you do exactly what I tell you to do." Richardson narrowed his eyes at me. "And what might that be?" Bingo. This was the part I'd been looking forward to the most. The part I'd practiced in a mirror the night before until I'd gotten the ferocity of my expression just right. "What happens next is you are going to leave Reginald Cleaves alone, forever. If you do that, we will pretend we've never heard of you if the IRS ever comes knocking." I trailed off, letting my words hang in the air for dramatic effect. In the entirety of my time as an accountant, I had never once had the opportunity to do anything for dramatic effect. I could all but feel Reggie looking on, beaming with pride. "If you continue to harass Reggie, however, I tell the IRS everything I know.