When Harbor House finally shifted its fundraising, it didn’t start with a new appeal or a better OBBBA webinar. It started with three people in a room asking what the organization is really for over the next decade, and who needed to be part of that answer.
When a founder dies, the family conversation that follows is rarely about strategy. It’s about loyalty, grief, and a question that sounds like clarity but functions as a wall: What would she have wanted?
Every organization runs on an implicit sequence: something comes first, and everything else follows from it. Most of the time that sequence operates below the surface of strategy and governance, invisible until something goes wrong.
The modern business sense of ‘stakeholder’ was strategic and practical; yet, it became a ‘non-word’—a term so broadly applied that it no longer tells you anything specific. This clarity matters a lot, because…
For nearly two decades, the Whitfield Family Foundation ran like a quiet clock. Then Margaret’s oncologist used the word “aggressive,” and three adult children found themselves at a kitchen table asking a question the foundation had never needed to answer before.
2.3%. That number– the share of American household wealth held in cash and checkable accounts– should change how every nonprofit approaches fund development. The other 97.7% is in real estate, securities, business interests, retirement accounts, and other noncash assets. Yet,…