The Candidates and Service
Next week, Senators McCain and Obama will attend a presidential forum on service as part of the Service Nation Summit in NYC. It will be one of the f…
After the honeymoon
As part of the Pro Bono Action Tank’s campaign to support and grow pro bono service at professional services firms, we conduct regular c…
Help - We Need Values
We are in the midst of evaluating the articulation of our organizational values. While our values hopefully never change, as we mature we hope that w…
Impulsive Leadership
When we interview candidates for jobs at the Taproot Foundation, we always start by asking the candidate why they want to work on our team. It screen…
Architects & Pro Bono
This is the first in a series of posts under the banner of “Pro Bono Design.” Future posts will range from specific pro bono design proje…
Nonprofit Management for America
Teach for America (TFA) is the 6th largest employer of students upon their graduation from college, followed by Deloitte (to put it in perspective). …
Led by a Blind Man
I volunteer as an account director for the Taproot Foundation, an organization that is basically a Peace Corps for professionals to benefit non-profi…
Perfection vs. Multitasking
One of the most common habits that is also one of the hardest to break is perfectionism. For all but a few roles (e.g. accounting) perfectionism caus…
Intelligence, Character and Will
At the Aspen Ideas Festival on Sunday, I had the honor of introducing Howard Gardner, the author of the groundbreaking work on multiple intelligence …
Nonprofits' Role in Climate Change
Several years ago, a member of our management team suggested that we become carbon neutral and buy offsets to cover our travel. He had looked into it…
Loan Executives to Companies?
In the 1980s, there was a movement to create loaned executive programs at companies, which would send their leaders for a period of time to a local n…
Reclaiming Core Social Services
For some reason, I was recently looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For those who forget Psych 101, Maslow believed that while humans have …
