Who Decides? The Wrong Standards for Nonprofit Survival
The latest from David Callahan, There Are Too Many Nonprofits.| The Butterfly Effect
The latest from David Callahan, There Are Too Many Nonprofits.| The Butterfly Effect
By the end of next week, the students in my social entrepreneurship course will have identified a complex social problem they want to wrestle with and design a solution for throughout the semester.| The Butterfly Effect
In two weeks I’ll be back in the classroom introducing a new group of students to the nonprofit sector.| responsive.substack.com
A couple of weeks ago our family was in the midst of a crisis.| The Butterfly Effect
The more I understand the logic of the gift—learning how to distinguish it from the commodity and the tax—the more I’ve asked myself whether I’m shooting myself in the foot.| The Butterfly Effect
Last week, while facilitating a workshop, someone asked a question that immediately brought to mind Scuttle from The Little Mermaid—the seagull who confidently describes a fork as a “dinglehopper.” It reminded me how few supposed experts in our space can accurately describe what a gift actually is.| The Butterfly Effect
Last month, I suggested we’re in the midst of a reckoning our sector’s narrators don't want to see coming. They’re not helping us face the system’s unraveling; they’re trying to manage the disruption without surrendering control. They’re still clinging to the tools, institutions, and authority of a system that’s plainly falling apart. What they offer is just enough change to preserve their standing, but not enough to reckon with what truly needs to be rebuilt. Yet many of us can...| responsive.substack.com
This is part two of a three-part series on fundraising’s original sin.| The Butterfly Effect
This is part one of a three-part series on fundraising’s original sin.| responsive.substack.com
This is the last in a three-part series on reclaiming the ethic of the gift in contemporary fundraising.| responsive.substack.com
In the past few weeks, I’ve read a number of pieces from those trying to make sense of this moment for the rest of us.| responsive.substack.com
This is Part Two of a three-part series exploring what it really means to reclaim the ethic of the gift in today’s fundraising landscape.| The Butterfly Effect
At its heart, the ethic of the gift is an ethic of movement.| responsive.substack.com
Our first two roadshow dates for 2025 are officially set!| responsive.substack.com
This is the first in a three-part series on reclaiming the ethic of the gift in contemporary fundraising.| responsive.substack.com
Registration for our summer webinar series opens next week.| The Butterfly Effect
I just spent twenty-four hours watching a gaggle of direct response professionals have an existential crisis over a critique that, admittedly, wasn’t even all that original.| The Butterfly Effect
There’s an old line, often attributed to Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”| The Butterfly Effect
Turns out, a 2% response rate comes with a cost.| The Butterfly Effect
Last evening, I took John Palfrey’s “courage is contagious” hashtag to heart and decided to challenge him on some of his statements about philanthropy.| The Butterfly Effect
Last week, I poked fun at an increasingly familiar group—let’s call them the Nice Guys of Philanthropy. Understandably, they have a lot to say about where institutional philanthropy finds itself right now—and they’ve got plenty of boosters ready to cheer them on for their bold takes. They’re easy to spot: white and about ten years older than me, they grew up in blue counties, went to elite schools, and built the kinds of résumés guys like me weren’t exactly meant to have. Despit...| responsive.substack.com
Since Inauguration Day, I’ve been watching closely to see what those inside the bubble of institutional philanthropy are actually saying out loud.| responsive.substack.com
