Posted on Tuesday, 14th September 2010 by chris wignall

Wayne Elsey, CEO of Soles4Souls posted a mildly provocative blog today entitled “5 Reasons No One Cares About Your Nonprofit“. It’s worth the couple minutes it will take to read. His 5 reasons are: and my corresponding thoughts 1. I can’t find you online. Wayne urges not only web presence; but current, regularly updated web [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 17th August 2010 by chris wignall

One of the major new challenges I’ve taken on this year is chairing the board with Absolute.org (one of our strategic partners). Having been on boards of a few organizations before, and with a sudden need for someone to accept the chair, I agreed to the role in February. It hasn’t been an easy time [...]

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Posted on Monday, 16th August 2010 by chris wignall

Sometimes it’s just about context. Yesterday professional golfer Dustin Johnson blew a chance to win his first major tournament because he hadn’t taken 60 seconds to read the specific rules of the course that were posted for all the players to see. A lot of fans were annoyed that a seemingly small violation caused by [...]

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Posted on Friday, 13th August 2010 by chris wignall

When we launched our organization in February of 2008 one of the first decisions we made was that we wouldn’t offer grants to churches. It was actually a very easy decision and one made with very little debate. On our website’s FAQs we put it this way: 5. Does Catalyst support church-based projects? Not at [...]

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Posted on Friday, 13th August 2010 by chris wignall

Lately I’ve been getting comments on this blog from people who are offering to help get our website to the top of Google and Yahoo searches using their brilliant SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. That would be slightly intriguing if the purpose of our website was to be at the top of searches. Even a [...]

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Posted on Monday, 9th August 2010 by chris wignall

Andy Stanley from Northpoint Church in Georgia shares his reflection on a critical mistake he made for the first eight years of his leadership in a video from Catalyst Leadership (no relation:) ) You may have to scroll down the page to find Andy’s video and it is a little slow to load. I love [...]

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Posted on Wednesday, 28th July 2010 by chris wignall

Earlier this summer my 6 year old refused to take part in a large family picture at a reunion. Regardless of how we asked, encouraged, or mildly threatened him he just wouldn’t sit down with all the cousins and more distant relatives and smile for a few seconds. Until Grandpa offered him $2 to do [...]

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Posted on Wednesday, 23rd June 2010 by chris wignall

MoneySense magazine recently published The Charity 100, a series of ratings of Canadian charities based on several factors with the intent “to be a tool for potential donors researching which charities to give money to”. In the nonprofit world this is the kind of thing that fires up the blogosphere and even earns a twitter [...]

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Posted on Friday, 18th June 2010 by chris wignall

I didn’t get much accomplished from a work perspective last week. I spent several hours dealing with my first ever “at fault” car accident, shopped for a car to replace the totalled one, fulfilled an old promise to take my nephews to the zoo, and celebrated my son’s 4th birthday at least three times. But [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 15th June 2010 by chris wignall

My friend and mentor Fred Smith recently posted an insightful article about the tendency for givers to support active programs but resist funding the administrative and supportive costs those programs require. In part he gives this example: It’s like a business manager in a school where I taught years ago. He had a closet full [...]

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