Posted on Tuesday, 23rd April 2013 by chris wignall

Watch this video. I’ll wait… Love it. It seems more and more charities and individuals are engaging in awareness campaigns with a focus on social media. Every once in a while one of them strikes a chord and goes viral (like the ambitious but ultimately undermined Kony 2012 project from Invisible Children). The majority of [...]

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Posted on Wednesday, 17th April 2013 by chris wignall

I hate to complain but… Complainers and critics sap the energy of even the best of us. Even valid frustrations are things we’d mostly rather avoid. For those who are generally adverse to conflict it’s even harder. In one of my volunteer roles this past year I had to handle a number of complaints from [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 12th March 2013 by chris wignall

(How’s that for an attention grabbing title?) I’m focusing a lot of my reading so far this year on aspects of brain science and how they apply to everyday leadership. I find it fascinating. There is so much we truly don’t understand about our minds both physiologically and behaviourally. Daniel Kahneman‘s book Thinking, Fast and [...]

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Posted on Monday, 27th August 2012 by chris wignall

The academic world never really suited me. I made pretty good grades (except for those five consecutive math exams I failed in high school) and completed undergraduate and Maser’s degrees; but I always found the kind of learning required to be outside my natural process. I do love learning. Working my mind around and through [...]

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Posted on Friday, 16th March 2012 by chris wignall

Last December I retweeted CBC host Jian Ghomeshi: Lots of other people retweeted it, which makes sense because it represents what has become common understanding in the development field. There are lots of reports supporting the idea that aid given to women results in benefits to their family and community, while aid given to men [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 6th December 2011 by chris wignall

It’s that time of year when it seems nearly every charity in Canada is filling my mailbox with their year end appeals. Many of my nonprofit friends are under serious stress as they have to bring in a critical portion of their budgets in these next few weeks. In many cases, there is a real [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 16th August 2011 by chris wignall

Be warned, this may be more of a rant than a well balanced post. I’m frustrated by the number of leaders who are ending their marriages or in marriages that are deeply struggling. I’m not a sociologist or registered counsellor and I haven’t done a statistical analysis to determine if there’s really a trend to [...]

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Posted on Thursday, 28th April 2011 by chris wignall

My friend and colleague Mark Petersen posted some of his thoughts on partnership based largely on what he’s noticed while working on our shared Stronger Together 2011 project. Earlier this year we hosted a small conference for charities we work with called Gather. (Some of my thoughts on the event can be found here). The [...]

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Posted on Thursday, 31st March 2011 by chris wignall

I just prepared this brief summary of the roles a board member plays for a board I chair. For more on it read everything Bob Andringa ever wrote. The Three Hats of a Board Member Bob Andringa (http://www.theandringagroup.com/pages/bob_andringa) is the source of this helpful concept for how board members can better understand the various ways [...]

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Posted on Friday, 11th February 2011 by chris wignall

What role should members of the board of directors play in fundraising for a charity? One of the most engaged discussions I observed at our Gather conference last month was the one about this topic. I didn’t participate on the conversation; in part because I needed to keep on eye on the entire flow of [...]

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