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A troubling development underscores that charitable nonprofits will have to work even harder to be heard by the IRS.  

As nonprofits, we are healers. We are protectors. We educate and we enrich lives. And much more. But we can’t do anything without the public’s trust. As a result, the failures of one nonprofit can negatively affect public opinion and harm the ability of thousands of other nonprofits to advance their missions.

Like most nonprofit professionals, I am passionate about the cause I support, and like many professionals, I am always looking for ways to build and strengthen my professional skills. This latter pursuit led me to participate in the Allstate Foundation Greater Good Nonprofit Leaders program taught at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. A year later, the lessons I learned from this experience continue to guide my work.   

“Data” is just a fancy word for “information,” right? And “digital” is just a fancy word for information stored on, or communicated via computers. “Digital” is also a word that is being used increasingly instead of the expression “online,” as well as to describe the gap between those individuals who have access to the internet, and those who don’t (known as the “digital divide”). So, let’s take a fresh look at digital data, with a little help from our friends, shall we?

Washington State has 58,000 nonprofits. More than 75% of them have budgets of $100,000 or less. So by rough estimates, 580,000 board members need training but many lack significant professional development funds to do so. And these nonprofits do our communities’ most important work; they feed the hungry, educate our children, care for our seniors, and protect our earth. Their success matters. Our challenge at Washington Nonprofits was, “How can we help busy board members learn what they need to know, so that their organizations can thrive?”

In today’s online edition of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, I wrote that an “honest dialogue is long overdue to identify how best to meet the urgent advocacy needs of the nonprofit and foundation communities. Considering the clear and present policy threats

If you, like many other small nonprofit leaders, are finding yourself increasingly worried about the security of your organization’s data and are looking for a quick and easy solution, I have some bad news: there is no quick fix to putting your nonprofit’s worst cyber-attack nightmares to rest. The good news is that addressing this issue does not have to create a budgetary nightmare.

Wherever people find your nonprofit online, its website is where they will look for more information. It’s the best place to tell the full story of your organization and its impact in the community. So be sure your nonprofit’s website is designed in a way to wow your audience. However, there are other places on the web where people are finding information about your nonprofit: online “profiles.”