Collaboration | Creation in Common

Defining Your Organization’s Value

by Carlo Cuesta | May 17, 2011 | Board Engagement, Collaboration, Creativity and Innovation

This installment of the Sixty-Second Strategy covers a quick exercise to help organizations define the value they create and deliver to the communities they serve. For more information, go to the related post entitled Owning Your Place in the Community. Also,...

Owning Your Place in the Community

by Carlo Cuesta | May 17, 2011 | Board Engagement, Collaboration, Creativity and Innovation, Great Nonprofit Examples, Resource Development

[The following is an excerpt from a keynote I gave to the Southern Minnesota Nonprofit Summit.] Fifteen years ago this week was when I arrived in Minnesota to become the Executive Director of The Playwrights’ Center. My wife and I were newly married. We drove 900...

Commit 72 Minutes for the Future of the Nonprofit Sector

by Carlo Cuesta | Jul 26, 2009 | Collaboration, Creativity and Innovation

Call to Action Commit 72 minutes per day to innovate and create a new future for your nonprofit organization. 72 minutes away from putting out fires and reacting to the economy; 72 minutes from the daily grind; 72 minutes focused on challenging assumptions and...

Board President to Executive Director: “We’re not a fundraising board.” (Part III)

by Carlo Cuesta | Jul 20, 2009 | Board Engagement, Collaboration, Resource Development

This post is part three of a three-part series on board/staff collaboration. Go here to read part one and here to read part two. “What we got here is a failure to communicate” said the Board President slightly chuckling at his own joke. “Actually, what we have is a...

Staff Member: “We’ve already tried that” (Part II)

by Carlo Cuesta | Jul 2, 2009 | Board Engagement, Collaboration

This post is part two of a three-part series on board/staff collaboration. Go here to read part one. “We’ve already tried that, it didn’t work.” The board member smiled back at the organization’s marketing director and thought: “you may have tried it, but did you do...

Board Member: “I don’t understand what we do?” (Part I)

by Carlo Cuesta | Jun 30, 2009 | Board Engagement, Branding and Communications, Collaboration

The following is part one of a three-part series on board/staff collaboration. Identities have been concealed to protect the innocent. “I don’t understand what we do?” The question hung in the air. The executive director, just three months on the job, did not know...