Editor’s Note: I recently began researching PRIs, or Program Related Investments, to gain an understanding of how they create leverage and whether it makes sense for our foundation in some cases to provide low-interest loans instead of grants to our nonprofit partners. The attached, provided to me by the helpful people at Ohio Grant makers Forum, gives a good overview of the features and benefits of using PRIs.
“That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
Editor’s Note: Steve Rothschild, former executive vice president of General Mills and founder of Twin Cities RISE!, a nonprofit that works to advance anti-poverty programs, offers a useful case study of the challenges and successes RISE! has experienced, with a view to providing a management guide for other nonprofit leaders to follow. I especially liked the book's honest portrayal of the early difficulties that RISE! faced, especially the process the organization went through to achieve focus, and the steps it took to overcome the natural tendency of most philanthropists to try to do too much too fast.
Editor’s Note: It's hard to believe it’s been over ten years since George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, passed away. Hearing his solo stuff, especially this song, always puts me in a good place.
My experience says there are several reasons that business partnerships are like marriages:
Editor’s Note: Our foundation supported development of two functional CDFIs in Cleveland over the last two years. We have also recently been approved to formalize our microenterprise work in our little county of Ashtabula, Ohio, as a CDFI. That’s why I enjoyed this article and hope it could inspire a reader or two to pursue such a worthy cause. My favorite Muhammed Yunis quote is “poor people usually aren’t poor because their stupid – it’s more often because the system doesn’t allow them a chance to retain the product of their labor.”
Editor’s Note: I recently met Professor Wei-Skillern at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business where she was teaching a class in social enterprise with Rick Aubry of New Foundry Ventures (http://newfoundryventures.org/). Her decades of research on successful nonprofit collaborations highlight key success factors required for collective impact initiatives to succeed.
“Do not depend on the hope of results. When you do the sort of work you have taken on, you must face the fact that your work may apparently be worthless. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate on the value, the rightness and the truth of the work itself.”
Editor’s Note: I worked in an Interpublic Group advertising agency from 1979 to 1987. And so I was on Madison Avenue after the period covered by AMC’s hit show, Mad Men. If you hope this book is about the television show or contains salacious content as the show does, you will be disappointed. It is instead an intelligent review of the period the show covers, often referred to as the “golden age of advertising.” Cracknell himself spent 40 years in the business as a writer and creative director so his words mean more than an observer. If you have interest in the business of advertising, this is a nice history of the business with special focus on the “creative revolution” of the 60’s, the period covered by Don Draper and his colleagues in the TV show. I respect the ad business more than most because when it’s done well, as it was in the two agencies I worked for, it is a valiant and constant struggle between creativity and business discipline. The excerpt below, from the book’s epilogue, reflects my feelings about the current state of the art.
Editor’s Note: An oldie for this month since I’ve had some grey clouds the last few months. Then we spent last week celebrating my son Kevin’s love for his new wife, Chiara, reminding me that “it’s all right.”
