Ken Goldstein, MPPA

Ken Goldstein has been working in nonprofits and local government agencies from Santa Cruz, to Sacramento, and back to Silicon Valley, since 1989. He's been staff, volunteer, board member, executive director, and, since 2003, a consultant to local nonprofit organizations. For more on Ken's background, click here. If you are interested in retaining Ken's services, you may contact him at ken at goldstein.net.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

What gets left behind - Thinking about priorities

I apologize for not being better about posting for the last couple of weeks. First I had to go out of town for several days for a funeral, and since I've been back I've been extremely busy with helping one client with a new Strategic Plan, helping another with a major funding proposal (the finished proposal was about 25 pages), and starting up an assignment as an Interim Executive Director. With all of this activity, blogging has been pushed aside.

But this could also be an interesting topic for a nonprofit blog; what gets left undone when you get busy with everything else? What's falling through the cracks at your nonprofit organization?

It's a fact of nonprofit life that you will always be busier than you can handle, and that you will always be doing more than one job. So, how do you prioritize?

In the case of this blog, the fact of life is that projects that have far greater income potential distracted me. The blog is part of my mission of assisting nonprofits, and it is a good tool for promoting my consulting practice, but bottom line considerations intervened.

Are you putting mission aside to work on projects that have more immediate deadlines, or have some greater income potential?

I have no answers today, just these questions for you to think about, and an explanation for my recent absence.