In the last few weeks, I’ve had quite a few opportunities to speak about my own experiments in leadership, as well as the lack of leadership that plagues the nonprofit sector. By far, my favorite is an interview I did for Idealist – The nonprofit leadership crisis we’re not talking about: Interview with Robert Egger. It’s got pretty good play out in nonprofitland, and it’s loaded with patented lines, including this bon mot, aimed at some of the “leaders” who talk endlessly from the safety of the pier, when the action is on the boat…. Continue reading »
Boomers, Food and Innovation
I’ve been comparing notes with the folks at the Milken Institute, and they have once again opened their doors to me, this time giving me a fine platform, in their Currency of Ideas blog, to continue to explore ways in which food and aging could, should, and MUST drive innovation in the philanthropic arena. I hope you dig it, and consider sharing it with others…or reaching out to share ideas. I am 100% open-source, so I’m always happy to trade in what for others might be trade secrets. It’s titled Boomers, Food and Innovation. I… Continue reading »
Jobs, Not Services
Any local nonprofit leader in Los Angeles who read the release of “A Time for Truth”, the 2020 Commission’s long anticipated report on the city’s economic future, could be forgiven for packing his or her bags and fleeing town. The lead paragraph from the L.A. Times front-page article pretty much sums it up: “Los Angeles is a city facing economic decline, weighed down by poverty, strangled by traffic and suffering from a crisis of leadership, according to a report released Wednesday by a 13-member panel of influential civic leaders.” It went on to report…. “The Los… Continue reading »
A Joyous Reunion
Anybody in the direct service world knows the joy of the unexpected return of the prodigal client…that person who had it all together, who had triumphed over incalculable odds, but who flames out/self-destructs at the last moment…and then wanders back into the wilderness of drugs, prison or the street. You sigh…you pray…you jump into the next crisis…and weeks, months and even years can drift by when, suddenly, they show up…clean, confident and full of thanks for the journey. Another variation of that happened to me. I was visiting Freshology last Friday, a great high-end meal… Continue reading »
Beyond Recovery – Revealing the TRUE Power of Food
Food Recovery Programs, once outliers in the nonprofit hunger relief system, are now front and center in the global push to limit the amount of fresh foods that are wasted every year, in every country. In the U.S., the first program to dig deep into the urban food system was New York’s City Harvest in 1982. Its success in recovering prepared food from the city’s restaurants and hospitality industry, and then immediately distributing donations to pantries, shelters and other assistance programs, spawned replication in numerous cities…first in Minneapolis (Twelve Baskets), Philadelphia (Philabundunce) and then in… Continue reading »
