Should you work for an org when you arent a fan of the leadership?

During my job search I came across an interesting struggle. What happens when the org you want to work for has leadership that you dont agree with? But you truly support the work of the org, love the other staff and have a deep dedication to the cause...

Well here are the three key learnings that I came up with while trying to tackle this problem...

1. You make your own choices in your daily life, once working there, you can make moral objections as needed.
2. If you choose to not work for an org because of the leadership, what difference have you really made? Wouldnt it mean more if you worked there, made a difference in the cause and worked toward change?
3. Ultimately you work for the cause and for your God, not that person.

I guess what I am saying is that your decision on who you are and what you do.  A boss cant change who you are unless you allow them to.

I am not suggesting that this is the right choice for all situations or people.  There are probably numerous examples where the leadership is more extreme and is so objectionable that there is good reason to not work there.

For me it came down to a choice of accepting that this is the leadership and it may have flaws, but those flaws dont outweigh the benefits of working for an org and cause that I believe in.

I would welcome any comments or pushback on this....

I'm back with Random items

Hello, being anonymous and absent at the same time was fun, but the thoughts within are fighting to be released.  So here are a couple.

First - DONT PLAY WITH SOCIAL NETWORKS at the risk of making your org (or yourself) look silly.

Interim Master? is that a real title? Or was this a user that set this up as a test and then left it alone? And has now forgotten about it?

Second - Lets have some fun and see that it is important to keep social networking and such in perspective, things will come and go with continual change.

But to leave all of this on a more positive and useful note, if you really want to learn more about social networks, social media and more within the nonprofit arena visit www.wearemedia.org from NTEN. It is a great start to what is and will continue to be a wealth of information and a good community.

Info on hiring tech staff

OK, so I did a couple blog posts on my thoughts while I was job hunting about nonprofits and hiring tech staff. Well it appears that I am not alone in that topic. Here are a couple great links to conversations about hiring tech staff.

First is a blog post from Paul Hagen on the Idealware site.

Paul talks about three considerations for staff and tech:
1) Dedicate staffing to support and evangelize tools. As a rule of thumb, I’ve been suggesting organizations dedicate 0.25 FTE for every 10 staff members as on-going support and evangelizing new tools – double or triple the time during implementation and the first few months after launch.

2) Spread the responsibility. Make online responsibilities and competency something that a majority of staff participate in. Assign specific online responsibilities in staff job descriptions, such as developing content for specific sections of the web site (pages, newsletters, video) , monitoring and managing social networking presence, or providing monthly reports of web and other online statistics. Build the organizational culture by adding an online health status report to all major staff and/or program meetings.

3) Make online competency a job hiring must. Ensure that online competency is considered and weighed in all new hires, particularly for management, communications, and marketing/outreach positions.

And my favorite quote from Paul "In fact, most organizations vastly underutilize the tools they currently own because of staffing issues."

The other resource is an annual effort from NTEN and the Nonprofit Times to complete a nonprofit technology staff salary study. Always awesome information available in there.

Good stuff! Sorry I dont have a full blog post again this week. Maybe someday I will again.

Powerpoint humor - since I dont have time to blog

Sorry this blog has been so erratic in its posting, but like the title of the blog says - Random thoughts.

So I still dont have time to be anonymous, but should soon, whenever I get a job. In the meantime, someone suggested this video to me and I loved it. SO here ya go as a substitute for a real post.

Awesome Obama video from Sarah Silverman and Dont VOTE

Ok,at times I try to be controversial or sarcastic, but I cant hold a candle to Sarah Silverman. YIKES, this video has some inappropriate words, comments and themes, but sure makes a point.

Is your organization willing to take a risk like this to make a point? Are you?



There is a lot of awesome creativity in this video. It is obvious that there was a lot of planning done before just making a video. It seems that many of us could be able to come up with a way to make a point like this, if we were just willing to step out there and risk offending people. When is it time to step all over politically correctness and go extreme?

"Vote for Obama. Gonna visit Grandmama. Vote for McCain. To me you're a $%$#%$ stain." Wow.

Here is another video with some great creativity and a good message also! But hey, it actually isnt offensive and doesnt use any expletives.



I think the point of sharing these is that sometimes a video with just a great case study, professional production, inspiring message, just isnt enough. Take it all the way to what you really want to say. Dont be afraid make people mad enough to yell, hey at least they will be talking.