The last half of the article by La Piana Consulting in the Winter 2010 Outcomes has a section title that says Be a Futurist. In this section they talk at length about how organizations can learn about the changes going on, study them, and then adapt.
This will require studying the changes around us, listening to uncomfortable analysis, and putting forth the serious intellectual effort to grasp new things. That is essentially becoming a futurist.
Making that transition will be hard. (more…)
Another great article in the Winter 2010 Outcomes from Christian Leadership Alliance is from La Piana Consulting. Their research in the wider social service sector has identified five major trends. Quoting them, the five are:
I’ve been talking about the Winter 2010 Outcomes from Christian Leadership Alliance. You would learn and stretch if you could take a few minutes and browse the issue.
Kevin Ring has a great article, Future-Proof Ministries that talks through some of the current and long-term tech issues.
Earlier discussed that we need to pay attention to the trends in our culture and then looked at some of those trends identified by David Kinnaman.
How do we respond to those trends? Kinnaman raises four superb questions in his article. I will quote his questions and share my thoughts.
Helping people grow spiritually — Every church I’ve every worked with had a vision that included some variation of that idea. It is phrased differently with varying focus, but that seems to be typical.
What if you could identify things that help that growth? What if you could identify things that are completely irrelevant to helping people grow?
Yes. It is possible to quantify spiritual maturity in a local church. Every non-profit along with all churches can learn from that answer.
What are a few of the changes today that impact the faith-based nonprofit community? Barna Group has a few ideas.
Where our culture is headed and the resulting impact on ministries is the focus of the Winter 2010 issue of Outcomes from Christian Leadership Alliance. Lots of great articles that I’ll talk about a while.
The rate of change around us makes me dizzy.
It is easy to measure how much stuff you did. It is very hard to measure what you actually accomplished.
It is easy to count:
Are you changing the world or are you just running around in circles? What change is happening because of all your effort? That’s what we mean by outcome measures. Many donors are now asking what are you accomplishing? instead of what are you doing?
What is the difference?
Check out how to present multiple pieces of data from every country on the planet over a 40 year trend in such a way that anyone can get your point. Professor Hans Rosling has a way of showing extremely complicated data so you can get the idea in a few minutes.
Some examples:
Great article on tips to avoid email disasters along with a few horror stories to show why awareness is needed. Very short read. (more…)
I have completed the course work and am now available to provide Peer Review to CPA firms. 
Please see my other blog, www.attestationupdate.com for more details.
I started a new blog today, Attestation Update, www.attestationupdate.com. It will provide news and updates to the CPA community on audits, reviews, and compilations. Some posts are only at the new site and some attestation posts will be left here. In the future, posts that are focused more on the CPA community will be at the new site.
Why make this change? I realized there are very two distinct audiences for my writing: the non-profit community and CPAs. While there is a lot of overlap, particularly with the CPA firms in Southern California with whom I count as friends at the same time as competitors, the interests are very different. Thus, two blogs. This will allow for more focused attention by time constrained readers. Enjoy them both!