Last month we wrote about taking your Board from a “Founding Board” to a “Funding Board” and we highlighted a tool to evaluate your board composition. So what if you find major gaps in experience and skills on your Board? How to you begin the long task of recruiting new Board members? At Starfish Impact,…
DetailsAh, April – the season for accounting and paperwork. In the spirit of looking back, organizing, and checklists we put together a list of things all family foundations should be considering on an annual basis. Although it’s hard to make time for reflection, making time to consider the following areas once a year is key…
DetailsWe have heard from a lot of companies that would like to do more for their communities but are constrained by limited philanthropic dollars. So we were delighted to hear about the giving program at First Foundation, Supporting Our Communities. Conceived by Doug Freeman, Director of Trust Services and Consulting, the program aims to support…
DetailsTwitter can be a loud place. With 6,000 tweets per minute, it can be a hard place to be heard. But in addition to building a brand and a presence on Twitter, you should be using Twitter as a research tool. We’ve found some amazing resources out there for family foundations and non-profit organizations. First,…
DetailsWe hear it all the time. “I wish my Board would fundraise.” If this feels familiar, you’re not alone. Survey after survey shows that getting the board to fundraise is the number one area that non-profits say needs improvement. Part of the reason is that fundraising is a different skill than most Board members use…
DetailsA few weeks ago we wrote about Corporate Social Responsibility for smaller companies. In that article we talked about how companies of any size can benefit from CSR efforts, provided goals are clear and employees are involved. Stacy Phillips, Managing Principal at Phillips Lerner, has a near-perfect example of a CSR program that gets maximum…
DetailsOn February 19th, over 60 artists and over 500 philanthropists gathered to raise funds for one of Starfish Impact’s favorite clients, LIFT-LA. The event, LIFT:Art featured works donated by artists with the proceeds from art sales going to support the program at LIFT-LA. As I mingled among celebrities, activists, and passionate supporters, I almost forgot…
DetailsSometimes it seems like Corporate Social Responsibility is only for the “big guys,” those companies that have whole departments dedicated to reputation management. When you’re a smaller company it’s easy to think CSR is not for you. After all, you have bigger concerns, like where the next customer is coming from or how to hang…
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