There is always a silver lining. The economy has slowed, endowments have lost value and donations have declined. The hard work of the nonprofit sector is as needed now as ever. But this recession may help cure one of the critical crises facing the nonprofit sector today: the Senior Management Shortage.

It has been an interesting seven months since I have written about the potential for Mergers and Acquisitions in the nonprofit sector. The question in my mind has always been about how you would conduct mergers with nonprofits. What would be the incentive? Where would the money come from? The payout might be more efficient delivery of services, but the people that get the services typically are not paying, so they cannot force consolidation in the industry. The New York Times might have answered my longstanding question today.

The Winter 2009 issue of Sloan Management Review had an article entitled Does It Pay To Be Good? For those of us in the social and public sector, the answer is "usually not enough." While this article focuses on the corporate sector, and how for-profit organizations are using corporate responsibility as a marketing scheme, it has a few important lessons for us in the social sector as well.

I'm very happy to report that the first-ever Mission Driven Performance Management Summit in Washington, DC, was a smashing success! We had over 80 people in attendance and had incredible discussions about how the Balanced Scorecard can be used to drive lasting strategic change.

Nonprofits, like many other organizations have to manage their hiring process carefully. They especially need to be careful when considering internal candidates. Bridgestar recently wrote an article titled "Considering and evaluating Internal Candidates for Senior-Level Nonprofit Positions." In this article, they suggest several best practice strategies.

The Balanced Scorecard management system has been around for quite some time -- born in 1992, it's now officially a teenager. And while 16 years is still relatively young in human years, it's a few lifetimes in management concept years. Remember the other "great ideas" of the early 1990s? Like reengineering?

A constant problem for many not-for-profit organizations is recruiting, engaging, and retaining volunteers. The volunteer labor force has a lot of benefits: it costs little and is typically passionate about the cause. But volunteers bring baggage, too: there's a lot of turnonver and retraining required and they typically have their own ideas (not all bad) on how to acheive the organization's objectives.

I was skimming Newt Gingrich's new book, REAL CHANGE, and was reminded about General Eisenhower's amazing success in executing strategy. In World War II, Eisenhower coordinated the largest military undertaking ever, the invasion of Normandy. He not only managed huge sea, air, and land forces, but also managed unpredictable weather as well as the political forces of Roosevelt, Churchill and de Gaulle. When asked about his success, Eisenhower said "Whenever I run into a problem I can't solve, I always make it bigger.

There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal on March 20, 2008 highlighting the challenges that food banks are running into during this recession in the US. In today's environment, these food banks have a real business challenge on their hands. Demand is up, but supply is down. This demand and supply situation would make a for profit very rich, but it is extraordinarily challenging for a nonprofit.

I recently came across the Blackbaud State of the Nonprofit Industry Survey 2007. There are a number of interesting factiods in this survey, which was conducted late last year.