"Management meetings should be fun!" was the challenge from Dave Norton, originator of the Balanced Scorecard and first speaker at the networking breakfast last Thursday. With the Gauntlet thrown, the fun really began when our guest speakers from Catholic Charities and ACCION told us about the transformation their board meetings have taken since they started reporting their strategic measures on their Balanced Scorecard to the Board. When board members exclaim that they are thrilled, give standing ovations and actually take strategic action – you know you are onto something!

Ascendant has teamed up with the Association of Research Libraries to help several of its members build Balanced Scorecards for their organizations. This initiative kicked off not a moment too soon as one of the libraries was notified of a 12% cut to its funding next year. The idea of a library scorecard is not entirely new.

People with a college education earn 50% more than people without one. Only 8% of poor children go to college.

This was the context for a Boston Foundation forum on The ingredients of Effective Schools. It was inspirational watching a collection of accomplished educational experts with a broad range of views, collaborating on the elements of successful schools while debating the benefits of different approaches.

Have you ever wondered what people were talking about online? People are Tweeting and Blogging about all kinds of things, and some of these things are related to the Balanced Scorecard. How are you supposed to keep up? I think it is too much to ask to search Google, then search Google Blogs, then search Twitter, and then look for other search engines and other social networks. Well we have made it all much easier at our redesigned BSC Community.

Columbia Business School's "Ideas@Work" blog had an interesting post last week entitled "The Nonprofit MBA." The premise was that in a time of unprecedented challenge for non-profits, hiring a MBA may be a way for social sector organizations to tap into management expertise that can help them survive. (Since MBAs are a lot cheaper now than they used to be!)

We recently returned from Digital Now 2009, an executive leadership conference focused on association leadership in the digital age. At Digital Now, we presented with Project Management Institute and American Society of Mechanical Engineers on how the Balanced Scorecard can be used to drive change and innovation in associations.

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.

A recent article in the New York Times talked about the shift in focus of the Hudson-Webber Foundation in downtown Detroit. For years, Hudson-Webber has been funding organizations in the Detroit metro area. Given the changing philanthropic and economic landscape, however, Hudson-Webber has had to start playing a new role: "picking winners and losers."

Friday, October 24th was the first conference held by the MA Nonprofit Network. A gathering of over 300 professionals from the state's nonprofit sector committed to learning from and sharing ideas with one another was definitely a forum that should serve as a model to the sector everywhere.