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 Obama Administration is proposing changes to the tax code that will cap the deduction for charitable gifts at 28%. The theory is that lower income people pay 28% marginal taxes, and their charitable giving saves them 28%. High income people pay 36% marginal taxes, so their gifts save 36%. Since the savings is greater, this is unfair to poor people, so the logic goes. But the question is less about fairness to poor people and more about the fairness to charities.

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.

Photos from the Mission Driven Perfomance Management Summit are now available here. We look forward to seeing you at next year's event!

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.

This is the title of a new working paper at Harvard Business School. The paper, found here, is the result of some great research being conducted by Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman, all professors at various business schools. The premise is that goal setting may cause more damage than benefits. This may be cause for concern if you have been creating personal scorecards or otherwise been working to link your employee performance to the Balanced Scorecard.

Many of the organizations we work with are literally awash with data but totally bereft of insight. They track everything, from website hits to donation rates to recidivism. But they have no way of knowing whether or not they're making progress against their mission.

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."

Okay, so now we have a new President, and the stock market is down about 9% this year already. This is after about a 35-40% drop last year. The market is a good proxy for the economy. Not only did the economy crash last year, but it is still not looking good this year, even with Hope and Change in the highest office of the country. The President yesterday said that is it is time to rebuild what America stands for and time to recommit to our values (more or less). What I heard, was that is it time for a new strategy. This also applies to your organization.