Recently, I saw an interesting editorial from a United Way CEO about how their United Way is changing the way it addresses social issues in their community. What caught my attention in the editorial was not what the United Way is going to do to address the pressing local needs it has identified but how they are going to measure their success.

The issue of designations can be controversial. While some United Ways promote designations as a way to encourage donors to give, others discourage designations by placing restrictions on which organizations can be designated to or by requiring a minimum designation amount.

To survive when Philanthropy Cloud is available to all nonprofits, United Ways will need to strengthen the products they have to sell. For many United Ways, this will be a significant challenge.

We make our New Year’s resolutions with the intention to better ourselves. If we know that our resolutions are in our best interest, why are they so hard to keep?

One of the most common refrains I hear from United Ways is that the times are changing. Society is changing, technology is changing, the economy is changing, and even competition for charitable giving is changing.

Donors – especially younger donors – have increasingly high expectations of the charitable organizations they support. Donors want to feel confident that the dollars they donate go to organizations that significantly impact their community.