By Tom Peterson In the acknowledgements section of her best-selling book Quiet, Susan Cain thanks more than 200 people by name. Along the way, she had asked those people to help her: share contacts, read some pages, be a sounding board, do an interview. That’s a lot of reaching out for a […]
By Tom Peterson Not too often, but occasionally a nonprofit should re-think its brand. Brands are so much more than logos and words. Here’s my best recollection about one such endeavor: the rebranding of Heifer. The challenge Heifers for Relief started out sending ships full of dairy cows and other farm animals to the countries […]
By Tom Peterson Working as a nonprofit professional and wondering, What can I do to grow? Here are some ideas created by a couple dozen nonprofit folks in a twenty-minute exercise called “25/10 Crowd Sourcing.” (My changes were minimal.) They emerged from a workshop on Liberating Structures at the national conference of the […]
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” —Mark Twain By Tom Peterson What’s your purpose in life? Do you know? Hear the words of Benjamin Mays: The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. […]
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” —Dr. Seuss By Tom Peterson The other night, a few of us stayed up late discussing what direction we should go in our little world-changing movement. We wondered who could help with certain […]
By Tom Peterson Hanging out with positive people who give energy to the world will gives us energy, as well. The more we’re around them, the more we find ourselves reaching for our own best. However, by the same token, nothing can be more counter-productive than having negative people on your team. Negative people […]
By Tom Peterson It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed when we see injustice, greed and a broken world with so many needs. Sometimes it’s just too much and we become paralyzed. Here’s a freeing thought: There’s no way you can save the world. No matter how much you’d like or how hard you […]
By Tom Peterson My daily ritual usually includes a little reading from some nonfiction book. The genre wanders: social change, business or marketing, psychology, history, biography, spirituality and so on. I just finished the book Daily Rituals by Mason Currey. “Nearly every weekday morning for a year and a half,” he says, “I got […]
By Tom Peterson To get ready for the new year, I started with two Pomodoros at Panera listening to Pandora. By time the holidays are over, I’ve usually taken stock of the past year and written down what I’d like to do in the next. (A few pages from the journals on […]
By Tom Peterson You can learn new tricks. As a young man, Albert Schweitzer made big marks in several fields. He was a renowned organist and an expert on Bach. He had earned a doctorate in philosophy and another in theology and had written a book that turned contemporary theological thinking on […]
