Kay McMillan’s Blog – The Woman Behind the Computer Screen at Activate Good
Greetings readers of the Activate Good blog! Whether you are a consistent reader or just stumbled across this post, my name is Kay McMillan and I am one of the summer interns for Activate Good. I am a second year senior at NC State, majoring in Political Science with minors in accounting and nonprofit studies (which explains why I am a second year senior).
I have been charged with the task of writing for Activate Good’s blog. I am pleased to announce that I will be writing a five-part blog series on something that college has ingrained in my brain as a nonprofit studies minor – “the five leadership challenges for nonprofits” – and how they relate to the wonderful world of volunteerism.
The Five Leadership Challenges for Nonprofits
You might ask, what the heck are the five leadership challenges for nonprofits? A crash course in Nonprofit Studies: These challenges correspond with the core characteristics of the nonprofit sector (e.g., being mission based, accomplishing some social good, their tax exemption status) and affe
cts almost all nonprofits – no matter their size or their mission. The five challenges are as follows: earning the public trust; aligning mission, methods, and resources; capitalizing on issues associated with diversity; balancing individual interests and common good; moving beyond charity to systemic change. It isn’t any fun to start in order, so let’s start the next blog with the last one: moving beyond charity to systemic change.
How Volunteers fit into the leadership challenges
How are these five leadership challenges applicable to volunteers? Hopefully the answer will become apparent in my subsequent posts, but let’s start with this reason. Awareness of these challenges can help volunteers better understand the struggles and goals of the nonprofits and can enable volunteers to better contribute their own ideas since they have a better understanding of the difficulties that nonprofits face.
Stay tuned for my next blog to see how a fisherman and a hungry dude are related to our themes!
