It has been a while. In fact, this week marks a year since we last published an article. We hope you’ve missed us. We have certainly missed you.
So, what have we been up to that has kept us so busy that we haven’t been able to prioritize communicating with you in a way that is very important to us? Well, life has been happening. Like everyone, over the past seven months we have been adjusting to life changing dramatically, virtually overnight, as the COVID-19 pandemic has gripped the world and especially the U.S.
But even before that, we were adjusting to some very dramatic changes. In early 2019, we were dealt what we can only call a traumatic blow. We will elaborate more on that in a future case study, likely a series of case studies. While it will always be a difficult topic for us to discuss, there are a lot of important lessons there we need to share ranging from nonprofit governance and management, ethical and legal implications, corporate philanthropic relationships, and navigating tragedy and grief. For now, it is sufficient to say that no matter how many years or how broad a diversity of experience we have, there is always more to learn and no one is immune to being blindsided once in a while.
We sincerely hope that we can find sensitive and appropriate ways to share our experience with you in a way that empowers you to avoid the pitfalls we encountered last year. We confess, we nearly lost our heart for this work altogether.
But then, COVID struck. Times of crisis highlight more than anything how vitally important it is to do good. In the spring, we sprang into action to help, putting together educational opportunities to connect our community with relief as soon as it became available.
Our sincere thanks to everyone who joined us for those webinars. You helped us more than we helped you. You reminded us why we do this, that it matters, and that we really can make a difference.
Since then, we have been extremely busy on the consulting side of the house, helping our clients to weather the economic impacts of this disaster. The nature of the services we are providing to existing clients has evolved and we are not currently accepting new consulting clients so that we can focus on the stability and sustainability of those we are currently serving.
That said, we are going into the last quarter of this year with a renewed focus on providing education and support to empower you to weather this storm alongside us and our clients. The statistics are alarming. Not only is philanthropic giving down, the sheer number of organizations projected to collapse is heartbreaking. But there is hope.
We have worked in this field through recoveries before. We have some idea of what to expect and we know what to do. Stay with us through the next few months and look forward to new tools and resources to help you, do more, better.