Category Archives: Organizational Development

by Jini Stolk Half way through a NPQ webinar on Nonprofit Leadership Transitions and Organizational Sustainability (which will be very helpful in planning our November 27th Creative Champions workshop on Succession Planning) it hit me. The performing arts has for years been using a shared or co-leadership model that the wider non-profit community has recently […]

by Jini Stolk Those of us in the arts don’t need to be reminded that our most important resources are people: those who create the art, support the art, and engage in the art. But our work can be so intense that I think we sometimes forget to care for ourselves and each other. That’s […]

by Jini Stolk You have a great idea. It’s been percolating for a good while now and you’re ready to take action. Does this idea have legs? Can you accomplish it? How do you move forward? It’s time for Exploring the Feasibility. At Creative Trust we were very careful to figure out whether our ambitious […]

by Jini Stolk Hiring can involve both anticipation and anxiety. If you do it right, you can look forward to sunny days, basking in achievements and successes. If you don’t…it’s yours to fix. Here are a few pieces of advice for managers and for board members undertaking what might be their most important job – […]

by Jini Stolk Arts organizations tend to be skilled and inventive creators of programming, requiring the careful weaving of many strands – artistic, financial, contracting, marketing and much more. These 8 Top Tips for Creating a New Program are designed for those moments in an arts or other nonprofit organization when an entirely new initiative […]

by Jini Stolk I’ve had many fascinating conversations since my recent post on self-interest as a largely unacknowledged factor in successful collaborative initiatives. This led me to think about another essential component of collaborations that work: trust. Because it was part of our name, identity, values and process at Creative Trust, trust was much discussed […]

by Jini Stolk We all read Joseph Recinos’ Where are the Minority Voices in Theatre. I know we did. Here are some thoughts I think are relevant: Vu Le finds recent stats on diversity in nonprofit leadership in the States (only 8% of board members are people of color; nearly a third of nonprofit boards don’t […]

by Jini Stolk I thought about calling this post “Shared platforms: the future”, but I’m not yet sure that’s the way it will go. At this point, there’s a lot of discussion, an insightful research paper by Jane Marsland and funder support for new “platforms” that take on major components of the administration of small arts […]

by Jini Stolk I’ll go out on a limb here. My prediction for 2015 is that arts organizations will adapt to new funding, producing and audience realities by moving away from expecting/assuming that healthy organizations are characterized by growing seasons, expanding budgets, and ever more senior corporate board members. Instead they’ll move towards accepting/embracing the […]