EcoDialogues
A Curated Selection of Files
Finding Beauty in Business
Can business be beautiful? This file explores how meaningful human connection, vulnerability, and purpose can redefine our understanding of business beyond transactions.
Stepping Off the Train: Beyond Right and Wrong
In these divisive times, it feels somewhat comfortable to gravitate toward an existing train of thought. This train goes left, and this one right.
Why Care?
In a fractured world, why care? This file explores the existential and practical value of compassion, connection, and shared human experience.
Better Governance For Nonprofits: Leadership That Works
Explore how transformative leadership redefines nonprofit governance, fostering collaboration, innovation, and systemic change for greater impact.
Unstorying the Self
Discover the journey of unstorying the self, exploring how personal narratives shape our identity and the ethical responsibility we hold to others, nature, and the world.
Marketing’s Role in Shaping Self-Perception
Marketing is deeply intertwined with our worldview because it shapes and reflects how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Beyond the Hero’s Journey (Part III)
To some extent, the hero’s journey reflects and perpetuates a colonizer mindset, leading to the subjugation of entire cultures.
Beyond the Hero’s Journey (Part II)
Technology, profit, productivity—these are hallmarks of what is often construed as progress within the Western worldview? Progress for whom?
Beyond the Hero’s Journey (Part I)
Floods, wildfires, drought, biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, pollution, mass riots, war—this is the world right now in active ecological crisis.
Space as Metaphor: Beyond Output-Oriented Paradigms (Part II)
Strategic plans are particularly excellent examples of a process with questionable results, especially if stakeholder collaboration is desired.
Space as Metaphor: Beyond Output-Oriented Paradigms (Part I)
In various fields (counseling, education, business, and leadership, etc.), transformation and change are often framed as part of a metaphorical hero’s journey.
To ‘Lead’ Or Not To ‘Lead’ (Part III)
If we think in silos, we bring ourselves deeper inside single systems.
To ‘Lead’ Or Not To ‘Lead’ (Part II)
What does social purpose mean in the context of my life? How do I apply my belief in a social purpose? How I answer these questions may provide insight into the extent to which I have retained my systemic sensibility.
To ‘Lead’ Or Not To ‘Lead’ (Part I)
Is the past really past, and is the future somewhere ahead of us? The realization that past trauma, for instance, has a direct bearing on our mental health lends credence to the notion that yesterday is alive, a consideration that leads to a cybernetic complementarity that the future is equally real today. Can we hold two seemingly disparate ideas?
Wading at the Edges
All my life, I have essentially waded at the edges of the proverbial pools of life–a condition that does not lend itself to transformation, an idea I recently gleaned from Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Successful Fundraising Strategies
Successful fundraising at the organizational level rests on constructing solicitation strategies and techniques that reflect the capabilities and wants of current and prospective donor groups.
Fundraising Ethics
Effective fundraising and development must include careful consideration of the laws and regulations that govern such activities, which include interactions with donors, staff, and volunteers.
Development In Nonprofits
Effective development requires a substantial amount of input from different kinds of ‘players’ throughout an organization. For example, a fundraising/development professional needs an accurate understanding of the accounting picture in order to communicate fiscal realities to donors/philanthropists.
Fundraising and Development
Fundraising is generally viewed as ‘asking for money’. This is essentially true. Whether you have been asked to support the local Little League baseball team or received a printed mailer that asked for your support to build a homeless shelter, you have likely been the recipient of a fundraising activity.
Self-Reflection in Marketing
Marketing is a business domain not only for promoting brands, products, and services but also as a platform for organizational self-reflection, engaging the entire staff in the process.