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The Nonprofit Quarterly

Your Promise is Your Brand: How to Work It

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Carlo M. Cuesta and Padraic Lillis

An effective organizational promise is identified through an honest assessment of ability, opportunity, and desire. Tapping the collective aspirations of board, staff, and community partners can inspire a bond, motivating the whole to expand their thinking beyond the routine of their individual roles and recognize the exciting places their shared effort can take them.

President Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget today including $100 billion earmarked for job creation as the nation struggles with the worst recession in decades. Among the president's planned programs is the small business tax credit proposed in his State of the Union address last Wednesday. So what's in the proposal for nonprofits?

In service to transparency, we would like to inform our readers that the Nonprofit Quarterly’s board member and general counsel, Scott Harshbarger of the firm Proskauer Rose, has been hired by ACORN to review some of its procedures and policies governing staff intake and service work that led to the pimp/prostitute sting.

Call this the charitable deduction acceleration legislation. In late January President Obama signed into law legislation designed to encourage more giving to the relief effort in Haiti. This isn't unprecedented. After the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004 similar legislation was passed. Increasing charitable aid to Haiti is a noble goal, but is an accelerated charitable deduction for donations to earthquake relief efforts good public policy?

In the Nonprofit Quarterly’s Nonprofits in the Age of Obama project, we have committed to following significant trends in and around nonprofits as our economic and political environment re-calibrates. This has led us to follow news reports of the traditional goal setting of the nation’s United Ways. We noticed some interesting trends and wanted to get your input on what you see happening in your locale.