Friday, March 4, 2011

Embracing Opportunity

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” Peter Drucker

The world is changing all around us, day by day, minute by minute. In my lifetime, I thought I would never see peaceful demonstrations in the Mideast, much less peaceful demonstrations in the Mideast able to topple oil rich dictators. And in a world that has been filled with so much dark news recently, it gives me hope.

I believe that all of this change has brought with it opportunity. A world of opportunity to people across the globe who have seized a moment in time where anything is possible.

In the New Jersey nonprofit world we have heard a lot about change and with that opportunity, largely in the form of affiliation, collaboration and merger. Five Northern United Ways have merged in to one, many NJ towns are in the early stages of sharing services and costs, and sustainability is the name of the game.

Nonprofits and town governments are gathering together to best decide their most collaborative path to ensure that they continue to have impact. I believe they are embracing opportunity and becoming the thought leaders on how best to move forward. PIP too must do that internally.

PIP has been on the capacity building scene for 20 years and so much has changed since 1991. I see before us opportunities to be innovative, creative and more efficient in how we deliver services, provide programming and support the nonprofits we care so deeply about.

I’ll end this post with my mantra for the next 12 months which is again a quote from Peter Drucker, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” So it begins here at PIP....