Right now, maybe more than ever, it's so important for Nonprofit leaders to be as effective in our advocacy work as possible, while dealing with the fact that we have super-limited bandwidth. So anything we can do to be faster and more efficient and more effective getting to those results, the better.

I had a call with a client a few days ago that was a case study in all the things that can make us crazy when we're advocating with government decisionmakers in particular. Whether we're looking for a policy change or funding or both, it seems like the process and the path are rarely clear and certainly never easy.

A lot of times it can feel like a long and cumbersome process, especially if you don't have a full-time government relations person on staff. Which frankly, most nonprofits don't. I hear from a lot of clients their frustration with overly complex systems that have a million moving parts and are hard to decipher. Opaque decisionmaking structures where it sometimes feels impossible to figure out who's really in charge of the decisions you're trying to affect.

It's enough to make you want to give up before you even start.

I'm here to tell you that even when you're a full-time advocate, those roadblocks and challenges still crop up all the time. The difference is we know some tricks to cut through the fog and get on the shortest path to the results we want.

Today I'm sharing with you my three favorite shortcuts for doing just that.

In this episode, we share:

• The one place you should always start from to get faster advocacy results
• Two magic questions that will buy you more progress than any others
• How taking these three shortcuts can result in more and stronger strategic relationships
• The key to avoiding unseen holes in your dream policy that will come back to bite you
• How to use AI effectively in your advocacy work

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!

We have reason to celebrate this week! And I want to celebrate with you. We all just experienced a profound demonstration of the power of collective action.

I hope you were able to participate in one of the thousands of No King's events this past weekend. I was there for the event in my community and it was awesome. Fantastic energy, lots and lots of people. A wonderful collection of friends and neighbors and people I'd never met before. All of us gathered together in common cause, and to leverage the power of collective action. It was beyond impressive.

I also hope that when you got home, you had a chance to look through social media and everywhere else to see all the images and video of the amazing events all over the country and the world. And I hope you took a moment to reflect on what that really means.

There are three major sets of powerful evidence that momentum is increasing for us. The biggest, most obvious piece of evidence is the ever-growing No King's attendance and the number and diversity of communities touched.

Over 8 million people in over 3,300 local communities, including many in deep red territory in every state in the country. All of them showing up to say, what's happening is wrong. We want better. We are joining together to call for better, and to commit to creating better.

What was maybe the most exciting to me, although there were a lot of exciting things, was that thousands of those who showed up said that this was the first time they'd ever participated in any kind of a protest. They'd never done anything like that before. But they looked around at what was happening and they said, I can't be silent anymore. I can't be standing on the sidelines. I need to stand up, show up, and begin to take action.

But as I said, that’s just one set of evidence. There’s a lot more and it’s creating some great possibility for 2026.

In this episode, we share:

• Three powerful sets of evidence that momentum is building toward a big change in our favor
• Two important lessons that tell us what we need to do next as Nonprofit leaders
• Why the right wing is worried enough to double down on voter suppression, and how we can counter that
• Two actions Nonprofit leaders can take right now to help ensure our clients and volunteers are able to make their voices heard
• One excellent tool that every Nonprofit leader can use to streamline that assistance

Link:

Handy look-up tool for all things voter registration: https://www.nass.org/can-I-vote

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!

One of the biggest challenges that we deal with is what happens when we inevitably fall short of expectations. The reality is it's going to happen. It happens to everybody now and again.

It could be expectations set by others for us, or expectations we set for ourselves. Either way, when we fall short of those expectations, that tends to carry a lot of emotional weight. And it's that emotional weight, and the stuff that unfolds from that, that can cause a whole lot of problems for all of us, and for Nonprofit leaders in particular.

It’s usually a combination of external factors and some internal factors that cause us to fall short of an expectation, regardless of whom it was set by. But instead of simply assessing the causes, fixing the problem, and moving on, we often get caught up in judgment about it all. And we beat ourselves up and get tangled up in what all of it means about us.

I bet I don't have to tell you, that only makes the problem worse.

It's inevitable that we will fall short of expectations from time to time. But how we respond to that makes a huge difference in our effectiveness, in our success, and I would argue in our wellbeing.

In this episode, we share:

• How fear of judgement actually makes it harder to fix things when we fall short of expectations
• The essential mental frame that will keep you out of self-judgement and self-recrimination
• What to do first if you find yourself unable to meet an expectation
• Four keys to defanging the experience of falling short
• How to set teams up for success even when one or more members fall short
• The superpower good leaders use to avoid the traps that cause most shortfalls

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!