Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants: Nonprofit horror stories

Weird stuff can happen at nonprofits. Anyone who's been in the sector for more than a few months has at least one horror story to tell. Situations where bone-headed ignorance drove vital strategy. Where somebody's personal hobby-horse was allowed to run wild. Where negligence or downright criminality did serious damage. Where lawyers said or did anything at all. Of course, nonprofits aren't alone in generating these things. But when it happens here, it's a particular shame. We really should do better.

This week's Carnival is a gathering of nonprofit horror stories. We didn't get very many (you have to be careful of embarrassing people -- or getting into trouble!). But these ones are doozies.

Enjoy. And learn.

Trent Stamp, president of Charity Navigator whose Trent Stamp's Take is an always informative and often entertaining look at the nonprofit world, offers us a cringe-worthy grab-bag of horror stories. A good reminder of the value of charity evaluators like Charity Navigator.

Kivi Leroux Miller, at the Nonprofit Communications blog, offers us Newsletter Photo Mistakes - And How to Avoid Them. (I've made every one of these mistakes in my long newsletter career. Now you don't have to.)

There's a story in the current Reader's Digest called called Charity Chiselers that will set some teeth to gnashing about compensation abuse by nonprofit executives.

Finally, someone named Jeff Brooks at an obscure blog called the Donor Power Blog writes The danger of a little knowledge, about a nonprofit that learned a useful fact but managed to nearly destroy themselves by insanely focusing on it.

Next week's Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is on any and all nonprofit topics. Don't miss it. And if you're blogging on the nonprofit world, get involved!