Essential Non-Profit Hacks What You Need to Know to Successfully Run a Mission Driven Organization

Nonprofit leaders often tout their own accomplishments and capabilities and those of the teams and organizations they lead. Rarely do they openly share their lessons learned, especially since many of them come from failures and setbacks – painful experiences that they try to keep hidden from public view, and even from themselves. In his recent books, Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Three Decades of Social Entrepreneurship (Rivertowns Books, 2019) and When In Doubt, Ask for More: And 207 Other Life and Career Hacks for the Mission-Driven Leader (Rivertowns Books, 2020), Alex Counts returns to SIPA to share his hard-won lessons about how to start, manage, and lead a successful nonprofit organization – though many of those techniques can be applied to any professional context. Among his most important insights is that maintaining a balance between professional goals and personal needs is difficult, but essential – and he shows how it can be done. His recent books have been chosen as an "editor's pick" by the Chronicle of Philanthropy and was termed "essential reading for nonprofit employees" by Forbes magazine. In this talk, Counts will share his most important lessons and facilitate a discussion about how best to apply them.

Speaker bio:
Alex Counts is an educator, consultant and writer. He founded Grameen Foundation and became its President and CEO in 1997, after having worked in microfinance and poverty reduction for 10 years, mainly based in Bangladesh. He then successfully ran the organization for its first 18 years.

A Cornell University graduate, Counts' commitment to poverty eradication deepened as a Fulbright scholar with Grameen Bank, where he immersed himself in its innovative poverty solutions. He trained under Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, and co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Since its modest beginnings, sparked by a $6,000 seed grant provided by Prof. Yunus (who was a founding board member and continues as director emeritus), Grameen Foundation grew to become a leading international humanitarian organization. Counts stepped down as CEO of Grameen Foundation in 2015, yet remains involved in the organization in a voluntary capacity.

Counts propelled Grameen Foundation's philosophy through his writings, including Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance Are Changing the World (John Wiley and Sons, 2008). His articles and blog posts have been published widely. Most recently, he has written Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Three Decades of Social Entrepreneurship (Rivertowns Books, 2019) and When In Doubt, Ask for More: And 207 Other Life and Career Hacks for the Mission-Driven Leader (Rivertowns Books, 2020).

Today, Counts teaches public policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland College Park specializing in philanthropy, non-profit leadership and social entrepreneurship and has a consulting practice focused on helping nonprofit organizations and their leaders, boards, and fund-raising teams more effective. He is an active Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer, working for abused and neglected children in Prince George's County, Maryland. For more information, visit www.alexcounts.com.

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