All too often young professionals are relegated to leading a social media project or developing a bake sale fundraising strategy and aren’t given the opportunity to flex their true leadership muscles. As a result, many young professionals don’t feel prepared or confident to take the lead when the moment strikes.

Here's what we have coming up next week.

Review of The Social Profit Handbook: The Essential Guide to Setting Goals, Assessing Outcomes, and Achieving Success for Mission-Driven Organizations (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015) by David Grant, former president and CEO of the New Jersey-based Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

Why might a well-rounded, thoughtful organization struggle to attract the kind of support they needed to stay afloat? It could be a matter of knowing too much.

When it comes to identifying prospects, many otherwise intelligent people enter the world of the Sugar Plum Fairy. 

Social entrepreneurs often end up wasting precious time running after unrealistic funding opportunities and knocking on doors that will never open instead of investing their energies in more effective approaches. If you want to get a social venture off the ground, here are a few common fundraising pitfalls to avoid. 

Nonprofits benefit by storing in their “sacred bundles” nuggets of wisdom gained from the important program assessment data they gather. The key is to identify — from among the many possibilities — what is most significant.  

Here's what we have coming up next week.

Jen Bokoff, Director of Foundation Center's GrantCraft, discusses two new publications available for free on the GrantCraft site. Communication That Counts focuses on South African funding, and 21st-Century Community Foundations looks at the future of community foundations.

Is your nonprofit's legal house in order? Review this checklist from Carrie Garber Siegrist, an Associate in Venable's Nonprofit Organizations and Political Law Practice Groups.