First Things First

A Leadership Guide to Building a Gold Standard Nonprofit

By: Tom Iselin

Narrated by: Kris Monroe

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McKinsey and Company. Lined with bold messages and practical advice, First Things First takes listeners on an insightful journey of how to build a high-performance nonprofit. Listeners learn from the blunders of an organization on the verge of bankruptcy and how Tom Iselin rebuilt it into a national brand. They also learn how to build a set of essential cornerstones most emerging nonprofits overlook when starting out or expanding.

"Too often emerging nonprofits want to do what's convenient, not what's important," says Iselin, who has spent the last 20 years building eight of the nation's most innovative nonprofits. "The nonprofit world is filled with passionate people eager to make a difference. Their intentions are noble, but most leaders of early stage nonprofits lack the experience needed to build a quality organization. They tend to take short cuts, penny pinch, and make hasty decisions. The result is costly disruptions, operational migraines, and in some cases, failure."

First Things First is a guidebook for nonprofit leaders. It focuses on a set of governing principles, operational structures, and practical tactics board members, executives, and managers should adopt and apply if they are truly serious about fulfilling their missions and building sustainable nonprofits of superior quality—not just talking about it. Each chapter provides a case study example that relates chapter topics to experiences Iselin had during the five years he spent as chief executive at SVAS and the founder of Higher Ground. Listeners see how his staff and board overcame a host of challenging situations to create a pathway for the organization to develop pioneering programming and effective operations that propelled his organizations to national recognition and acclaim.

©2010, 2022 Thomas Iselin (P)2022 Thomas Iselin