2,273 stories by "Joe Patti"
Over the years, I have written a fair bit on culture passes that various European countries have distributed to young people. In addition to passes for cultural experiences and goods, so…
I was out taking a walk this weekend and flipped over to the NPR livestream just as an episode of the Splendid Table came on. As they introduced the second guest, Priya Parker, I wondered wh…
My nephew is in the throes of writing essays for college applications so perhaps that is why a Twitter thread by author Kelly Barnhill caught my attention a month ago. She talks about how ne…
Okay, a little bit of a rant today. I have wanted to get this off my chest for a couple years now. Who decided that greeting customers with "What can I get started for you today?" was a good…
About a week ago, The Atlantic had an article that answered a question that has been nagging me for quite a few years " are kids still passing down the silly, nonsense jokes, hand clapping r…
Little trip down memory lane to an entry I did referencing Joe LeBlang, the owner of a tobacco shop whose entrepreneurial mind created NYC's first Times Square discount ticket service in …
I have been listening to the pledge drive for the statewide public radio network the last couple weeks and been thinking nostalgically about my time living in Hawaii when I was a regular gue…
I saw an article on the NBC News site questioning the value of standing ovations with a subtitle suggesting the seeming default occurrence of the act was a symptom of "'everyone gets a troph…
Many arts organizations are seeing a drop in ticket sales and subscriptions this year which got me to thinking about a TED talk Dan Ariely did about how unwanted options helped helped people…
Back in 2009 I wrote about a TED talk Dan Pink did on motivation. In particular, he discussed how monetary rewards was successful at motivating people in mechanical tasks, but when it came t…
Perusing my archives, I came across a post about something Adam Thurman of The Mission Paradox blog wrote regarding the poor work environment in the arts. While people, including myself, wer…
Looking back at past entries, I came across a post I wrote about educator Jane Remer's thoughts about arts in education. I had read and written this post years before I began corresponding w…
I am going to be traveling and preparing to take up a new position so I am dipping back into the archives to help provide some content while I am busy elsewhere. One of the first entries…
For a long time now pursuit of a low overhead ratio has been viewed as a benchmark of good governance in the non-profit sector. There have been arguments against that view, but the perceptio…
Last month I mentioned NPR was doing a series on theatre in the US. In fact, there is an installment in that series airing today. However, today I wanted to point out a entry in the series f…
Yesterday Daniel Pink made the following Twitter post about OKRs " Objectives & Key Results (because apparently KPIs " Key Performance Indicators, needed to be replaced with another equa…
Over the last few months, Non-Profit Quarterly has run a series of pieces on the topic of capacity building. In particular, the authors have challenged the notion that current capacity build…
I haven't really been paying close attention to all the recent stories about the re-opening of the renovated Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, but a New Yorker article about how the acoustics h…
Jeremy Reynolds recently wrote a great piece about the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's (PSO) European tour. The article isn't so much about what happened during the tour as it is about why o…
For decades now there has been a belief that the lower the ratio of non-profit's overhead expenses to program expense, the better run the non-profit is. As a result, a low overhead ratio…
Given that today is Indigenous People's Day, I wanted to mention some recent positive developments related to the arts and an increased presence and role of the Muscogee (Creek) people who o…
Countries around the world are eyeing the success of South Korea's K-Pop, and Japan's earlier J-Pop, and are developing national music strategies of their own according to a recent Forbes ar…
Last week Vox had a provocatively titled article saying "Why fewer Americans are donating to charity." Rising to that provocation, I read the fairly lengthy piece that essentially said that …
Last week Barry Hessenius sent me a link to a Buzzfeed article listing answers to job interview questions, suggesting it might make a good blog post. This suggestion was well-timed because D…
If you have read Ve Le's Non-Profit AF blog, you know that he often frames serious topics with a bit of humor, often extolling vegan cuisine and his obsession with the Oxford comma. Frequent…
