I was wrong. It was amazing. And I'm not alone in believing that. It's blown away every expectation. Having grossed almost two billion dollars globally, there's really nothing to stop it from growing. But why? I mean what did Disney do with The Force Awakens that George Lucas was unable to do with the prequels?

It comes down to a few pretty amazing lessons that can be applied in lots of other arenas. From marketing to strategic planning, watching Disney massage a storyline back into public favor has a few lessons to teach us.

It's the digital age, people: Time to step up your email game! Emails have replaced phone calls, faxes, letters, and meetings. So, let's start doing it right.

But it wasn’t more than a few hours later that the criticism started to pour in. The Zuckerbergs have set up an LLC to manage their charitable contributions, whereas traditionally, billionaires establish private foundations - a type of 501(c)(3). The bloggers were Tweeting, the newscasters were chiding, and many people doing outstanding work in the world were hopeful once again. All the while, the big points were being misunderstood.

Mayer has been criticized for her decision as a woman and a mother, but I have yet to see much written about her leadership. Speculators consider that this move was meant to keep investors feeling confident. However, I’d like to put this out there: If a CEO hasn’t developed her team enough that she can take a decent maternity leave, investors have more to fear than they realize.

Rejection letters are a part of the grant writing process, and it’s natural to be disappointed when you receive one. Very often, though, developing a relationship with a funder may take a few rounds of rejection - and the key to success might be in their rejection letters.

Now that we know our leading strengths, we're working to ensure that each of us does what we do best every day and leverages our biggest strengths for the firm and our clients. We also have a good handle on the strengths we'll want to consider as we bring on new team members.

Social media can be a great tool for establishing your brand and getting your name out there. User-friendly formats and high engagement rates make this medium a great tool for reaching broad audiences with relative ease. However, it's wise to consider your branding, as well as your audience and organizational values, when deciding which social media platform best suits you. Missteps in social media management can leave your audience shaking their heads - like organizational parsley-teeth.

Suppose communication is short or confusing within your organization. That might indicate that you're twisted into a challenging position, and something needs to change. Without effective communication, projects will suffer, and you risk hurting your organization. Here are a few ways we can work to improve communication, even when times are tough:

You know how every home has a junk drawer, an unkempt closet, and a funky corner of an attic or basement? You know how you're always promising that you'll do a better job keeping your funky corner organized? Well, working with small- and medium-sized nonprofits, we've found some things to be similarly universal - and forgotten web clutter is among them. Here are some good indicators that your web presence needs attention.

Good design and strong branding are paramount to succeeding in any field. Particularly in the digital age, these elements represent the “face” of your organization and imply your values and mission—whether you plan on it or not. And just as you may shave your winter beard or rethink a hairstyle, it may be time to take a second look at your organization’s design and branding.

Main Street Community Services had identified its core values through strategic planning and had committed to communicating this core feature of their identity in every interaction. They discussed these values frequently and at every level of the organization, from their staff to their board to their volunteers, and used them to make decisions and stay focused on their mission. Broadway Community Services may have identified very similar values if they had completed a strategic planning process—but because they didn’t, they couldn’t communicate them clearly to someone who wanted to support them.

Spring can be a great time to regroup and recommit for organizations, as well. While the New Year’s resolutions and goals may have been lost in the tizzy of post-holiday madness, this can be the perfect moment to resurrect them and do some organizational soul-searching. What inspires our organization? Are we honoring our original mission? What new programs could we launch this year? How did we accrue so many unread e-mails?

Let’s be honest: Millenials in the work place have taken a beating. They are entering a work place designed by a generation with completely different culture and values. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have value. As a matter of fact, CLC has witnessed some workplace offenses that we think correlate to a deficiency of Millenials.

I have a confession to make. Once upon a time, I used to look forward to ropes courses. I’m not sure if this is unusual, but for some reason, my education and early career involved lots and lots of ropes courses … The objective is to learn about yourself and your team by overcoming completely arbitrary challenges, mostly suspended on or by cables, wearing a helmet and in the woods. You usually start with simple exercises like trying to remember everyone’s middle name or what they’d bring to a picnic. But before too long you’re carrying your executive director piggyback style across a tightrope nine feet in the air.

As a grant writer, this shift was visible in one major way. Before crowdfunding began to make the news, people would suggest an idea or concept and joke, “Think I can get a grant for that?” Then, one day, after a few campaigns for albums and art projects and potato salads reached viral status, for better or worse, the joke became, “I think I’ll launch a Kickstarter.” And the years since have been interesting.

When I first began contracting as a grant writer, I had a client named Nick who was very concerned about his budget and his ability to fund my time. Sympathetic to the situation of new organizations, I explained to him that we could work together so that he could become accustomed to the process of preparing proposals, until his budget expanded. “No way!” he had exclaimed incredulously, “I don’t do my own taxes or perform my own dental work! Why would I think I could write my own grants!?”

Despite claims in the 2000’s that leisure time was on the rise, current research shows that the time we can switch into Off-Mode has decreased, especially for parents. And this is a critical problem. For one thing, those workers who check their work email in their off hours are more likely to report that the previous day was stressful. A lack of psychological detachment from the work environment and exhaustion are inextricably linked.