Know Your Own Bone

Welcome to Know Your Own Bone!

My name is Colleen Dilenschneider and I write about changes taking place in museums and nonprofit organizations. There’s a lot going on out there; there’s a social media revolution changing the way we communicate and make connections, a growing national emphasis on social change, and a new generation of leaders stepping up to the plate. I provide thoughts on how cultural organizations can embrace these changes and remain connected to the communities they serve.

First time here and feeling a little lost? No worries. Take a look at the lists below to see the most popular posts in each category. If you want to read more, please select a topic that interests you by using the “What I Write About” feature in the right column. To see my most recent posts, click on the “Home” tab above.

On the Nonprofit Sector:

• The Nonprofit Manifesto For Generation Y Leaders
• Social Change is Sector Agnostic- And Gen Yers Know It
• Why It’s Smart to Listen to Your Gen Y Employees’ Overshare
• A Theory For Breaking Through Nonprofit Sector Constraints
• Perhaps We’ve Got it Backward: Businesses Are Turning to Nonprofit Practices
• 3 Smart Reasons Why Nonprofits Should Hire Candidates with Personal Brands
• Does Writing a Check to a Nonprofit Equal Social Change?
• How Social Media Transforms us From Managers into Leaders
• The Nonprofit Leadership Deficit Won’t Be as Bad as We Think
• Why Sector Blur is Bad for Those in Need
• The Contrasting Mindsets of Nonprofit and For-Profit Marketers
• When Hiring Nonprofit Executives, We Only Get it Right 50% of the Time
• Employee Drive and Monetary Rewards: Could Nonprofits Outperform For-Profits?
• Nonprofiteers: Personal Branding Will Make You Better at Your Job
• Nonprofit Management Ideology: Are You Liberal or Conservative?
• A Good Nonprofit Leader is Worth a Million Bucks
• Weighing Outputs: Measuring Social Impact in Museums and Nonprofits
• The Organization May Have Zilch, But You Won’t

On Museums:

• 41 Ways Museums are Merging Social and Tech to Engage Audiences
• Evolutionary Biology and Human Psychology: A Case for Museum Donor Walls
• Where Are Museum Studies Graduate Programs Going Wrong?
• Museums and Cultural Nonprofits: Social Media Does Not Belong to the Marketing Department
• Sizing up the Graduate Degrees of 17 Top Museum Directors
• Social Media in Museums: The Best Devote Their Websites to it
• 3 Ways Museums Have Paved The Way in Online Transparency
• How Museums Can Use Social Media to Engage Different Types of Learners
• Museums May Need a Social Media Mentality Makeover to Keep Up With For-Profits
• MSI’s Month at The Museum: Marketing vs. Mission
• Curating: Everyone’s Doing It
• Museum Accessibility: Are Museum Professionals Sending the Right Signals?
• Viva Le Vie… Cultural Nonprofit Employee?
• Encyclopedic Museums Must Focus on the Present
• Physical Interaction With Artwork in Museums: What is Appropriate and What Will get You Fired
• Let Museums Evolve: A Case Against Brookyln Museum’s Recent Bad Press
• When Art Museum Directors Talk Trash, Everybody Wins
• Jeffrey Deitch and the Management-Trained Museum Director
• 55 Low-Resource Ways for Museums to Connect with the Community
• Museums Are (Right) Now

Of the ‘X Reasons to Y‘ Variety:

• 10 Reasons to Visit a Museum
• 5 Reasons Why I Chose to Pursue an MPA Over an MBA
• 5 Reasons to Be Proud that You Majored in English
• 5 Reasons to Always Be Thinking Like a Grad Student
• 5 Ways That Social Media May Replace NYC as the Center for Creative Development
• 7 (Surprisingly Difficult) Things to Consider When Applying To Grad School
• Got a Minute? 3 Exercises to Make You a Better Leader
• 8 Movies with Great Museum Scenes
• 5 Unexpected Ways in Which Grad School Loans are Changing My Lifestyle
• 3 Important Lessons I Learned at my First Full-Time Nonprofit/Museum Job
• How to Lead With Empathy: Read Fiction (5 Reasons)
• Decline of the MBA, Increase in Social Good?

Disclaimer: The thoughts and ideas on this blog are my own, and do not in any way reflect the thoughts and opinions of my employers or other organizations with which I am affliliated.