The North Branch Land Trust, a small northeast Pennsylvania, has the sort of problem many charities might like to wrestle with. The Trust owns a wildlife sanctuary that sits on a natural gas deposit, a deposit that could be quite valuable. What to do? Allow access to the land for drilling and make money to expand? Do they stick strictly to their environmental stewardship mission in every way and hope things work out in the end? Is there another option? I don’t know what North Branch Land Trust needs to do in this case. I DO know about some tools that could lead to a better decision. There are huge stakes in a decision like this one. An intuitive approach to making the right choice might not give the best results. There are techniques for evaluating decisions. I’d like to mention three of those methods and show how they can apply to decisions like the one North Branch Land Trust faces. First, consider all of the factors involved in a decision to allow natural gas drilling. There are po...
This a blog about lateral thinking, SWOT analysis, problem solving, and brainstorming for advocacy, nonprofit strategy, fundraising, and program design.