A series of observations from inside nonprofit work.
What Becky Kern keeps hearing in conversations with the people who run small to medium-sized nonprofits, and what it turned out to mean. New essays most Mondays.
By Becky Kern, co-founder of BeMo. Also available as an RSS feed.
6 min readI Can Keep Doing This, but I Can't Keep Doing This
The tools got easier to try this year. Holding everything did not.
6 min readBig Tech Calls It Context. Nonprofits Call It Holding.
The biggest software companies are building around context. Nonprofit leaders have been describing the same problem for years. They just used different words.
5 min readUntil the Popcorn Stops Popping
Lee said the beta runs until the popcorn stops popping. Four months in, here is what the popping taught us about trust.
6 min readA Dozen Steps to a Yes
One document, from me to my co-founder and back. A dozen steps, five places, and only two of them the work.
6 min readNothing Is Missing. But What Is Still True?
What we learned when BeMo could remember an organization's record but could not tell what was still true.
7 min readHow Many Apps Did You Open Today to Answer One Question About Your Organization?
Every app she opens, she explains her organization to it again. What that costs, who ends up paying it, and what BeMo is building so a person does not have to be the thing in the middle.
- Guest contributor
7 min readWhat it means to actually have a partner
Meg Poe runs the Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance as its only staff member. Her account of what it costs to be the only person who knows how an organization works, and what changed when the thinking had somewhere to go.
7 min readThe Day I Installed My Third Monitor
I thought I needed more room to work. What I actually needed was somewhere to think out loud.
10 min readSeems Like AI Slop
LinkedIn added a button for it. The button can't answer the question that actually matters.
6 min readIt Told Her When It Was Guessing
How software earns trust, from the tester who didn't go easy on us.
8 min readThe Grant You Missed Was Already on Your List
Finding funders was never the hard part.
7 min readNo Lost Work, No Starting Over
Jen Allen walked away from an unfinished annual report for two weeks. Coming back cost her nothing.
6 min readNo One Ever Asked You to Think That Big
The leaders of small to medium-sized nonprofits aren't short on strategic thinking. They're short on anyone asking for it, and anything built to hold it.
3 min readKnowing What to Do Was Never the Problem
Nonprofit leaders know what to do. The question is whether the work has somewhere to go after it begins.
5 min readThe Knowledge That Walks Out the Door
Organizations don't lose knowledge because people leave. They lose it because there was never a place for it to live before they did.
4 min readYour Organization Can't Grow Past You
Succession planning is the polite name for it. The real problem is growth: every new person has to go through you first.
3 min readNothing Is Broken. But Everything Depends on Someone.
The system works because one person keeps it from breaking. That is not a role. It is infrastructure that lives in a person.
4 min readWhere Coordination Collapse Shows Up Every Day
Grant reporting, board prep, staff transitions: the everyday moments where a nonprofit rebuilds what it already knew.
6 min readCoordination Collapse: A Pattern I Can No Longer Ignore
What actually happens when the one person holding a nonprofit together steps away, and why the pattern deserves a name.
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In 2025 Lee Grainger published a record of what BeMo would be. Each edition takes one of those claims, checks it against what building BeMo and running the beta actually taught, and says plainly what changed. Full technical depth, most Wednesdays.