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Tom Klaus

Tom Klaus
Tom Klaus has been in nonprofit and social change work his entire career. He has worked with a variety of nonprofits as a consultant in both leadership and organizational development in order to strengthen them and improve sustainability.

Recent Posts

The (Mostly) Certitudes of Change

Posted by Tom Klaus on December 8, 2017

All things considered, I prefer sameness in my personal life. Okay, actually, I really like the comfort of my personal routine when I am at home.

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The Challenge of Competing Ideas

Posted by Tom Klaus on July 31, 2017

“Would you have sex with a person whom you knew for certain had AIDS and your only protection was a condom?” That was not a question I had expected, though I had responded to plenty of difficult questions in the preceding three hours of the meeting. For two years I had been piloting a sexuality education curriculum to prepare it for wider dissemination and replication in public schools.

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Knowing, Naming & Trusting

Posted by Tom Klaus on January 31, 2017
“Here’s my promise: I will know your first and last name by the end of the week.” This didn’t sound like much of a promise really; until you consider that it was a promise I made to more than 100 youth, most of whom I was meeting for the first time.

Early in my career I was put in charge of a four-week summer youth camping program. I was barely aged out of the “youth” category myself. (Looking back at that period, I ask, “What in the world were they thinking?!?!” yet, it was a position I held for 11 summers.) Each week we would receive a new batch of campers and each week I tried very hard to get to know each of them by name. Sometimes I was successful; other times I was not. Occasionally, I’d stand before the whole group at the orientation and make that promise. Always, though, even unannounced, I would do my best to learn and remember each camper’s name so I could greet them by it…at least once by the end of the week. Read More

The Refuge of Community

Posted by Tom Klaus on December 8, 2016

What is the meaning of community for us; each of us, as individual persons? This question has been nagging at me since September when I attended Tamarack’s Community Change Institute in Toronto. It has come into sharper focus for me in the wake of the results of the U.S. Presidential election.

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Listening for Crickets

Posted by Tom Klaus on September 8, 2016

Some people think of me as an expert in a few things, which is okay. It is not okay, however, that I have acted like an expert in most things...if not all things on occasion. 

This awareness is part of the understanding that comes with experience and maturity (which is a nice way of saying "age"). That it took me a while to arrive at this self-understanding is a bit embarrassing yet I'm glad I did. It has dramatically changed how I try to work with individuals and groups. Even more, I think it has changed my relationship with them for better.

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How's Your Collaborative Posture?

Posted by Tom Klaus on May 10, 2016

Recently the Collective Impact Forum featured a terrific piece by Sheri Brady and Jennifer Splansky Juster on the Collective Impact Principles of Practice. These eight principles to guide efforts to put Collective Impact into practice are long overdue.

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