I just returned from Fargo, North Dakota, where we are launching a two-year large scale capacity building effort that aims to transform the state’s nonprofit sector.

We’ll be leading capacity building workshops, board development trainings, and board assessments – for cohorts of our proven Leadership Advanced executive development program, here to be called Leadership Advanced North Dakota (LAND). The program is sponsored by the Impact Foundation, with major funding from the Bush Foundation in Minneapolis.

This was my first trip to North Dakota – in February – and I found it a stunning, cold, beautiful place of wide open vistas, full of dedicated people who are willing to take big risks to get things done. North Dakota is a large land mass, but has only 600,000 people, and most of the state has fewer than 6 people per square mile.

The challenge of meeting the needs of an aging population in a rural context will be daunting, but with the partners we have, and the resources committed to the effort, we are excited about the possibilities for developing a new model for nonprofit capacity building. Stay tuned.

It is not too hard to believe that California’s budget deficit is the lion’s share of all the deficits in those states with current year deficits, is it? What is especially wild is that, unlike the feds, states are required to pass balanced budgets at the beginning of their year, yet no less than 43 states have gotten into trouble in the middle of the year. They projected tax revenues that, due to the recession, did not materialize, and of course they are experiencing increased costs for all sorts of safety net programs.

According to the California Journal, The National Conference of State Legislatures calculates that total state-by-state deficits for this current year are a staggering $47.4 billion. California’s share of these deficits: $40 Billion, or 84% of all state budget deficits in the country! 2010 budgets are not going to move toward the black either. The current cumulative state deficit guess is $84 billion. How much of that will be California’s?