For more and more investors and would-be funders, nonprofits need to have more than a worthy cause and a compelling mission: They need a plan. Specifically, they’re now being asked to showcase the same mindset that’s required of for-profit organizations, meaning that spreadsheets, metrics and core competencies can matter just as much as pulling the heartstrings.   

California has reached a deal to raise its statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour. This would certainly be a breathtakingly broad political experiment. The question is whether it will turn into a breathtaking disaster.

Ann Thompson, a regional sales executive for Bank of America, knows that the surest route into the hearts and minds of millennials is through their hands — not hand-holding, but talking to them through technology. “They want to be self-served and want things convenient,” Thompson says. “So, we have to reach them through that thing they hold in their hands, a smartphone.”

Thanks to a growing pool of financial apps, we can now review our budgets, tweak our investments and work toward retirement — all while waiting in line for a coffee.

Millennials are the cusp of their prime spending years. But will they spend those dollars on home ownership? 

At first everything’s great. You talk all the time, set life goals together, exchange notes. One day you notice the conversations have gotten shorter, the notes less frequent. Calls go unanswered. Maybe you two aren’t such a great fit after all. The problem is, this person manages your life savings. 

We sat down recently with Erica Taylor, Golden 1 Vice President of Communications & Community Relations and last year’s Young Professional of the Year, to talk about the credit union’s efforts to attract and retain younger employees and customers.

Today’s jobs report confirms much of what we already know: Workers are finding employment at a steady but unspectacular rate, private-sector job creation is good but not great, hours worked are ever so slowly ticking up and wage increases are pretty much nonexistent.

It’s a funny thing, to hear the word “employed” in tandem with comic books, says Eben Burgoon, creator of the local comic B-Squad. He and Sean Sutter, lead artist on the project, explain that many artists and writers — even at the highest levels of comic book creation — often have to work for free or in trade. And as Burgoon points out, free beer and exposure don’t pay the rent.

Call it the tale of two turfs. In summer 2014, 27-year-old Benjamin Triffo wanted to do something about his dry, unattractive yard. He owns a four-bedroom, four-bath duplex in Elk Grove that he’d bought in 2011, and his sprinkler lines were broken. But with the state passing rules last July that would allow fines for overwatering, Triffo quickly figured out that replacing his system and re-sodding would be like attaching a drain line to his checkbook.