Archive for the ‘Educational’ Category

How to Manage an Effective Nonprofit Organization: From Writing and Managing Grants to Fundraising, Board Development, and Strategic Planning by Michael A. Sand

Agency professionals at every level will find themselves referring to
How to Manage an Effective Nonprofit Organization anytime they have a
problem and need helpful, practical and to-the-point advice from an
acknowledged leader in the field. Each of the nine chapters includes
numerous practical recommendations: * Board members will learn how to
run effective meetings and get and keep the best people on their team.
* Busy staff members will learn how to maximize opportunities to obtain
grant funds while minimizing the time spent. * Grant writers will learn
how to prepare better proposals and how to manage the funds once they
get them. * Agencies will learn how to establish an outstanding
volunteer program and how to form community coalitions that work. * And
everyone will learn effective strategies to help improve supervisory,
personnel, and general management skills.

Nonprofit Management: Principles and Practice by Michael J. Worth

The first comprehensive textbook written for the Nonprofit Management
course, covers such topics as the scope and structure of the nonprofit
sector, leadership of nonprofits, managing the nonprofit organization,
fundraising, nonprofit enterprise, financial management, collaborations
and mergers, nonprofit lobbying and advocacy, and international trends.
Written specifically for students, this text integrates research,
theory, and the practitioner literature and includes more than is found
in the more prescriptive, practitioner-oriented alternatives. Providing
an overview suitable for students enrolled in their first course in the
field, the book also includes cases and discussions of advanced issues
for those with experience.

Every business needs a plan; therefore, you are encouraged
to create a business plan. Then you need a way to ensure that that plan is
implemented, this is where strategic planning comes into play. Strategic
planning, in simplest terms, is the process of taking your business plan and
making it into action items. Identifying what you’ll spend time accomplishing
in order to meet your business plan objectives.

You need a few tools as you start to create your strategic
plan, they are:

·        
Personnel roster – know who is on your team and
what their skillsets include. You’ll create jobs for personnel, and need to
know what job is best suited for that individual.

·        
Calendars – make measurable milestones. At the
end of this process there should be a timeline with clear milestones as ways
for you to measure the success of the process.

·        
Time – allow yourself, and your staff, time to
develop this plan. Many organizations make an event out of strategic planning
by having an office retreat, or conference, and spend at least 8 full hours
working on it.

·        
Creativity hat – this is an opportunity to think
outside the box. If you’ve had an idea that you’ve wanted to try, now is the
time to share and brainstorm more innovative ways to reach your target market.

·        
Open mind – this goes hand in hand with being
creative. All ideas should be considered as this fosters sharing.

·        
Physical tools – there are some actual tools you
should have around the room during a retreat, such as: paper, pens, poster
pages, markers, tape, and the mission statement should be posted everywhere.

·      
Your mission statement is a key element to
accomplishing anything for your organization. Every staff person should clearly
know the mission statement. It should be reiterated in every activity. So, have
it posted clearly.

While it isn’t mentioned as an essential component, it
should be, there should be a facilitator present. The facilitator should be a
non-staff person as they will be the most objective. Their job will be to keep
the conversation moving forward. They are not there to control the
conversation, but to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to join in and
share. It should be a safe place for people.

Strategic planning can happen whenever you deem it
necessary. If you take time to do this before you start looking at next year’s
budget, then you can perhaps add new ideas into your funding process. This will
give your strategic planning more of a business development approach, and your
creativity and new business strategies will really come into play. Now, if you
decide to do your strategic planning at the beginning of a new fiscal year, you
may not have the opportunity to manipulate the budget; therefore, you’ll have
to make sure your new business development stays within your allotted budget for
each department. As you can see there is no right or wrong time to do strategic
planning, and no one will say you can only do it once a year. However, as I’ve
already mentioned, it is imperative that you 
keep in mind that strategic planning is directly tied into your budget.

Here’s
a resource that I found that may be helpful as you are walking through this
process. If you need a referral for a facilitator, please contact me as I
know several.

Here' s a great tip from my friend Sonja Chevere.

Please put down the phone and step away from your computer! It’s time for a five minute stretch.

If you’re like me and sit at your computer all day, then you have to
give yourself time to stretch. Over the years, I’ve developed tightness
in my neck and shoulders along with a huge knot in my back. Not pretty!
To alleviate the tension, I practice desk yoga as shown in this short
video. Check out the office setting- gotta love it!

I used to take my calendar and fill it with a “to do” every hour. I would have
a list a mile long of things I wanted to complete by the end of the day.
However, I would find myself throughout that day just shuffling things around. I
was completely overwhelmed by the list, and therefore, it stifled my ability to
move forward.

Like all good learners, I sought a solution to my
problem. I took a time management class, attended a managing multiple projects
seminar, and I’ve purchased many books on the topics. I learned two invaluable
lessons from my research: 1) I must put myself on a “to do” list diet, and 2) my
time management system will be ever evolving.

What is a “to do” list diet, you ask. I used to be the
type that would put ever “to do” on the list for Monday, and then move the
undone things to Tuesday. Then repeat throughout the week until the Monday “to
dos” were finally done. It would be aggravating and frustrating to see the list
growing, and feeling like I had nothing checked off. So, in essence I was
creating a lose/lose scenario for myself: too much to do and not enough week to
get it all done.

As a result of the classes I took, I immediately recognized
that I was adding too many “to dos” to my daily list. I was encouraged to only
add one or two a day. I thought, “I’ll never get through my list with only one
or two things on it.” Then I tried it. I was astonished to discover that by
limiting the number of things I was requiring myself to complete in a day I was
actually able to complete more tasks on my list, and with no pressure. This is
my “to do” list diet: one to two tasks to complete a day.

Now, why does the system evolve? It has been my
experience, after trying many systems, that a combination of things actually
works best for me. So, today I use a Planner Pad, my Palm®Treo smartphone, and
my Outlook calendar to track tasks, and keep myself generally organized. My
friend, Toni Jo Artz, gave me her extra Planner Pad this year. I didn’t think I
would use it because I’ve evolved beyond paper. (Hahaha! The jokes on me!) It
has been the best system I’ve ever used. I’ve color coded my clients, and list
out their “to dos” in the Categories section of the pad. Then assign the tasks
a day under the Daily Things To-Do section. Finally, I set aside time within my
Appointments section to work on that client’s project. I transfer the
appointment information to my Outlook calendar, and then synchronize my Palm®Treo
with my Outlook. I am able to stay completely on track! It’s like my own checks
and balance system.

Reevaluate y our time management system? Consider what
you can do to be more efficient. Next time I share details about my tickler
file.

I lost my heart to Savannah! I can’t remember going anywhere and feeling more comfortable. I didn’t feel
like a stranger in Savannah, and yet it was my
very first time ever setting foot in Georgia. One
thing I learned about me, while I’m from the District of Columbia, I’m
definitely not a southern girl; I’m city through and through.

Savannah
is a quaint place full of ghosts.
Every house tells a tale of a haunting, or the prevention of such a thing.
There’s one house that is said to have been mailed ordered, and was assembled
with every single window installed upside down (see picture). This was done to ward off evil
spirits.

I took the trolley tour
around town several times, and spent hours hearing different renditions regarding
the same historical sites. Each trolley driver had their own unique way of
telling a story. The St. Patrick’s Day
was my favorite. One driver said, “The St. Patrick’s Day parade is the
second in the country to New York.
Everything in Savannah
turns green: the river, the water fountains, the beer, and the next day the faces
of the people turn green.”

The food in Savannah
was by far the best I ever had! I ate at the Olde Pink House,
Lady and Sons, and I
cooked my favorite meal at the 700 Kitchen Cooking School.
We made Low Country cuisine, and it was further proof that I’m not a southern girl. Every other dish started with
biscuits and grits both yuck in my personal opinion. Yet, when in the South one
must try it out. So, I ate enough (a very little) to at least be able to say
that I tried them. I know my former mean coach would’ve
been proud of me!

However, I do love fried green "tamadas"!

Every summer for a week, I take my mom and two youngest
nieces to the Wilderness Presidential Resort for a summer get-away. We stay in
a trailer, grocery shop every day, swim, eat out every night, and just have a
great time. It is fun, but not very relaxing as there is ALWAYS something to
do.

This year is the first one where I’ve been completely
disconnected from the internet. The Wilderness is isolated as cell reception
isn’t the best, and the only wifi is at the reservation lodge at the very
entrance of the park. There’s absolutely no opportunity for someone like me
with two busy little girls and one impatient mom to stop playing and check FB,
Twitter, and god forbid check email.

Also, this year we tried something new, we did activities
off property. The most memorable for my nieces may have been the lunch theatre
performance of The Little Mermaid. However, for me and my mom, it was the
Trolley Tour of downtown Fredericksburg, VA. My mom was completely fascinated
by the civil war history as told by our trolley tour guide. He showed us battle
scenes that have lived over the course of 140 some years. It was absolutely overwhelming
to hear stories about actual battles, and to walk through the battlefields
where men gave their lives in a war that nearly divided the country.

It gave me a new appreciation and deepened my fascination
with this horrific war fought, in part, to afford me the freedom I have today.
It amazed me to see a slave auction block still standing in the central part of town.
Would you allow your child to play on this?

So, while we are a united nation
there will always be signs of our divisions.