9 Ways Board Members Can Raise Money Without Fundraising

From Social Velocity blog:

“ …the fact remains that a majority of people don’t like to (or simply won’t) ask for money.

The good news is that there are lots of other things board members can do to bring money in the door. And remember, if you are financing not fundraising your organization, your definition of “bringing money in the door” should be very broad.”

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Charity Law update – January 2012

From Carters, their January 2012 update includes a review of Chairty Law in 2011 as well as CRA news and learnings from various recent cases across Canada.

Please click here to access document – 23 pages in pdf

An Introvert’s Guide to Networking

From the Harvard Business Review:

“I learned the critical importance of networking, and discovered my natural aversion to it, early in my career. I was a new college graduate working in the strategic planning division of a $10 billion company, and our business unit had been invited to a retirement party for one of the top executives. The gentleman retiring was someone I’d looked up to during my brief tenure, and I wanted him to know he’d made an impact on me.  While I wanted to attend the party, as an introvert I usually avoided these types of events because they made me uncomfortable.

Introverts who avoid networking are making a critical career mistake. Being an adroit networker is non-negotiable — and not as hard as it might seem.”

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Non-profit sector keeps getting smacked harder

From the Montreal Gazette:

“To be an executive director of a nonprofit one has to be an iron horse with genius flexibility and creativity. It requires being a master of all skills, from strategic planning to budget controlling, fundraising, public relations and communications, policy making, grant writing, government relations, community relations, networking, change management, marketing developer and specialist in the domain of the services being offered.

It also means being prepared to perpetual staff and/or volunteer turnover, training, retraining and reshaping job descriptions so that individuals fit the skills required to execute the mandated services of the organization. 

The other challenging aspect of staffing is not having much candy to dangle. Perks, I mean! Directors have to contend with low hourly rates, short-term contracts, no pensions, few holidays, no health-care plans. Somehow the bar has to be raised in order to maintain staff for long duration. That means bigger budgets. By doing so, it can only facilitate stabilization of the agency. Keeping the good ones is something that must be a focus.”

Read more here.  

Video Inspiration: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

From Stanford Business:

“In this lecture, Joel Peterson, Lecturer in Business, GSB, imparts his wisdom on happiness, leadership and self-development. Building on Friedrich Buechner’s imperative to find “a person to be, someone to love, and work to do,” Peterson gives succinct but powerful advice on a range of topics that is breath-taking in breadth, and inspiring in depth. Speaking from personal experience, his advice ranges from writing your own mission statement, making personal sacrifices, developing the leadership attitude, building trust, to making sure “the beef is there.” The lecture includes colorful quotes from Twain, Goethe and Churchill, and a healthy, emboldening chunk of Peterson’s infectious optimism on life.”

Click here to view video on YouTube approx 1 hr

Today, impact investing goes mainstream in Canada

From MaRS:

“Mark January 24, 2012 in your calendar as the date when impact investing went mainstream in Canada.

Today RBC, the largest of Canada’s Big Five (banks), has joined the growing ranks of major global institutions like Deutsche Bank, and national leaders like Vancity and le Chantier de l’économie sociale in demonstrating real leadership in impact investing.

The bank has just announced a $20 million commitment in an impact investing strategy that will include the creation of a new $10 million RBC Impact Fund and the allocation of $10 million from RBC Foundation’s assets into socially responsible investment (SRI) funds. It is the first initiative of its kind announced by a major financial institution in Canada.”

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Free Nonprofit Webinars – February 2012

Here’s a sample from Wild Apricots’s list of free webinars for February.  Access full list here

 Fire Up Your Board for Fundraising: Turn Their Passion Into Action  Wednesday, 1 February 2012 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Eastern)

 Moving on Up in Your Nonprofit Career:  Tips Tactics and Advice for the Nonprofit Professional Wednesday, 8 February 2012 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Eastern)

 Do you crave more responsibility and learning opportunities at your job? Do you want to learn how to be an Executive Director, or Chief Development Officer? This CharityHowTo webinar, (led by Mazarine Treyz. Author, The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising) will use real stories from real people telling you how they moved up in their career. We’ll help you answer questions like: What can you do to take control of your career? What can you do to make yourself irresistible to employers?   

Playing by the Rules: Creating an Effective Volunteer Handbook Thursday, 9 February 2012 2:00 AM – 3:00 PM (Eastern)

 Investing in Infrastructure Friday, 17 February 2012 11:00 AM (Eastern)

 Do you get nervous when funders ask you about overhead costs? Not sure how to respond? Feel like people don’t understand the importance of investing in yourself first? Need tips on how to respond? Frustrated that you don’t have money to invest in fundraising? During this teleseminar (geared towards leaders of nonprofit organizations, especially Board Members, Executive Directors and senior leadership):

Writing for the Web: Today’s Best Practices Tuesday, 21 February, 2012 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Eastern)

Taking the Mystery Out of Metrics Wednesday, 29 February, 2012 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Eastern)

Measure, measure, measure. More and more, we hear about the importance of metrics. But what does that really mean? Join strategy consultants Sam Frank and Michele Levy in this Nonprofit Webinars session for a practical discussion about the metrics that really matter for nonprofit organizations. Takeaways include:

• A straightforward definition of metrics and why they matter
• A brief list of key metrics that you can track for your organization
• An understanding of how to provide context for those metrics (aka so what do these numbers actually mean?)
• Some tips for creating a more metrics-driven organization

Review full list of free webinars here

Video: Managing ‘B’ Players – the solid performers in your organization

From Harvard Business video:

“An interview with Tom DeLong, Professor, Harvard Business School. Executives can get more value from their workforce if they recognize and motivate their B players. These solid, steady performers form the bulk of a workforce–and bring crucial forms of value to companies.”

Click here to watch video – approx 10 mins

Learning to Learn – Empower yourself

From Study Guides and Strategies:

“Your path for most effective learning is through knowing

• yourself
• your capacity to learn
• the process you have successfully used in the past
• your interest in, and knowledge of, the subject you wish to learn

It may be easy for you to learn physics but difficult to learn tennis,  or vice versa. All learning, however, is a process which settles into certain steps.”

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A first step any leader can take to improve employee engagement

From Blanchard Leader Chat:

“The Gallup Organization estimates that 27% of workers worldwide are actively disengaged at work.  This is a state of mind where an employee is so discouraged at work that they essentially quit and stay—doing only what is marginally required of them to keep their job, but little more.  In some extreme cases it can be even worse with disengaged workers actively working against an organization’s goals and spreading their discontent to other workers.  In the U.S. alone, this level of disengagement is estimated to cost employers over $300 billion dollars a year in lost productivity.

While some of the factors that contribute to disengagement need to be addressed at an organizational level, there is one action that managers at all levels can take that will help the situation.  Talking about it.  Staying quiet on the subject and hoping that it gets better on its own never works out.  In fact, usually, things will get worse.

As the late great business author Peter Drucker pointed out, “Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”

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