New Online Course: When Changes Comes to Nonprofits (Ready or Not)

I have just added another online course to my Udemy offerings: When Change Comes to Nonprofits (Ready or Not!)

In this course I share several case studies from my experiences of managing through crises as an Interim Executive Director. In fact, an apt sub-title for the course might have been Confessions of a Serial Interim ED.

In the first few lessons, I give the details of a couple of successful mergers, and merger negotiations that were ended without an agreement. I also talk about organizations that seemed all but doomed, and how they rebuilt to be stronger than ever. And one organization that went into bankruptcy, and what factors led to that fateful decision. 

In the second half of the course, I share several of the tools I've used in these situations for program evaluation, organizational assessment, and partnership evaluation, for students to take back to their organizations to help them work through their situations.

I originally created this course earlier this year to deliver as a presentation at the annual meeting of the South Carolina Human Services Providers Association. I did that conference session in early March, and the response was very positive. I then knew that I'd need to adapt it to the online format and share with others.

If you're interested, please follow this link to learn more and register.

My other Udemy courses that are currently available are:

Basic Training for Your Nonprofit Board of Directors, and

Basic Grant Proposal Writing for Nonprofits.

Click on the course titles to learn more or register for classes.

New Online Course: Basic Training for Your Nonprofit Board of Directors

Today I'm very pleased to announce that my latest online course is now available on Udemy: Basic Training for Your Nonprofit Board of Directors.

Some of the things covered in the course are:

• Legal requirements for Nonprofit Boards in the U.S.
• Roles and responsibilities of Board Members
  
• Roles and responsibilities of Board Officers
• Tips for successful meetings, including Agendas and Minutes
  
• About Board Committees
• The Board's role in Fundraising
  
• Board recruitment, training, and evaluation

This course is for anybody who is on a Nonprofit Board, nonprofit staff who work closely with their Boards, or anybody who's simply interested in nonprofit leadership.

You can learn more about the course and register by clicking here.

Introducing Online Training in Grant Proposal Writing

From 2003-2018 I presented the class Basic Grant Proposal Writing Skills for Nonprofits at the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County about three times each year. During that same period, I also did custom versions of the class for several individual organizations and smaller coalitions of nonprofits.

All-in-all, well over 1,000 individual nonprofit professionals have gone through my grant proposal writing trainings, and have been very satisfied with the results.

Over the last month or so, I've updated the materials again. This time, with the goal of translating it into an online class. I'm quite pleased with the results, and am officially launching the class today.

I've divided the course into eight major presentations, plus three short lectures, in over three hours of video. All of the lessons have downloads, including the slides, worksheets, and other resources.

The major lessons are:

1. The Charitable Giving Landscape
2. Making Your Fundraising Case
3. Getting Ready for Grants
4. Starting Your Proposal
5. Goals and Outcomes
6. Methodology, Evaluation, and Sustainability
7. Budgets
8. Putting it All Together

Throughout the course I put an emphasis on the modes of communication, good storytelling, and what funders are looking for (including strong outcomes statements).

The cost of the course will be $64.99 (students at the Community Foundation typically paid $65/each for the same material), but, to get the course launched, I am offering it to my regular readers for only $9.99 through this link (limited time offer).

Please let me know your reaction to the course, and if you have any ideas for what online course you'd like me to develop next!

Three R's of Grant Writing

We had a great turnout at yesterday's Basic Grant Proposal Writing workshop at Community Foundation Santa Cruz County. The group asked a lot of great questions, and we covered a lot of material. Exhausting, but in a good way!

At the end of the day, Community Foundation Communications Officer, Luis Chabolla, asked me to stick around and make a quick video for the Foundation's YouTube channel. Luis asked me for three quick grant writing tips in under two minutes. Here's the result:


The Three R's of Grant Writing:

Research - Stop sending proposals scatter-shot to every foundation in the book. Target your proposals to those foundations who are interested in your work. No matter what work your organization does, there's a foundation that is interested in it.

Relate - Yes, you need good strong data to make a case, and to report on your outcomes, but don't forget the story. Putting a face on those numbers is what makes your proposal relatable and memorable and puts signatures on checks.

Revise - Edit for clarity and brevity. Proofread and then do it again.

Basic Grant Proposal Writing Workshops

For several years now I have been honored to teach nonprofit workshops through the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County. This year, I will be teaching three sessions of "Basic Grant Proposal Writing" on:

• Monday, January 28
• Thursday, May 16
• Wednesday, September 18

We pack a lot of information into these sessions, but they're always lots of fun, with about 12-15 people attending per session.

We start with a quick review of the charitable giving landscape, then move on to:

• Building your case for funding:
• Understanding your organization's assets
• Clarifying your Mission
• Knowing what story you're telling
• Writing a successful grant proposal:
• Types of proposals/submissions
• The standard components, section by section
• Focus on Outcomes!
• Putting the proposal together and submitting
• After the Proposal - Next Steps

The workshops are held at the Community Foundation's building on Soquel Drive in Aptos, right off Highway 1. If you're in the Monterey Bay area, or even Silicon Valley and want a day near the ocean, click on the dates above to register, or click here to see the full workshop schedule.

Social Media 101 for Nonprofit Consultants

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present an introductory workshop on social media to a few of my colleagues in the Fund Builders Alliance. We covered some of the basics of what social media is and is not, got into the how-tos and whys of facebook, twitter, linkedin, and blogging, and briefly went over the variety of other services available (pinterest, storify, g+, ...). It's always a great day when you can get together with a group of professionals that you respect and teach them something new. (And thank you to Karen and Leadership Monterey Peninsula for use of the conference room!)

Here's the thing though. Although I was pleased to present this workshop, and although I do offer social media planning and coaching services, I'm always hesitant to use the title "social media expert." As I told the group yesterday, "At the end of this session you will all be social media experts, for about three hours." Social media is such a constantly changing and evolving ecosystem that I believe it is a continual learning effort. Fortunately, I am fascinated by it and enjoy that effort. But I still realize that there is always more to learn.

I've been playing around with online communities in my personal life for nearly twenty years now. On a professional level, I got involved with nonprofit online discussions as a member of HandsNet around 1996. A few years later, I wound up working for HandsNet as the Director of Online Community Development. Since then I've continued to be an early adopter of many new platforms, including blogger, facebook, youtube, and twitter. But "expert"? ...

I hope to continue to learn and fascinated by social media, and I hope to continue to bring that experience and enthusiasm to my colleagues and clients in the nonprofit sector. But if you ever catch me using the title "Social Media Expert" please splash a cold glass of water in my face. Just try not to splash my iPhone, thank you.

Oh, and if you'd like a copy of my powerpoint slides from yesterday's presentation, just send me an email (contact info in the "about the consultant" section of this blog).

Nonprofits Talking Taxes

Earlier this month I attended a workshop at the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County called "Show Me the Money: Nonprofits Talking Taxes." The workshop was conducted by Kim Klein, a well-known, much respected, and quite beloved fundraising consultant and trainer.

But "talking taxes"? Kim Klein is the grassroots fundraising guru, not an economist or policy wonk. But, as she explained at the start of the workshop, over the past several years of the recession-that-will-not-end, with each round of budget cuts at all levels of government, more and more public institutions were turning to private foundations and individual donors to fill the gap.

Nonprofits that have always relied on those sources were suddenly in competition with schools and libraries. Not to mention those nonprofits who had been reliant on government funding suddenly got the message about diversifying their fund development plan and were also doing their first fundraising letters and grant proposals. Of course, the funds available did not grow. In fact, many foundations (and many individual donors) have less resources to meet these rising needs.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit sector as a whole has been remarkably silent in the public discussion of government budget cuts, tax cuts, and the unwillingness of many to talk about new revenue. Those behind Nonprofits Talking Taxes believed that it's high time for the sector to get involved in this debate as if our organization's lives depended on it, because that's not far from the truth.

This is not simply a fight for those nonprofits who receive government funding; this is about all of us who care about what direction our society and our communities are heading. As has been said by many, a government budget is not simply a financial document, it is a direct reflection of a community's values. So what does the California State budget say about our values, that it sacrifices the jobs of teachers rather than inconvenience corporations?

The workshop was not all gloom and doom. Quite the opposite. Through humor and group participation, we learned more about the state budget, taxes, why all nonprofit professionals should care about it, and left feeling optimistic; that we can have some control and say over the future direction of our state.

For an example of how humor is used to talk about the topic, click here to take the "Nonprofit Tax Quiz" that Kim created (on Blue Avocado).

These workshops are free, and are available to any nonprofit group in California. For those elsewhere, I'm sure they'd be happy to provide some guidance to creating a Nonprofits Talking Taxes curriculum for your state.

Learn more at the Nonprofits Talking Taxes website.

Upcoming Workshops

For those who've written to ask, I've got a couple of public workshops coming up soon. Both will be held at the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, 2425 Porter Street, Suite 16, Soquel, CA.

Grant Proposal Writing 101 - Wednesday, July 29, 2009, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. - This is an introductory workshop for those new to proposal writing, and unsure of what elements to include or what foundations are looking for.

Fundraising Planning in the New Economic Environment - Thursday, September 24, 2009, 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - To survive the current crisis will require a plan. This short workshop provides a few tools for you to use in getting your plan started.

Please see the Community Foundation's website (www.cfscc.org) for more information, fees, and online registration.

Nonprofit Professionals - Amateur Managers?

Jonathan Peizer, of JP's Philanthropy Blog, had a great post yesterday called Being Smart and Being a Good Manager is Not the Same, and I've got to agree with him. JP says, in part:

Not that they are exclusive mind you. However, in my travels I have found many smart/intellectual/degreed people who assume that because they hold the title of manager and they are smart, they are de facto good managers. This is ironic because if you asked these same people if they were expert in an academic field that was not their own, they would defer to others who were.

Think about this in relation to how nonprofit managers come up through the ranks. People who are highly trained and qualified at helping people with their individual problems, or delivering a particular service, are put into situations where they are supervising other professionals and creating budgets, all without any prior preparation. If you ask them, they'll say they are social services experts or program experts, and that is their qualification to manage the agency, but they will never say, "I'm an HR expert and I just love spreadsheets."

After reading JP's posting yesterday, I began thinking about my own preparation for my career in nonprofit management, and now consulting.

Certainly my undergraduate degree in Politics gave me absolutely no background in supervising the work of others or running a program, let alone an entire organization. I learned critical thinking skills, I learned written communications skills, and I learned quite a bit about how to avoid some of the mistakes of the Cold War, should I ever happen to be transported back in time into Truman or Eisenhower's cabinets at certain moments in history. But I didn't learn about management.

My graduate program (Master of Public Policy and Administration, MPPA) provided a bit of management theory (Frederick Taylor and Max Weber) and organizational behavior, but the main focus of the program was on policy analysis and econometrics.

One management course I remember best from that time was one I took through the MBA program on employment law, where one of our texts was The Short Works of Herman Melville. We had a great time discussing the legal ramifications of the management decisions in "Billy Budd, Sailor" and "Bartleby the Scrivener", but I'm not sure that that's ever helped me in supervising a social worker who was dealing with her own family problems on the job.

Some of my best, and most relevant, management training came from professional development workshops at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. I first sat in on these workshops as a staff person (I was the Director of their Silicon Valley office for several years) and eventually wound up teaching a couple of them. I continue to do occasional Supervisory Skills workshops for my clients as an independent consultant.

When I find myself wrestling with a management question, it is these workshop materials that I find myself looking back to for reference, not "Billy Budd" or "Bartleby." (Don't get me wrong; I love these stories, just not as management reference works).

(I should also mention that I had great mentoring at both CompassPoint, and at HandsNet before that, and it is that experience which most prepared me for my current role).

Which brings me back to my point and a question. How is your organization preparing your next generation of managers and leaders? Are you investing in their professional development? Are you making sure that they get the skills they need beyond program implementation, whether through workshops or mentoring?

How about yourself? Are you prepared?

New Nonprofit Resource Site

Here's a new web site from a colleague of mine, Nancy Neal of Augment Direct (augmentdirect.com). There are, of course, sections about her consulting and coaching services, but also check out the free resources.

Nancy has a monthly e-newsletter, Building Relationships, a long (and growing) list of links, and an excellent download (pdf), Principled Fundraising 101. The download is the first course in what she promises will be the "College of Fundraising Knowledge."

I've known Nancy for several years, going back to my time as Silicon Valley Director for CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and Nancy was one of our workshop presenters. I still see her often at AFP and other nonprofit / fundraising / consulting events.

Speaking of CompassPoint workshops... I have one coming up in 10 days: Introduction to Fund Development Planning. This is a half-day course that will be taught at the Peninsula Community Foundation in San Mateo. (Click for registration details). If you can't make it to San Mateo, consider my book on the same topic.

I am also working on a new workshop on Effective Board Committees. This will be a panel discussion and will probably be held in November at CompassPoint's new Milpitas facility. (Look for the registration link here when details are confirmed).

Tags: nonprofit, resources, fundraising, workshops, consulting

Workshop: Introduction to Fundraising Planning

On August 31 I will be teaching a workshop on Introduction to Fundraising Planning at the Peninsula Community Foundation in San Mateo, CA. The PCF workshops are organized in partnership with CompassPoint Nonprofit Services.

The three-hour workshop (9:30 AM - 12:30 PM) will cover material from my book on Fund Development Planning. I've taught it for CompassPoint/PCF several times before, and it's always a great, motivating, event. The class is designed for those who are new to nonprofits or to a fundraising position.

I will lead participants through exercises on:

• The importance of a diversified funding base
• The players in the fund development process
• How to conduct a nonprofit assets inventory
• How to develop your mission & case statements,
• How to identify new funding opportunities
• How to set realistic goals, and
• How to prepare your development plan & calendar

By the end of the class, participants will be prepared to limit their "crisis" fundraising, motivate their board to participate in the process, and make the best use of their team's time.

If you'd like to join us, you can register online through the CompassPoint web site. The fee is only $55.

Tags: nonprofit, fundraising, fund development, workshop