Archive for the ‘Little ideas’ Category
Posted by Gayle Gifford on October 9, 2008 in Little ideas, Tidbits
Have I mentioned Tiny URL.com?
I just had to send a colleague of mine a link and the web address (aka URL) was incredibly long … the type of URL that breaks apart in email and it takes a bit of maneuvering to get it back into one piece.
Well, a few years ago, colleagues on another listserv turned me on to TinyURl.com — a handy tool for making long URLs into short ones. (Not quite the same as turning straw into gold, but anything that makes something very long shorter is a good deal in my book).
Did I mention that it’s free?
Not only does this little url shrinker shrink urls, but it also stabilizes the location of that link so it never expires.
Simple. Elegant. Ahh…
Now if everything on the web could be that easy.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on September 8, 2008 in Little ideas
It’s not often that I participate in a board/staff retreat where part of the orientation is “before hiking, pick up bear spray and travel in groups of 4 or more to keep the grizzly bears at a distance.”
Just got back from a retreat with Women’s Voices for the Earth. So for this Monday, a quote about Montana was a have to…
“Before Alaska came along and ruined everything, one of every twenty-five square miles in America was Montanan. This much space has nurtured a healthy Cult of Place in which people find perfection, even divinity in the landscape.”
– from Cecil Migrates by Ellen Meloy
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on September 3, 2008 in Little ideas, Strategic Thinking
One of the first things that I get my strategic planning clients doing is having conversations with different members of their communities. I’m reminded of lessons learned from a simulation on school reform that I participated in as a facilitator with the Best Schools project in New Hampshire. The simulation was called “Change is the Name of the Game.”
Each team was given a small amount of information at the beginning of the game and then made decided what steps to take next. The teams that chose to “talk to…. ” various stakeholders for their first few moves ended up with essential information that the teams that didn’t take the time to talk lacked. In the long run, the teams that chose to seek advice first moved much farther ahead with their (albeit simulated) school reform efforts.
There is no substitute for a substantive conversation with people who have a stake in your organization or the issues that you represent. When I come upon an organization that seems to be rapidly shriveling, one of the first things that I notice is that that nonprofit stopped having conversations with the outside world quite a while ago.
You can also contract with a consultant like me to conduct those interviews for you — it will speed up the process and perhaps elicit some information that less experienced interviewers might not surface. Unfortunately, as your consultant, I can’t act on the conversations that I have, I can only pass that information back to you. And it’s too easy, when you’ve got other things on your mind and you personally haven’t been eyeball to eyeball with someone, to delay acting on their request or offer.
But when you sit down face-to-face, you have the ability to negotiate new partnerships or improve strained relationships. You’ll be more likely to remember the details of the conversation than you will reading the report that I provide. You’ll also find, even though you don’t expect it, that you’ll get some very honest feedback about how you go about doing the work that you do.
As your consultant, my services are better used to help you think about who to approach and what questions to as. I can train you in interviewing techniques and debrief the conversations that you have and advise you on next steps.
Here’s another example of how these conversations really matter. When I was Director of Development & Marketing/Deputy Director at Save The Bay, I championed meeting with business donors who were contributing smaller gifts, say $100 to $500. My executive director and I walked many a manufacturing shop floor with a proud business owner. We listened to their concerns and needs. These conversations not only eventually led to some very large gifts, they also helped our program staff understand better how environmental laws needed worked on the ground and where they needed reforming — because sometimes the current regulations prevented responsible business people from moving faster ahead in their pollution prevention efforts.That type of knowledge was so valuable that it landed my Executive Director on an important industry subcommittee for EPA that was reviewing regulations for the metal finishing industry. Not bad for a small nonprofit from little RI.
People love being asked for advice. Its worth getting into the habit of listening.
Gayle
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on August 16, 2008 in Better Boards, Communicating, Little ideas
The blog has been quiet for the last few days because Jon and I decided to stick a short vacation between work and picking up one of our sons from camp where he’s been a counselor this summer. (Short vacation hops to Cape Cod and Portland, Maine – lovely)
The camp, Friends Camp, is run by New England Yearly Meeting of Friends ? and seeks to embody the Quaker values of community, equality, integrity, peace, & simplicity.
On the way to Friends Camp this year, I had the chance to think about the consensus decision-making process that is used by the Society of Friends and how foreign it feels from Robert?s Rules of Order that so many nonprofit boards try to use.
I was fortunate that I began my nonprofit board service on a board that used Quaker Consensus Process — the area committee of the Rhode Island office of the American Friends Service Committee. Though I?m not a Quaker, I soon camp to value a meeting process that sought building unity as a goal of its decision-making. I’ve always felt that it was a great starting place for my work as a facilitator. Read More >>
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on August 7, 2008 in Little ideas, Research
Sitting in the file cabinets of most foundations are hundreds of thousands of final reports from grantees on projects funded by those foundations.
For some time I’ve been thinking that it is a shame that all that great learning is locked away, inaccessible from others who might put those lessons to good use.
Call it Open Source grant reporting.
My dream is to see all those reports made available on the web. Imagine that you’re sitting in Iowa and thinking about launching an arts mentoring program for high school students. Wouldn’t it be great if your initial googling would not only surface the names of other nonprofits that run arts mentoring programs for you to call, but also produced links to the dozens of reports reflecting on arts mentoring programming from start up to roll out?
I can picture researchers mining these reports and preparing national “lessons learned” papers that can be shared across the industry. Or program officers skipping right away to implement “what worked” rather than rehashing the same missteps and dead ends.
Kudos to those foundations and others who make their final reports available to their colleagues throughout the US. But why wait for the foundations. What if nonprofits posted their own grant project reports on the web to share with their colleagues?
Insanity you say? Who would want to expose themselves in this way?
Even just having short summaries on the web to tempt us would be a great start. Then we could “call for a copy of the full report.”
What do you think? Doable?
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on July 21, 2008 in Great quotes, Little ideas, Tidbits
We took a few days off to visit friends in Vermont last Friday and then to our niece Amanda Patterson’s wedding to Ben Kendall at the Common Ground Center in Starksboro, VT. Congratulations Amanda and Ben. Many happy years ahead.
During the ceremony, we had the opportunity for silent reflection. It occurred to me then that, in a strange way, marriage is this incredibly defiant act. Defiant? you ask? Why that word.
Without much effort, we can see only problems and turmoil in the future. Global climate change. Ongoing genocide. Torture condoned in our own country. State budgets in crisis, with dramatic budget cuts on the most vulnerable of our citizens. What is an ordinary person to do?
Amanda and Ben, both school teachers, have decided not to give in to hopelessness. Their marriage was a celebration of life, of possibility, of belief in a future, grounded in love, life, and hope.
So our quote today is from Pearl S. Buck:
To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.
Manga! With hope
Gayle
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on June 11, 2008 in Fundraising, Good reads, Little ideas
We’ve posted a new article “Discovering great ideas in new places” in our Tools for Change. In the article, I share ideas for fundraising that I picked up by reading magazines like Wired.
A version of the article first appeared in the November 2007 edition of Contributions Magazine. I hope you like it.
glg
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on June 1, 2008 in Helpful sites, Little ideas
A website that I find myself going back to frequently is the Table Wizard at the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Wondering how many nonprofits are in your state? The Table Wizard can tell you. Curious about how nonprofits like yours in your state rank by size or income? The Table Wizard has the answers.
It’s not hard to use once you get the hang of it. You’ll amaze your boss or colleagues with your extraordinary knowledge of the nonprofit community.
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