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In This Edition:
News Update:
Tips of the
Week:
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Expanding Non-Governmental
Organization Impacts
An online program offered by
Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education designed to give NGO
leaders the opportunity to sharpen their visions and think
strategically about how to build capacity in a sustainable
manner. www.hks.harvard.edu/ee/impacts1 or call 617-496-0484 for more
information.
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Pro Bono Work Pegged At
$120/hour
A new study estimates that the
standard pro bono services provided by corporations to
nonprofits is valued at an average of $120 per hour.
Taproot Foundation’s Pro
Bono Action Tank (PBAT) and the Committee Encouraging Corporate
Philanthropy (CECP) released the standard.
To read
the complete article click here... |
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Management ...
10
pieces of good news
Ready for some good news? According to the January,
2009 issue of CFO magazine, there really is good news, although
it took some work and optimism to unearth it. These are the
positive developments.
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The savings rate should increase. Household savings
have suffered during a two-decade shopping spree. The pullback
in consumer spending will help the
economy.
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Cheap is cool.
Bargain-priced consumer staples are back in vogue. Now
discounters are getting their
turn.
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Finance talent just got
easier to find. Finance executives, who have struggled to
attract and retain qualified workers ever since Sarbanes-Oxley
ramped up demand, anticipate easier
recruiting.
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Go east, young man.
That’s as in the Middle East and India. The downturns in
the United States and Europe have triggered a steady current of
new MBA resumes flowing
eastward.
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Deals can still get done.
It's not as easy as it used to be, but things can
happen.
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CFOs have never been more
important. Chief executives turned to their finance departments
during the early days of the crisis. They still do, to learn
what to do next.
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A buy rating on buying.
It's a great time to buy almost
anything.
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Green piece. Clean energy
could provide a way out of the
mess.
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A chance to simplify and
prepare. Nearly 60 percent of CFOs expect the recovery to begin
in the fourth quarter of 2009 or
later.
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Less pain at the pump. At
one point, gas was down from more than twice the level of this
past summer.
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Human Resources ...
5 benefits to acting as
a group
Whoever said, “an
elephant is a mouse designed by a committee,” definitely
did not think much of large groups for
decision-making.
In his book “Recharge
Your Team” however, Jay W. Vogt outlined the benefits of
group action, including a chance to get early widespread support
of any venture.
Vogt quotes an article from
the “Journal of Applied Behavioral Science” to
catalog the benefits of group intervention.
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The greater speed of change
that comes from involving everyone at once allows a more rapid
response to global competition than the more traditional
top-down, trickle-down form of change.
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The greater impact on people
and culture in the organization that comes from being in the
same room, hearing the same information, sharing the same
experience and arriving at the same conclusions about the future
allows a more effective response to changing
conditions.
-
The greater opportunity for
emerging leadership to surface, engage and step forward that
comes from authentic, widespread participation allows a wider
sense of ownership and accountability for implementing the
vision.
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The greater exchange of
ideas between levels and functions within an organization and
stakeholders in and out of the organization that comes from
engaging maximum diversity leads to a greater empathy and better
solutions.
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The greater perspective that
individuals gain about the organization that comes from
experiencing “the whole,” perhaps for the first
time, allows for more globally informed action to happen at the
local level when taking next
steps. |
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Finance ...
4 ideas on
grant assistance
Granted, grants can be very helpful. But,
just how helpful are they really?
Rather than take grants for granted, The
Center for Effective Philanthropy sponsored a study of
grant-making to get a better grip on the concept. The
Center’s report, “More than Money: Making a
Difference with Assistance Beyond the Grant,” used its
research on how funders can strengthen nonprofits to come up
with four key findings.
Those four ideas are:
- Foundation staff believe that assistance
beyond the grant is important for creating impact and, in
particular, for grantees' achievement of their goals, but they
know little about the actual results of the assistance they
provide.
- The majority of grantees of a typical large
foundation receive no assistance beyond the grant, and the 44
percent that do receive assistance generally receive just two or
three types.
- Providing just two or three types of
assistance to grantees appears to be ineffective. Only in a
minority of cases when grantees receive either a comprehensive
set of assistance activities or a set of mainly field-focused
types of assistance do they have a substantially more positive
experience with their foundation funders than grantees receiving
no assistance.
- Providing assistance beyond the grant in
ways that make a meaningful difference to grantees calls for a
significant investment on the part of the foundation. Program
staff at foundations providing assistance in these ways to more
of their grantees, tend to manage fewer active grants and give
larger grants.
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