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What's New?
This site is updated regularly. Check here
to see what's been added. The Picks of the Week is the only nonprofit capacity building resource
of its kind on the Web, offering recommendations in
the following categories: Cool Websites, Publications, Key Trends,
Useful Resources, and Tech Tips. Published weekly since 2004, the Picks
of the Week are updated each Monday. To check out the full archive, go
to: Picks Archives.
Check out the schedule for
Create the Future Webinars and "Tap the power of online
learning!"
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Picks of the Week: May 19 - 25, 2013
Website of the Week
Nonprofit Best
Practice Library
The best practice library consists of
exemplary projects completed by graduate students enrolled in the University
of San Diego’s Nonprofit Leadership and Management program for, and in
collaboration with, nonprofit organizations. The library expands each
semester as students create or revise essential policy, planning, research,
and fundraising documents that are critical to the successful operation of
nonprofit organizations and programs. A portion of the nearly 800 consulting
projects completed for nonprofits and foundations by students in the
Nonprofit Leadership and Management program is contained in the library. Go
to:
www.sandiego.edu/nponline
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Publication of the Week
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Balanced
Scorecard: Step-by-Step for Government and Nonprofit Agencies
by Paul Niven
From the publisher: This book provides an
easy-to-follow roadmap for successfully implementing the Balanced Scorecard
methodology in small- and medium-sized companies. Building on the success of
the first edition, the Second Edition includes new cases based on the
author's experience implementing the balanced scorecard at government and
nonprofit agencies. It is a must-read for any organization interested in
achieving breakthrough results.
Click to preview this book on Amazon.com
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Trend of the Week
Challenges Facing Nonprofit
Fundraising
The study UnderDeveloped: A National Study of
Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising reveals that many nonprofits are stuck
in a vicious cycle that threatens their ability to raise the resources they need
to succeed. A joint project of CompassPoint and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr.
Fund, the report found high levels of turnover and lengthy vacancies in
development director positions throughout the sector. More significantly, the
study reveals deeper issues that contribute to instability in the development
director role, including a lack of basic fundraising systems and inadequate
attention to fund development among key board and staff leaders. The report is
organized around three main challenges and concludes with a set of
recommendations to jumpstart a national conversation about how we can all help
nonprofits take their fund development to the next level. Key findings include:
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Revolving Door - Organizations are
struggling with high turnover and long vacancies in the development
director position. |
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Help Wanted - Organizations aren’t
finding enough qualified candidates for development director jobs.
Executives also report performance problems and a lack of basic
fundraising skills among key development staff. |
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It’s About More Than One Person - Beyond
creating a development director position and hiring someone who is
qualified for the job, organizations and their leaders need to build the
capacity, the systems, and the culture to support fundraising success.
The findings indicate that many nonprofits aren’t doing this. |
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Breaking The Cycle - UnderDeveloped
offers urgent calls to action for the nonprofit sector, citing key steps
that nonprofit executives, funders, and sector leaders should consider
as they set out to address the challenges detailed in the report. |
To download the full report, go to:
www.compasspoint.org
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Resource of the Week
Partnership Self-Assessment Tool 2.0
The Partnership Self-Assessment Tool gives a
partnership a way to assess how well its collaborative process is working and to
identify specific areas for its partners to focus on to make the process work
better. The Tool is provided by the Center for the Advancement of Collaborative
Strategies in Health at The New York Academy of Medicine with funding from the
W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The Tool was originally offered as a web-based
assessment. Recognizing the popularity of the Tool and its usefulness to
partnerships, the Center has now made the questionnaire and action-oriented
report available with instructions for using the Tool offline. You will find a
brief overview of the Tool, with a rundown of who should use it and why. For
partnerships interested in using the Tool, a coordinator guide has been
provided, along with instructions for using the tool offline (including how to
use the questionnaire as a pen and paper instrument and how to tabulate the
results), the tool questionnaire, and the tool report. Go to:
www.partnershiptool.net
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Tech Tip of the Week
Using Date Functions in Excel 2007/2010
There are many ways to use the Date functions in Excel. Previous Tech
Tips have included:
Calculate a Person's Age in Excel;
Calculate Remaining Days in the Year; and
Calculate the Days, Months or Years between Dates in Excel.
A lesser known date function is NETWORKDAYS, which returns
the number of work days between two dates. For example:
The format for this function is:
NETWORKDAYS(start_date,end_date,[holidays]). Holidays is optional.
The following tutorials can help you learn to use of the Date functions in
Excel:
Excel 2007 / 2010 Date Functions: Working with Dates in Excel from
www.about.com
Microsoft Excel 2007 to 2010: The Date Function in Excel from
www.homeandlearn.co.uk
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