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Help 4 NonProfits & Tribes
Community-Driventm Institute
e-Newsletter
Building Community-Driven Organizations

May 2005
(If our newsletter does not appear below, or if it appears as gobbledy-gook, please click here to get the newsletter from the Help 4 NonProfits Website. And please let us know, and we will change your newsletter settings to “text only.”)

Hello!
It’s been a whirlwind month for us here at Help 4 NonProfits & Tribes, and so, in addition to our normal bevy of goodies, we thought we’d take some time to share some of where we’ve been. The journey is always amazing for us, and we’re glad to have you along!

  1. A New Feature - Learnings from the Road
  2. Board Accountability: A Model for Community-Driven Governance
  3. Boards Library Kicks Off Website Change to Community-Driven Model™
  4. “Power Notes” Close-out: Everything Must Go!
  5. Seeking Testimonials for our Speaker Workbook
  6. Best Sellers from our Nonprofit Bookstore
  7. New E-newsletter: Help 4 Funders
  8. Sharing this Newsletter
  9. Sneak Preview: More Community-Driven programs!

Please read and enjoy, and pass these items along. We know it will help you improve the quality of life in your community. And isn't that really why we all do the work we do?

A New Feature:

Learnings from the RoadCLICK

We’ve always said we learn at least as much as we teach, and that was never more evident than the two trips we combined into one terrific 10 days last month. We spent the better part of a week in the small rural town of Danville, Virginia. And we ended the trip with the American Bar Association in Chicago! So we thought we would share some of what we learned and observed as we taught in those two amazing places.

Boards and governance and accountability continue to head the list of things we think about everywhere we teach. CLICK

These days we are also concerned about collaboration. Does forcing nonprofits to collaborate simply doom those “collaborations” to fail? CLICK

We also spent some time focusing on how funders can more effectively create community impact. CLICK

And this trip in particular made us think about just what “faith-based” means, wondering if this whole sector isn’t in fact based in faith. CLICK

In addition, we learned a great tip for consent agenda users CLICK

As we continue to travel, sharing our Community-Driven approaches with communities across the continent, we'll continue to share our observations along the way. It's always an adventure!

Who Are Boards Accountable To, and What Are Boards Accountable For?

Announcing the Community-Driven Governance ModelCLICK

Welcome to the Community-Driven Governance Model

We have been so excited to see the response to this model. And as we’ve watched boards begin using the model, we are even more excited, seeing how engaged and alive those boards become with the things that really matter. When boards are focused on the benefit the organization provides to the community, the sky is truly the limit!

If your board can’t quite figure out what its role should be, CLICK

If your board is concerned about accountability but not quite sure what the board is accountable for, CLICK

And if your board already seems to have its act together, and wants to take your organization to the next level - incredible impact in the community - then this is absolutely the model for you!CLICK

The Community-Driven Governance Model will help you create an amazing board, aimed at running an amazing organization, all aimed at creating an amazing future for your community.

Boards Library Begins the Website Change to Our Community-Driven ModelCLICK

We are slowly peeling away 8 years of website layers to focus the whole Help 4 NonProfits site around our Community-Driven model. Over the coming months, we will be announcing a new section here or there, along with many new features.

In the meantime, check out the changes we’ve begun, all in the Boards section of the NonProfit Library.

As we looked over the articles in the Boards Library, we saw that some of our older Boards articles pre-dated the development of our Community-Driven approach. We’ve therefore retooled some of our most popular articles - check out the Micromanagement article, the Boards and Fundraising article... We’ve been busy!

We have also made the Boards section of the library easier to navigate. We think you’ll find the changes helpful, and if you have other suggestions, please let us know! CLICK

PowerNotes Close-out: Everything Must Go!

The PowerNotes line in our bookstore is being discontinued. Once our current supply is gone, we will have no more.

That means all our PowerNotes are only $5.00!

So what are PowerNotes?

PowerNotes summarize the thinking that has emerged from some of America’s top conferences, reviewed and presented by some of the best minds around. But PowerNotes doesn’t just give you a summary of each speaker’s talk. Instead, each book is organized around the major themes of that conference. In that way, PowerNotes provides a broad view across ALL the break-out sessions, to get the true essence of what made that conference special. You may learn more from PowerNotes than from actually being there!

All this for only $5.00! Quantities are limited, so check them out now!

Pursuit of the Summit:
Attracting and Retaining the Best Employees and Customers
CLICK

Innovate or DIE:
The 8th Annual Innovative Thinking Conference
CLICK

A Rich Heritage, A Prosperous Future:
Arizona Governor’s Rural Economic Development Conference
CLICK

Testimonials Wanted:

Building Support Through Public Speaking: Tips, Tools and Secrets Any Nonprofit Leader Can Master

Until now, our speaker workbook has been available only as a download. As we are preparing to release that workbook in print, we are looking for testimonial quotes to use on the back cover.

(If you are not familiar with the workbook, it will be available as a download until the print version comes out - check it out!) CLICK

If you have the workbook and you have found it helpful, we want to know! The more specific you can be, the better. What section made an impact on your organization? How did that work for you?

Here’s what Charity Channel Founder and CEO Steve Nill said in his review of the book - and yes, Steve’s words will likely be among those we use! (For a full copy of the review, CLICK )

To my knowledge, this is the first book written about public speaking in the context of raising support for nonprofit/NGO organizations. In its own in-the-trenches, pragmatic way, it's ground-breaking.

If we choose your testimonial for the back of the book, we will send you a prize from the Help 4 NonProfits bag of tricks, as a token of our gratitude! So send them in!

To submit a testimonial, CLICK

To check out the workbook, CLICK

Bookstore Best Sellers

Aside from our own books, we have been slowly stocking our bookstore with books we recommend by other authors. Because our inventory is only books we think are worthy of sharing, being a best-seller at our tiny bookstore means a lot to us!

Our first best-seller is a new title for us and has been an immediate hit - Andy Robinson’s wonderful “Big Gifts for Small Groups: A Board Member’s 1-Hour Guide to Securing Gifts of $500 to $5,000". We added this book just a month or so ago, and sales have consistently proven that Andy has written a top notch guide.

This tiny book (under 100 pages) makes a complex subject understandable and immediately doable. Aimed at small nonprofits for whom gifts of $500 to $5,000 are major gifts, this short guide acknowledges you may never have done anything like this before. It shows how to create a prospect list from folks you already know; how to create a gift chart; how to determine where to meet with the prospect. And most importantly, it will show you how to ask for the gift in a way anyone can comfortably do - really! Andy Robinson clearly understands the needs and fears of small organizations, and this book speaks directly and effectively to them. We were not surprised at all when this book turned out to be a best-seller at our site!CLICK

The other book is Renata Rafferty’s “Don’t Just Give It Away: How to Make the Most of Your Charitable Giving.” This book is the opposite of Andy Robinson’s book in a couple of ways. First, we’ve stocked it for a long time, so it has built a track record of sales at our store over time. Secondly, unlike Andy’s fundraising book, this book is technically intended as a guide for donors, not the organizations asking for money. That is why we have advised our website visitors, “Don’t be fooled by the book’s stated purpose OR the title.”

And no, it’s not insanity to recommend a book and then say “Pay no attention to what it’s supposed to be about...” That’s because this bible for educating donors on what to look for before investing their donations is an amazing tool for NonProfits to use in reverse - to know what funders are looking for! The chapters on donor motivation provide great fundraising and marketing insights. The chapters on performing due diligence (“Ten Warning Signs: Where to Look for the Bodies”) make a fabulous checklist for ensuring your organization’s ducks are in a row. And if your board can’t answer the “Ten Key Questions Every Board Member Should Be Able to Answer,” perhaps it’s time to get some help! If sales of this book are any indication, we are encouraged that more and more nonprofits are heeding the advice Renata Rafferty provides!CLICK

Help 4 Funders: A New e-newsletter!

Thanks to inspiration from funders all over the country (and a final boost over the top from the funders in Danville, Virginia - see our Learnings from the Road for details!), we will be launching a new e-newsletter just for funders! We are hoping to get an issue out every few months, and it will be aptly named Help 4 Funders!

To sign up, CLICK    (Sorry - subscriptions are limited to funders only).

Share this Newsletter With a Friend!

Every month, hundreds of new subscribers sign up for our e-newsletter, most of whom learn about our site from a friend or colleague. Here’s one of our favorite comments this month:

As an avid and loyal follower, please notify us as you re-do the website - we wouldn't want to miss a thing! Your work continues to inspire!

Sandi Cooper, The Women’s Center of America, Michigan

And because board members so rarely receive information on how to do their job better, please be sure to pass this newsletter along to your board. Or better yet, sign them all up to receive a copy of their own!

Sneak Preview: More Community-Driven Programs!

There is so much coming up in the next few months, it is hard to tell it all! First, our new workbook on Boards and Fundraising will be on the market in the next few months. We are getting more and more excited about this book as it is certainly not the standard fare. First, it doesn’t tell boards they have to fundraise, but provides them with great ways to do so if that is what they choose to do. Second, the book provides boards with ways to generate support that go far beyond fundraising in their ability to create sustainability. So stay tuned for that one soon!

We are continuing to work on great projects, and have vowed to share what we learn with you as we head down the road. And so, as we revamp our website, we will find a way to make those learnings a fixture at the site.

Lastly, we are finally assembling the book that will describe in detail the Community-Driven model - methods for running every aspect of a nonprofit for maximum community benefit. We hope to have that out by the end of the year.

We look forward to keeping you posted as these projects unfold!


Thank you, as always, for the work you do to make your communities better places to live. We wish for you all the possibilities life holds.

Hildy and Dimitri
Help 4 NonProfits & Tribes
http://www.Help4NonProfits.com
4433 E. Broadway Blvd. Ste 202
Tucson, Arizona 85711

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