October 2004

(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.”)

Welcome to the Help 4 NonProfits E-Newsletter!

Here’s what you’ll find in our newsletter this month:

1) Update: Our new model for Organizational Sustainability (It’s about way more than just money!)

2) Public Seminar Dates: Building and Sustaining Programs in Tough Economic Times

3) Tip: Regional newsletters

4) Update: Phone Hacking

5) Sharing this Newsletter

6) Sneak Preview for the next Help 4 NonProfits e-newsletter: Year End Surprises!

Please read and enjoy, and pass these new 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?

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Update:

Community-Driven Sustainability Model

Sustainability - the knowledge that you can stop worrying about money and start focusing where it matters, on the community - that’s what our new model is all about.

Someone suggested we call it the “It’s Not About Money” model. But even though that’s true - the model is intended to help us stop worrying about money - it’s not the important part.

The important part is that when we stop worrying about money, we can start focusing on what our communities need from our organizations. That’s why we call it Community-Driven Sustainability.

If your organization is not aiming for sustainability, then your community isn’t getting all it needs from you. So check it out!
http://www.help4nonprofits.com/Workshops/Community-DrivenModel.htm

This Month’s Seminar Dates:

Building and Sustaining Programs in Tough Economic Times

Learn the 5 steps to making your own organization more sustainable at our full-day intensive session in Phoenix on November 11^th.

We guarantee the session - guarantee you will learn, change your thinking, come away rejuvenated - and that you will understand how simple it can be to change your approach to sustainability.

Here’s just one response to the last session we did:

The session was comprehensive and provided great tools. I would recommend it to anyone working with communities, regardless of whether or not they are thinking about fundraising. Thank you!

Phoenix is only a $99 flight from so many regions of the country, and the weather in November is incredible! If you were planning on turning the Veteran’s Day holiday into a 4 day weekend, join us in Phoenix, and learn the 5 steps to building sustainability into your organization’s programs!
http://www.help4nonprofits.com/Workshops/ToughEconomicTimes.htm

Regional Newsletters:

Almost every region has an e-newsletter that provides nonprofits with timely information about grants, events, jobs, etc. If you have a favorite go-to source for your own regional updates, please let us know, and we will highlight those resources in coming newsletters!
http://www.help4nonprofits.com/ContactUs.htm

The resources we are sharing this month are in southeastern Canada, specifically southern Quebec and Ontario.

In Montreal, the Centre for Community Organizations has an informative newsletter. The newsletter goes beyond their own programs to provide information on books and reports, as well as a plethora of job postings and other announcements from the general nonprofit community. Find them at http://www.coco-net.org/ebulletin.html

In southwestern Ontario, Nathan Garber publishes a small but highly informative newsletter - by his own promotion, the newsletter only comes out when Nathan has something informative to share. This newsletter combines in-depth discussion of governance and other relevant issues, with a select list of upcoming events in the London area. For samples of Nathan’s newsletter and to subscribe, head to http://www.garberconsulting.com

We are happy to pass on the word about newsletters focusing on nonprofit goings-on in your neck of the woods, so please let us know of good ones!

Phone Hacking Update:

Many of our readers may recall that over the July 4^th weekend, our phone system was hacked, with the perpetrators racking up thousands of dollars of calls to regions primarily in the middle east. Because so many of you have written over the months to ask the status of that incident, we thought we’d give you an update.

(And for those who weren’t aware of the incident, you can read about it at http://www.help4nonprofits.com/NP_F&E_PhoneFraud_Art.htm )

As you read this update, it will help to keep in mind how we learned about this incident: Both Sprint’s and AT&T’s fraud divisions called to tell us they suspected fraud and were turning off our long distance. It makes the irony far more poignant when you know that’s how the story starts.

As you may have guessed, this hasn’t been a fun few months. Between Sprint and AT&T, Sprint has been much more of a pleasure to work with. That gives us comfort, as they have been our long distance provider for over ten years.

The nicest part of working with Sprint is that their customer service consists of a live human being with a real beating heart. Our dispute has been assigned to a single customer service rep, who knows our account and has been sympathetic to our situation. We have provided Sprint documentation from our phone maintenance company that the system had indeed been hacked into, and our rep has told us they will use that information to determine the next steps. There’s no resolution yet, but at least a response that suggests they are considering our side of the story.

We wish we could say the same for AT&T. To point out the most obvious difference between AT&T and Sprint, when you call AT&T’s customer service line, you are told that the only way to dispute charges is to fax your dispute to a fax number. Any attempts to contact a live human lead you right back to that fax line.

We faxed AT&T the same documentation we sent to Sprint. In reply, we received an automated response, telling us not only that we are responsible for the charges, but that 18% interest is accruing on those charges. The fax has no number to call for further discussion.

As far as AT&T is concerned, regardless of the fact that their own fraud division was the first to notify us of this clearly fraudulent situation, we owe the money - period.

Some people have asked us, if Sprint is our carrier, why we have to deal with AT&T. It all has to do with those 10-10 numbers you see advertised on TV. Access to AT&T is just a 10-10 call away, regardless of who your main long distance carrier is. And so the perpetrators used our phone system not just to access our own long distance carrier, but any and all others, including AT&T.

Our next step with AT&T has been a delightful gentleman at the Arizona Corporation Commission, who will be helping us get FCC intervention into this matter. We are moments away from a call to the major national newspapers, if for nothing else than to alert the rest of the country to this major issue that no one seems to be warning the public about.

At this time, the only thing we can continue to do is to work through the various bureaucracies and await replies. But we continue to caution anyone with a multi-line phone system to take precautions to prevent outsiders from accessing your phone system. (There are downloadable forms with tips for how to do so at http://www.help4nonprofits.com/NP_F&E_PhoneFraud_Art.htm )

And lastly, we advise anyone whose long distance carrier is AT&T that perhaps you might want to rethink how you will be treated if this sort of thing happens to you.

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 just one comment we received:

I had a great time last night learning and checking out new things on your site. It has been a long time since I got as much help from a website and enjoyed it as much as I did from your site.

Omer King

Chambersburg, PA

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:

Next month’s newsletter will have end-of-year surprises, so watch for our next newsletter in your email box!

That’s it for this month. As always, we wish you all the possibilities life holds, because your community is counting on you.

Have a great and enthusiastic fall!

Hildy and Dimitri

Help 4 NonProfits & Tribes

http://www.Help4NonProfits.com

4433 E. Broadway Blvd. Ste 202

Tucson, Arizona 85711

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