Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Picks of the Week: March 14 - 20, 2010

Website of the Week -- FindYouthInfo.gov

FindYouthInfo.gov is the U.S. government Web site that helps you create, maintain, and strengthen effective youth programs. Included are youth facts, funding information, and tools to help you assess community assets, generate maps of local and federal resources, search for evidence-based youth programs, and keep up-to-date on the latest, youth-related news. Go to: http://www.findyouthinfo.gov/index.shtml.


Publication of the Week -- The Jossey-Bass Reader on Nonprofit and Public Leadership
Jossey-Bass Publishers by James L. Perry (Editor)


From the publisher: An ideal resource for students and professionals, this comprehensive reader offers a diverse collection of the foremost writings on leadership and management in the public and nonprofit sectors. The book includes previously published essays, articles and extracts from leading books and periodicals, framed and vetted by author and professor James L. Perry. The anthology covers a wide range of topics, offering a third sector perspective on the general leadership questions essential to any manager--principles and practices of leadership, organizational change, corporate culture, communication, efficiency, ethics--as well as issues unique to public and nonprofit organizations--understanding leadership roles in the nonprofit world, founder vs. ED relationships, board leadership, alternative and collaborative leadership, strategic management, sustainability, and the future of leadership. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Nonprofit Social Media Adoption and Success

In August 2009, an email was sent to 7,500 subscribers of The Chronicle of Philanthropy inviting them to take the online survey designed to discover how nonprofits are using social media in their fundraising and outreach activities. By September 14, 2009 a total of 1,295 people had responded. Key findings include:

• 88% of respondents indicated that their organization currently participates in some form of social media.
• More than half of respondents said they’ve been using social media for less than a year.
• 20% of respondents said they spend more than 5 hours per week using social media.
• The most popular type of social media among respondents is general social networking such as Facebook and MySpace. Next most popular are blogs /microblogs and professional social networking.
• Facebook is by far the most popular social networking tool in use. Twitter and YouTube are also widely used.
• Advertising /promotion and profile creation /maintenance are the most common types of social media activities in which respondents take part.
• When respondents were asked what their goals are for social media participation, the most frequently mentioned responses were ‘sharing our story’, building a community, public relations, and donor engagement / retention. For a copy of the report, go to:
http://www.sagenonprofit.com.


Resource of the Week -- Catalog of Nonprofit Literature

The Catalog of Nonprofit Literature is a searchable database of the literature of philanthropy. It incorporates the unique contents of the Foundation Center's five libraries and contains approximately 28,000 full bibliographic citations, of which nearly 20,000 have descriptive abstracts. It is updated daily. The Catalog was formerly known as Literature of the Nonprofit Sector (LNPS). Go to: http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/cnl.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Gantt Charts in Excel 2007

A previously published tip Gantt Chart for Scheduling in Excel introduced Gantt charts as tools for project management and provided a link to a downloadable template. Making a Gantt Chart in Excel 2007 is another excellent resource for creating Gantt Charts in Excel. This 7-minute video gives you step-by-step instruction on how to use the built-in chart tool in Excel 2007 to create a Gantt chart. If you need more help, check out this article by Michele McDonough Using Excel to Create a Gantt Chart.

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