Picks of the Week: May 16 - 22, 2010

Website of the Week – FASTEN

The Faith and Service Technical Education Network (FASTEN) offers informational resources and networking opportunities to faith-based practitioners, private philanthropies, and public administrators who seek to collaborate effectively to renew urban communities. An initiative of Pew Charitable Trusts, FASTEN actively identifies best practices in faith-based services and multi-sector collaboration, and produces and disseminates educational materials for practitioners in the public and private sectors. Go to: www.fastennetwork.org.


Publication of the Week -- Fundraising Principles and Practice by Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang

From the publisher: This books offers a definitive text on the vital topic fundraising. It provides students of fundraising and nonprofit professionals access to the most relevant theories and includes concrete examples of modern fundraising practice. The book contains clear learning objectives, recommended readings, case studies, summary self-test questions, and exercises at the end of each chapter. The Principles and Practice of Fundraising comprehensively addresses all the major forms of fundraising and critical topics such as donor behavior and fundraising planning. Adrian Sargeant is the world's foremost fundraising scholar. This text will be invaluable to the beginner, but new research findings mean it should also be a must read for established practitioners. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Charitable Donors Give More When Asked Personally

Donors to charitable organizations give more when they are asked in person and when someone they know makes the request, a new study commissioned by Chicago-based consulting firm Campbell & Company and conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University finds. The study, Significant Gifts: Where Donors Direct Their Largest Gifts and Why confirms what nonprofit organization fundraisers have often observed: people give to people and especially to people they know. Donors who were asked to give in person by someone they knew donated 19 percent more ($987) to secular (non-religious) charities, when compared with telephone, mail or email requests from someone they knew ($799). For religious organizations, when the donor was asked in person by someone he or she knew, the average donation was 42 percent higher ($2,904) than when someone the donor knew made the request using a different tactic ($1,698). For more information, go to: http://www.campbellcompany.com.


Resource of the Week – Leadership Dialogues

The Leader to Leader Institute recently announced the launch of Leadership Dialogues, an online toolbox featuring a growing library of video interviews with inspiring leaders including Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally, and Tony Hsieh, Founder and CEO of Zappos.com.. The site is catalogued by topic and provides current and future leaders with essential leadership wisdom in topics such as diversity, accountability, courage, entrepreneurship, and growth that will help build effective social sector organizations. To access Leadership Dialogues, go to: www.leadertoleader.org/dialogues.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Back up a Microsoft Access 2007 Database

• Open the Database you want to back up
• Click the Microsoft Office Button (top left)
• Point to Manage
• Click Back up Database to open the Save As dialog box
• Choose the name and the location (By default Access 2007 adds the date of the backup to the name of the file.)
• Click the save button