Picks of the Week: February 5-12, 2011

Website of the Week – Council on Accreditation (COA)

COA is an international, independent, not-for-profit, child- and family-service and behavioral healthcare accrediting organization. It was founded in 1977 by the Child Welfare League of America and Family Service America (now the Alliance for Children and Families). Originally known as an accrediting body for family and children's agencies, COA currently accredits over 45 different service areas. The website contains a Tools Index, a one-stop resource for private organizations and public agencies which contains a wide variety of trainings, webinars, tip sheets, document templates, self-paced trainings, checklists and other tools. The tools contained in the index are designed to help nonprofits better understand the COA standards and successfully navigate the accreditation process. The tools index and other resources will be useful to organizations that are not pursuing COA accreditation as well. Go to: http://www.coastandards.org/tools.php.


Publication of the Week -- Hands-On Social Marketing by Nedra Kline Weinreich

From the publisher: This book shows students and practitioners how to develop social marketing programs through a simple, six-step process of strategic planning and design. Nedra Kline Weinreich starts by introducing the concept of social marketing and then walks the reader through each of the six steps of the process: analysis, strategy development, program and communication design, pretesting, implementation, and evaluation and feedback. The Second Edition incorporates developments in marketing practice over the last 10 years and focuses on how to apply the design approach to campaigns to effect behavior change. All organizations can do social marketing, Weinreich insists, if they follow the steps and start to think from a social marketing perspective. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Trends Impacting Nonprofits in 2011

onPhilanthropy.com, a global resource for non-profit, philanthropy and corporate social engagement professionals, has compiled a summary of trend analyses written by Patrick M. Rooney, Executive Director The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, Philip Coltoff, former Executive Director and CEO of The Children’s Aid Society, Matthew Bishop, author Philanthrocapitalism, and Susan U. Raymond, Ph.D. Executive Vice President, Changing Our World, Inc. and Chief Analyst, onPhilanthropy. To access the trend summary, go to: http://onphilanthropy.com/2011.


Resource of the Week – Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool

The Marguerite Casey Foundation Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool is a self-assessment instrument that helps nonprofits identify capacity strengths and challenges and establish capacity building goals. It is primarily a diagnostic and learning tool. Results from the Assessment can also help grantmakers deepen their understanding of the current capacity of their grantees as well as track their growth in capacity over time. Go to: http://www.caseygrants.org.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Help Learning Office 2010

Here are some more resources to help you switch from Office 2003 to the new Office 2010.
How to Find Office 2003 Commands in Office 2010 This is a "how to" article from www.howtogeek.com.

If you scroll to the bottom of this article you will find the following links to free information from Microsoft:

Office 2010 interactive guide

Download Office 2010 reference workbooks