Picks of the Week: January 22 - 28, 2012

Website of the Week -- Volunteer Consulting Group

The Volunteer Consulting Group (VCG) is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1969 by the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York, whose mission focuses on strengthening nonprofit organizations by increasing the governing and management ability of their Boards of Directors. Services that VCG provides to strengthen the governance of the nonprofit sector include: (1) Matching Board members and Boards; (2) Working to make Boards more effective; and (3) Continually upgrading the skills of current Board members. VCG offer several services for those interested in ongoing developments in nonprofit governance. Through advocacy, peer-learning roundtables and workshops, and educational resources -- such as the website -- Governance Matters fosters an open exchange of ideas throughout the nonprofit sector. Go to: http://www.vcggm.org.


Publication of the Week -- The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten

From the publisher: This book is a no-brainer for your bookshelf-it's like having a literate Cliff's Notes guide to all those books you know you should have read by now. More than 11,000 business books are published each year, and hidden somewhere in that overwhelming stack is the solution to your current business problem. For twenty-five years, Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten have made it their job to recommend the best business books, and now they've taken on the ultimate challenge-to reread the classics, the bestsellers, and the sleepers and choose the 100 most relevant, most revealing, most useful books in business history. This collection is more than just a list. Covert and Sattersten highlight important takeaways and put each book in context. Their insights can help anyone cut through the clutter and discover the business books that are truly worth their time and money.

Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Minorities Are More Generous Than Whites, Study Finds

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) released a new report, “Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Color” with support from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. This new report shows how the face of philanthropy is rapidly changing to become as ethnically, culturally and socioeconomically diverse as our country’s population, with some of the most significant growth stemming from identity-based philanthropy—a growing movement to spark philanthropic giving from a community on behalf of a community, where “community” is defined by race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Historically, communities of color receive a small percentage of mainstream philanthropic dollars despite an often disproportionate need. Yet recent trends show that communities of color are giving at increasing rates and levels. For instance, 63 percent of Latino households now make charitable donations, and African Americans give away 25 percent more of their income per year than whites. To download the full report, go to: http://www.wkkf.org.


Resource of the Week – The Grantsmanship Center Archives

The Grantsmanship Center publications are packed with information on how to plan, manage, staff and fund the programs of nonprofit organizations and government agencies. Archives of these publications are now available at the Library of Congress. You may also access articles from recent issues organized under ten categories. Go to: http://www.tgci.com/magazine.shtml.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Copy Formatting in Word

A previously published tip Fast Formatting covered using format painter (the paintbrush icon) to copy the format of text. Since I am a fan of shortcut keys, and sometimes format painter seems a bit erratic when using it to repeatedly copy the same format, here's how to do the same thing using shortcut keys:

• Click on the text which you want to copy a format from
• Press Ctrl+Shift+C (copy format) to copy the text formatting of the area where the cursor is located
• Select the text you want to copy the format to and press Ctrl+Shift+V (paste format)

This method is even more flexible than using the paintbrush. You can paste the format as many times as you want, since the format copy is saved in a memory area like the clipboard, and still do other things in between copies. And it appears to work in all versions of Word.