Sunday, July 6, 2014

Picks of the Week: June 22 - 28, 2014


Website of the Week -- Useful Links for Nonprofits -- IKNOW
IKNOW provides a directory of useful links for nonprofits on issues ranging from education and fundraising to current legislation, strategic planning, and volunteerism. IKNOW.org was conceived and launched in 1997 by Tom Raffa, Managing Partner of RAFFA, P.C., who saw the power of the web to help answer the many questions he received from his nonprofit clients and other friends in the sector.  Go to: www.iknow.org

Publication of the Week --  The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook:  Fully Integrating Online Service into Volunteer Involvement by Jayne Cravens and Susan J. Ellis  
From the publisher: What is Virtual Volunteering? It’s work done by volunteers online, via computers, smartphones or other hand-held devices, and often from afar. More and more organizations around the world are engaging people who want to contribute their skills via the Internet. The service may be done virtually, but the volunteers are real! In The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, Jayne Cravens and Susan J. Ellis emphasize that online volunteers should be integrated into an organization’s overall strategy for involving volunteers. They maintain that the basic principles of volunteer management should apply equally to volunteers working online or onsite. Whether you’re tech-savvy or still a newbie in cyberspace, this book will show you how to lead online volunteers. Cravens and Ellis fervently believe that future volunteer management practitioners will automatically incorporate online service into community engagement, making this book the LAST virtual volunteering guidebook that anyone has to write!

Trend of the Week --  Inequality Increasing
During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau data. From 2009 to 2011, the mean wealth of the 8 million households in the more affluent group rose to an estimated $3,173,895 from an estimated $2,476,244, while the mean wealth of the 111 million households in the less affluent group fell to an estimated $133,817 from an estimated $139,896. These wide variances were driven by the fact that the stock and bond market rallied during the 2009 to 2011 period while the housing market remained flat. Affluent households typically have their assets concentrated in stocks and other financial holdings, while less affluent households typically have their wealth more heavily concentrated in the value of their home. From the end of the recession in 2009 through 2011 (the last year for which Census Bureau wealth data are available), the 8 million households in the U.S. with a net worth above $836,033 saw their aggregate wealth rise by an estimated $5.6 trillion, while the 111 million households with a net worth at or below that level saw their aggregate wealth decline by an estimated $0.6 trillion. Because of these differences, wealth inequality increased during the first two years of the recovery. The upper 7% of households saw their aggregate share of the nation’s overall household wealth pie rise to 63% in 2011, up from 56% in 2009. On an individual household basis, the mean wealth of households in this more affluent group was almost 24 times that of those in the less affluent group in 2011. At the start of the recovery in 2009, that ratio had been less than 18-to-1. For more information, go to: http://tinyurl.com/k3b7pb5

Resource of the Week –  Building a Field-Specific Leadership Pipeline
The Bridgespan Group recently helped a group of funders develop a more strategic approach to building a leadership pipeline inside the field of Jewish nonprofits. The report's findings and recommendations focus on this field, but the approaches these funders are taking to create an environment for success are worth consideration by other fields in the sector. For more information and to download the full Bridgespan report, go to: http://tinyurl.com/q98ckfo

Tech Tip of the Week -- Run PowerPoint 2010 Slide Show in a Window
Have you ever wanted to be able to run a PowerPoint slideshow in a window?  This can be done by adding a button to the Quick Access Toolbar.  Here’s how:
  • Click the File tab on the Ribbon
  • Click the Options button at the bottom
  • Click Quick Access Toolbar in the left pane
  • Under Choose commands from, select Commands Not in the Ribbon
  • Scroll down and select Slide Show in a Window
  • Click Add to add this button to the Quick Access Toolbar
  • Click OK
  • To run a slideshow in a window simply click this button on the Quick Access Toolbar