Picks of the Week: January 31 - February 6, 2010

Website of the Week -- Center for Nonprofit Management

As one of the nation's leading management support organizations, the Center for Nonprofit Management brings the most current tools for best practices in nonprofit management to thousands of nonprofit boards, staff and volunteers each year. The mission of the Center for Nonprofit Management is to build stronger communities by increasing the performance and impact of nonprofit organizations. In the late 1970's, the Meadows Foundation in Dallas recognized a significant need for staff development and management assistance to charitable organizations. In 1980, with the support of other local funders, Meadows provided the seed funding to establish the Center for Nonprofit Management. Today, the Center receives support from donations, grants, fees for services and annual membership dues at a minimal cost and is a United Way affiliate. Go to: http://www.cnmdallas.org.


Publication of the Week – Consensus Through Conversation: How to Achieve High-Commitment Decisions by Larry Dressler


From the publisher: Consensus is fast becoming one of business' most popular-but most widely mis-understood decision-making models. By involving people in the decisions that impact their work, companies develop a passionate team of workers, one that is committed to a future they've helped shape. This useful guide leads managers, consultants, and facilitators through the consensus-building process. It shows how to avoid common pitfalls like false agreement and the "illusion of inclusion." For anyone charged with getting groups to fruitful resolution on important issues, Consensus Through Conversation offers an invaluable reference. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – 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, which is based on a national sample of more than 8,300 donors, confirms what nonprofit organization fundraisers have often observed: people give to people, and especially to people they know. The study examined characteristics of and factors influencing a donor household’s single largest gift. 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). To download a copy of the report, go to: http://www.campbellcompany.com.


Resource of the Week -- Independent Fundraising Event Guide

Blackbaud and Event 360 have released a new white paper based on a joint research project to better understand the common denominators of a successful programmatic approach to third-party fundraising. Independent fundraising events (IFE) are activities designed and run by volunteers to raise money on behalf of a specific nonprofit organization. You can download a copy of "Raising More Money Online with Independent Fundraising Events" at http://www.blackbaud.com.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Cleaning your Data in Excel

If you have copied or imported data into your Excel workbook, you may need to clean it up. An article from Microsoft entitled Top ten ways to clean your data covers features that will help you accomplish this. The basics of cleaning your data include:

• Removing duplicate rows
• Finding and replacing text
• Changing the case of text
• Removing spaces and nonprinting characters from text
• Fixing numbers and number signs
• Fixing dates and times
• Merging and splitting columns
• Transforming and rearranging columns and rows
• Reconciling table data by joining or matching