Picks of the Week: September 26 - October 2, 2010

Website of the Week – National Center for Youth Law

The National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) focuses particularly on children living in poverty, advocating for their protection from abuse, for their access to housing, healthcare, public benefits, and for improved methods of collecting child support. It also seeks to address the tendency to deal with youth behavior punitively. NCYL works towards these goals by publishing articles, manuals, books, and its bimonthly journal, Youth Law News; providing technical assistance and training; assisting legal advocates who represent poor children; and conducting administrative and legislative advocacy. The Web site includes pertinent news, an overview of the organization, online articles, analyses, publications, and links to related resources. Go to: http://www.youthlaw.org.


Publication of the Week -- Advanced Facilitation Strategies: Tools & Techniques to Master Difficult Situations by Ingrid Bens

From the publisher: From Ingrid Bens, the author of the best-selling book Facilitating with Ease!, comes the next-step resource for project leaders, managers, community leaders, teachers, and other facilitators who want to hone their skills in order to deal with complex situations. Advanced Facilitation Strategies is a field guide that offers practical strategies and techniques for working with challenging everyday situations. These proven strategies and techniques are based on experience gleaned from hundreds of facilitated activities in organizations of all sizes and in all sectors. Both novice and seasoned facilitators who have had firsthand experience designing and leading meetings will benefit from this reality-based playbook. Advanced Facilitation Strategies is filled with the information facilitators need to:

• Become better at diagnosing facilitation assignments and creating effective process designs
• Broaden their repertoire of tools to make impromptu design changes whenever they are needed
• Learn to be more resilient and confident when dealing with dysfunctional situations and difficult people.

Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Nonprofits Bright Spot in National Jobs Picture

Nonprofit employers are providing one of the few bright spots in the country's dismal employment picture this Labor Day, according to new data released today by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies. Initial analysis of data on 21 states spread broadly across the country reveals that nonprofit employment actually grew by an average of 2.5 percent per year between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009, the worst part of the recent recession. By contrast, for-profit employment in these states fell during this same period by an average of 3.3 percent per year. And this pattern held for every single state examined. However, nonprofits in some fields and some states did worse than others. For more information, including charts and tables with data listed by state and by field of activity, go to: http://ccss.jhu.edu.


Resource of the Week – Free Management Library

Developed by Carter McNamara and hosted by The Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits, the Free Management Library offers an extensive listing of resources of interest to nonprofit organizations. The Library provides easy-to-access, clutter-free, comprehensive resources regarding the leadership and management of yourself, other individuals, groups and organizations. Content is relevant to the vast majority of people, whether they are in large or small for-profit or nonprofit organizations. Over the past 15 years, the Library has grown to be one of the world's largest well-organized collections of these types of resources. The Library has been averaging well over 1,000,000 visitors per month.. Many of its topics consistently rank in the top ten results from Google searches. Go to: http://www.managementhelp.org.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Tracking Revisions in Excel 2007

Excel 2007 tracks worksheet revisions so you can see what has changed on each sheet. To use this feature, do the following:

• Click the sheet to make it active
• Click the Review tab on the Ribbon
• Click Track Changes in the Changes group
• Choose Highlight Changes
• Click in the "Track changes while editing" box and then set the types of changes you want to highlight.

You can choose to have the changes highlighted on screen or listed on a new sheet.