Picks of the Week: October 24 - 30, 2010

Website of the Week – Nonprofit and Philanthropy Good Practice
The Nonprofit and Philanthropy Good Practice or NPGoodpractice.org is a project of Nonprofit Services at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy. NPGoodpractice.org was created in 2002 with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as a one-stop shop for widely accepted and innovative nonprofit practices. Nonprofit leaders can access hands-on tips, articles and profiled links and apply them to their organizations. In 2010, the site was redesigned with interactive features. Visitors to NPGoodpractice.org come from all 50 states and over 140 countries. Go to: http://npgoodpractice.org.


Publication of the Week -- Renewal Coaching: Sustainable Change for Individuals and Organizations by Douglas B. Reeves and Elle Allison

From the publisher: Renewal Coaching provides a series of personal assessments that will guide individuals and teams through the seven stages of renewal. Each assessment includes both survey and narrative responses, and readers can use the journal pages in the text or convenient on-line formats to respond. The Renewal Coaching framework consists of these seven elements: Recognition Finding patterns of toxicity and renewal; Reality Confronting change killers in work and life; Reciprocity Coaching in harmony; Resilience Coaching through pain; Relationship Nurturing the personal elements of coaching; Resonance Coaching with emotional intelligence; Renewal Creating energy, meaning, and freedom to sustain the Journey. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Most Women Give More Than Men, New Study Finds

Women at virtually every income level are more likely to give to charity and to give more money on average than their male counterparts, after controlling for education, income and other factors that influence giving, new research from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University finds. The study analyzed charitable-giving data from 8,000 American households. Looking at every income level, the researchers found that women give to charity more frequently than men in similar circumstances. Giving by men and women is closest at the lowest income level, $23,509 or less. But more than one third of women making less than that sum (35.2 percent) were still more likely to give to charity than men earning the same amount (27.5 percent). Those gender differences are more pronounced among people making more money, the study found. For example, all but 4 percent of women who made more than $103,000 gave to charity, while only three-fourths of men who made that much did. To download a copy of the study, go to: http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/womengive.


Resource of the Week – Board Members' Guide to Partnership Planning

Today, more and more nonprofits are looking to partner with other organizations. Strategic partnerships offer benefits that range along a spectrum from simple joint programming ventures to full-scale mergers. The purpose of the Board Members' Guide to Partnership Planning is to serve as a reference for board members embarking on the collaboration journey. Many factors must be considered, and the following list shares 10 key elements critical to the success of any effective partnership. Boards are encouraged to use this list as a starting point for boardroom discussions (Note: The electronic version of this guide contains hyperlinks under each topic heading to additional resources for that subject area). Finally, this guide also contains a Partnership Checklist, a useful tool in tracking your progress through the partnership process. To download a copy of the guide, go to: http://www.asu.edu.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Create Access 2007 Tables from Excel

Here's a simple way to create an Access 2007 table from an Excel worksheet:

• Open the Excel worksheet
• Select the data you want in your Access table
• Copy the data to the clipboard and paste it into Access or you can even drag and drop it into Access