Picks of the Week: September 18 - 24, 2011

Website of the Week -- ArtsReady

Premiering Fall 2011, ArtsReady is a web based emergency preparedness platform designed to provide arts organizations with customized business continuity plans for post crisis sustainability. A national initiative of South Arts, the ArtsReady readiness, response and recovery tool was developed in partnership with the University of California/Berkeley and Fractured Atlas with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, Mississippi Arts Commission and National Endowment for the Arts. For more information, go to: http://www.artsready.org.


Publication of the Week -- Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement, 3rd Edition by John M. Bryson

From the publisher: When it was first published more than sixteen years ago, John Bryson's Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations introduced a new and thoughtful strategic planning model. Since then it has become the standard reference in the field. In this completely revised third edition, Bryson updates his perennial bestseller to help today’s leaders enhance organizational effectiveness. This completed updated 3rd edition:

• Features the Strategy Change Cycle—a proven planning process used by a large number of organizations
• Offers detailed guidance on implementing the planning process and includes specific tools and techniques to make the process work in any organization
• Introduces new material on creating public value, stakeholder analysis, strategy mapping, balanced scorecards, collaboration, and more
• Includes information about the organizational designs that will encourage strategic thought and action throughout the entire organization
• Contains a wealth of updated examples and cases

Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Dramatic Affect of Recession on Nonprofit Executive Compensation

GuideStar-- a leading source of nonprofit information--today published its 2011 GuideStar Nonprofit Compensation Report, the only large-scale analysis of its kind that relies exclusively on data reported to the IRS. The report, which was GuideStar's first look at how the "Great Recession" affected salaries and benefits across the nonprofit sector, showed that the economy undoubtedly played a role in lessening compensation. In 2008, median increases in incumbent CEO compensation were generally 4 percent or higher. In 2009, increases were generally 2 percent or less. Highlights of the 2011 report include:

• Median compensation of females continued to lag behind that of males when considering comparable positions at similar organizations. The gap ranged from 13.4 percent for CEOs at organizations with budgets of $250-$500 thousand to 24.6 percent at organizations with budgets of more than $50 million. Since 1999, though, these gaps have narrowed for most sizes of organizations. The notable exception is organizations in the $1-$5 million range, where the gap has actually increased.
• Since 1999, the percentage of female CEOs has increased for organizations of all sizes. The majority of organizations with budgets of $1 million or less have women as CEOs, although female representation in that role declines as budget size increases. Only 16 percent of organizations with budgets of more than $50 million have female CEOs.
• As usual, health and science organizations had the highest overall median salaries. Food, religion, and youth development organizations brought up the rear.
• For the sixth straight year, Washington, D.C., had the highest overall median salaries of the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSA), and Riverside-San Bernardino, California, had the lowest. Adjusted for cost of living, New York replaced San Francisco as the MSA where nonprofit executives had the lowest median buying power, whereas those in Boston had the highest.

For more information, go to: http://www2.guidestar.org.


Resource of the Week – Nonprofit Voter Engagement Webinars

Nonprofit VOTE hosts webinars on a variety of voter engagement topics, designed specifically with the 501(c)(3) nonprofit community in mind. Topics range from how to plan and execute voter engagement activities at your nonprofit to best practices for encouraging clients and constituents to vote on election days. Use the links provided to watch the recorded webinar online, or download each webinar's PowerPoint presentation and associated audio file. Select a topic from the menu provided or simply browse through the webinar offerings. Go to: http://www.nonprofitvote.org.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Disable Auto Resize of Fonts in PowerPoint 2007/2010

In PowerPoint 2007/2010 Auto Resize intentionally shrinks the size of text as large amounts are added to a slide. One of the top complaints about PowerPoint slide presentations is that text is too small. PowerPoint Design Themes were created to force good design by setting font size automatically. The AutoFit feature defeats this purpose and actually encourages too much text on slides by shrinking it as you type, allowing people to use fonts too small to be seen. To turn this feature off:

• Click the Microsoft Office Button in 2007 or the File tab in 2010
• Click the PowerPoint Options button
• Click Proofing
• Click AutoCorrect Options
• Click the AutoFormat As You Type tab
• Click to clear the check boxes for AutoFit Body text to placeholder and AutoFit title text to placeholder if you want to disable both the body text AND the title text from auto sizing