Picks of the Week: October 23 - 29, 2011

Website of the Week -- The Community Tool Box

The Community Tool Box is a widely used Internet-based resource for promoting community health and development. The Community Tool Box is a service of the Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas. Development of the Community Tool Box has been ongoing since 1994, and is a public service of the University of Kansas. The Tool Box provides more than 7,000 pages of practical information to support community health and development work. The focus is on specific practical skills, such as conducting a meeting or participatory evaluation, that help create conditions for health and human development. Go to: http://ctb.ku.edu/en/About.aspx.


Publication of the Week -- Driving Social Change: How to Solve the World's Toughest Problems by Paul C. Light

From the publisher: This important book illustrates how to create the social breakthroughs needed to solve urgent global threats such as poverty, disease, and hunger. It then turns to three alternative, but complementary, paths to social breakthrough: social protecting, social exploring, and social advocacy, providing a detailed map of the journey from initial commitment to a world of justice and opportunity. This publication:

• Examines the current condition of the social impact infrastructure
• Offers strategies for how to remedy the steady weakening of our social-impact infrastructure
• Provides tactics to build strong social organizations and networks
• Illustrates dynamic methods to respond to constant economic and social change

Author Paul Light believes we should be less concerned about the tools of agitation (social entrepreneurship, social protecting, social exploring, and social advocacy) and more concerned about the disruption and replacement of the status quo. Timely in its urgency, this book describes the revolutionary social impact cycle, which provides a new approach for framing the debate about urgent threats. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Lack of Diversity in Arts Giving

Most foundations make grants to big arts organizations that serve a well-to-do, predominantly white audience, according to a new study by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. The study says organizations with annual budgets exceeding $5-million, representing about 2 percent of cultural organizations, collected 55 percent of arts grants in 2009. The biggest recipients tend to be museums, operas, and symphonies, which have seen attendance decline while demand is rising for community-based cultural programs, according to the watchdog group, which has challenged foundations to step up support for all types of groups that serve the needy. Arts philanthropy has not kept pace with demographic changes and “is using its tax-exempt status primarily to benefit wealthier, more privileged institutions and populations,” said Holly Sidford, the study’s author. To download an executive summary of the report, go to: http://www.ncrp.org.


Resource of the Week – Top 10 Tips for Running a Good Nonprofit Hiring Process

Any hiring process takes thoughtful planning. But for nonprofit organizations, which often face time and money constraints, and whose staff are highly driven by passion and commitment to a cause, the planning process takes on new meaning. It becomes even more important in this type of environment to ensure that the hiring process is done efficiently, and reaps the best candidates for the senior roles that nonprofits seek to fill. To explore how to run a good process, The Bridgespan Group interviewed Tom Friel, the retired chairman and chief executive officer of Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. and a senior advisor to The Bridgespan Group. In this article, he shares his top 10 tips on running an effective hiring process. Go to: http://www.bridgestar.org.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Add a Drop Cap in Word 2010

A drop cap is used to display the first letter of the paragraph in a large font. To add a drop cap to a paragraph in Word 2010:

• Click in the paragraph where you would like to apply a drop cap
• Click the Insert tab on the Ribbon
• In the text group, choose Drop Cap

From the Drop Cap list, click to select the style or choose options for additional choices