Picks of the Week: September 16-22, 2012

Website of the Week -- Financial Management Training Center
The Financial Management Training Center offers free web based courses on a broad range of financial management topics. Courses are downloaded to your computer by clicking on the hyperlinks on the opening webpage. Short Courses come in three formats: Microsoft Word documents, pdf files and exe files (self-extracting file). Finally, you can find Lecture Notes from other financial management courses. Go to www.exinfm.com/training

Publication of the Week --  A Fundraising Guide for Nonprofit Board Members by Julia I. Walker
From the publisher:  Engaging and informative, this practical guide to fundraising contains valuable insights that nonprofit boards need to succeed in raising money in today's dynamic economic environment. While written expressly for board members, this useful handbook also provides advice to executive directors and advancement staff on how to partner with your board to build an unstoppable fundraising team. A Fundraising Guide for Nonprofit Board Members shows you how to raise more money by building board leadership and skills in fundraising. This book covers it all—the board's leadership role in fundraising; how to organize and train your board to raise funds; building a team with board and staff; raising funds for operations, major gifts and capital campaigns; how to ask for gifts; plus a guide for conducting a board retreat that will lead to fundraising success.

·         Demystifies the ask by providing a straightforward guide on how to ask for, and close, gifts

·         Features case studies, real life examples, and checklists in an easy to reference format
·         Offers sample materials for a board retreat on building the successful fundraising team

 Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.

Trend of the Week – Struggling Economy Continued to Affect Nonprofit CEO Compensation
According to GuideStar's 2012 GuideStar Nonprofit Compensation Report, between 2009 and 2010, increases for incumbent CEO compensation started to creep back up at larger organizations, though still below levels seen before the economic meltdown. At organizations with expenses of $1 million or less, compensation increases were lower than during the period between 2008 and 2009. In total, the compensation of 41 percent of incumbent CEOs remained static or declined. Program areas that had higher median CEO compensation were science and technology research institutes and health, while the median compensation for animal- and religion-related programs tended to be lower. Report’s highlights include: 
·         The economy had a definite effect on compensation. In 2008, median increases in incumbent CEO compensation were generally 4 percent or higher. In 2010, increases were below this level for the second consecutive year.
·         Median compensation of females continued to lag behind that of males when considering comparable positions at similar organizations. The gap ranged from 10.4 percent for CEOs at organizations with budgets of $250 thousand-$500 thousand to 24.8 percent at organizations with budgets of more than $50 million. Since 2000, though, these gaps narrowed for most sizes of organizations. Organizations in the $1 million-$10 million range, where the gap actually increased, were the notable exception.
·         For the seventh straight year, Washington, D.C., had the highest overall median salary of the top 20 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA). Denver-Boulder, Colo., had the lowest. Adjusted for cost of living, New York was the MSA where nonprofit executives had the lowest median buying power, whereas those in St. Louis had the highest

For more information, go to: http://www.cisionwire.com/guidestar/r/new-guidestar-nonprofit-compensation-report-reveals-struggling-economy-continued-to-affect-nonprofit,c9304996

Resource of the Week – Nonprofit Good Practice Guide: Human Resources
The Nonprofit Good Practice Guide is a project of the Philanthropic and Nonprofit Knowledge Management Initiative (PNKM) at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership. The Guide is designed as a one-stop shop for widely-accepted and innovative nonprofit practices offering Preferred Practices and Pitfalls, Glossaries, Resources, Trends and Web site Profiles within the topic area of human resources. Go to: http://www.npgoodpractice.org/category/Human%20Resources

Tech Tip of the Week -- Creating Custom Images in PowerPoint 2010
PowerPoint 2010 has several advanced features that allow you do work with shapes and clip art.  By default, these features are NOT included on the Ribbon.  You can add these tools to the Ribbon or the Quick Access Toolbar.  Here’s how:
·         Click the File menu  
·         Select Options 
·         Select Quick Access Toolbar or Ribbon
·         From the Choose commands menu, select Commands Not in the Ribbon
·         Select the Command you want to add and click the Add button
·         Click OK 

For example, the Combine Shapes tool allows you to create new shapes by combining multiple shapes in one of four ways: Union, Combine, Subtract, or Intersect.