published in the Tallahassee Democrat on 04/07/13
Kelly: You’ve heard us talk about the community’s responsibility to provide opportunities for nonprofits to build capacity. Leadership Tallahassee takes that responsibility very seriously in several ways. First of all, they cultivate 40 emerging and established leaders every year to be the best board members they can be.
Service to nonprofits through leadership is a consistent theme stressed throughout every LT program year.
In addition they see the nonprofit sector as necessary to every conversation about community well-being and make certain that they are represented. And last but not least, every year LT offers a wonderful board development opportunity to the community.
LT’s Building Better Boards is a training seminar designed for novice and veteran not-for-profit board members and staff, as well as agency professionals. The goal of the training is to help make organizations more successful by providing valuable information and resource materials. This year’s Building Better Boards is April 29 at Tallahassee Community College’s Center for Workforce Development from 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Participants will be able to attend two workshop sessions, as well as enjoy a box dinner and keynote speaker Beth Langford, Kappa Delta Sorority national president.
For each session you will have the opportunity to choose between six different workshops.
Presenters Jim Hunt, Kim Moore, Summer Pfeiffer, Floyd Self, Sarah Wilson, Debie Leonard, Cheri Rainey and Allison Harrell will cover diverse topics including social media marketing, questions to ask before joining a board, best practices for soliciting major donors, mission statement development, dealing with budget cuts without cutting programs and the role of mentoring on boards. My column partner Alyce Lee is doing a workshop on board best practices and yours truly will be talking about how you know if your executive director is doing a good job.
You get all of that expertise and information as well as dinner and great company for only $35 if you register before April 22. It’s $45 thereafter. Register by going to http://leadershiptallahassee. com/ and following the links.
Alyce Lee: Two days after participating in Building Better Boards, I encourage all nonprofit organizations to attend the Conference for Excellence in Nonprofit Management & Leadership hosted by United Partners for Human Services. It’s May 1 at Tallahassee Community College.
This is the 14th year of the conference, which provides quality training, shared learning and peerto-peer networking opportunities. Many thanks to Jim Murdaugh, TCC president, for generously providing the training space again this year.
The overall theme of this year’s conference is advocacy, an important issue that applies to all levels of the organization.
In addition, sessions will be offered on a variety of pertinent topics such as social media, employee management and fundraising. This is a great opportunity for all nonprofit organizations, not just health and human services, to strengthen their organizations, support their employees and build a stronger network within the nonprofit sector.
Special thanks to James Moore & Co., which is once again providing generous financial support to make the conference possible. Visit www.uphsfl.org for more information. Don’t miss it!
If fundraising is your focus, I also encourage you to attend the next meeting of the Big Bend Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals this Thursday.
I’ll be the featured speaker and plan to talk about what’s changing, what’s working and what’s not in today’s evolving fundraising environment.
And here’s one more: Planet Philanthropy, Florida’s largest and best fundraising conference, is June 9-11 in Sarasota.
Over 40 seminars, outstanding keynote speakers and free consulting sessions — it’s well worth the trip. More information is available at www.planetphilanthropy. org.
Kelly Otte is the executive director of PACE Center for Girls, where every day she gets to watch transformations that are magical. Alyce Lee Stansbury, CFRE, president of Stansbury Consulting, will be doing lots of speaking engagements over the next few months and hopes to see you there. Email us at notesonnonprofits@gmail.com