Bookmark this – February desktop wallpaper calendar

Artfully inspired desktop wallpaper-calendar from the creative minds at Marina Design.

Click the image above to select the size suitable for your monitor resolution. Enjoy!

Building confidence – worth a watch

I attended an industry meeting a number of years ago and a female Chief Development Officer was the speaker. Her opening words shook me.  She wondered why, in an industry dominated by female staff members, were there so few female executives?

Why indeed?

Author Kitty Kay has a possible clue, although her research is not limited to the nonprofit sector.  Females are notorious at self-effacing behavior.  For no obvious reason.  Even successful females have a measurable confidence gap when compared with their male colleagues who have achieved similar success.  Here’s a discussion with Ms. Kay, who has conducted research on the topic and offers some valuable suggestions.

Click here for the accompanying article.

What lessons can we learn?  Ms. Kay shares some findings.  She says women often hyperfocus on failures or negative aspects of their performance, but in a way that is ridiculously out of context with their overall professional achievements.  She also indicates that women tend to have internal dialogues that can spin out of control, contributing to a lack of action.

The video and article are well worth a look.

Tip: Register early for APRA-GH’s Winter Workshop

Just a little tip, the number of photo-headshot appointments and resume-review appointment time slots at our Winter Workshop is limited.  This phenomenal little extra is a super individual service to help give your professional brand a jump start.  Please don’t forget to select either (or both) appointment types when completing your online registration!

We’ve been getting a few questions about how to register if you’re not a member and the registration cost for nonmembers. The answer is to join online first then register.  APRA-GH annual membership is still only $35 per year and it’s the best value around.

Please share the Winter Workshop info with your colleagues or associates who might be interested!

Going from satisfactory to excellent with thank you letters

Inspired consultant and blogger Penelope Burk has been surveying donors and paying attention to what they say about how the nonprofits to whom they give recognize their donations.  Here’s her list of 20 elements that contribute to an excellent thank you letter.

Of course, images go a long way toward helping our donors see exactly who and what their dollars are supporting.  Ball Statue University holds campus-wide thank you events to involve students, faculty and donors and shares those images through their social media channels.

To access Penelope Burk’s blog, click on the list above.

Great ideas to boost giving

From our friends at Ruffalo Cody, 5 clever ideas to implement over the next few months that could be especially useful for annual giving solicitation, renewal and stewardship strategies.  Here’s a quick synopsis —

 

As a best practices reminder, Ruffalo Cody suggests that when implementing a new practice, make sure to capture baseline constituent list for each communication, to be able to measure specific results.

Click on any of the suggestions above to read the full article.

Winter Workshop – registration open!

APRA Greater Houston is excited to announce our Winter Workshop on March 6th.  It promises to be a day full of forward thinking sessions energize your career trajectory.  We hope you can join us!

 

Click on the image above to navigate to the registration page.

Social media user demographics for 2015

AdWeek just published their 2015-2016 forecast for social media platform user composition by age range.  Here are the results for the largest platforms, spanning nearly 180 million individuals.

Plan for content and social campaigns that resonate with your audience demographics!

Infographic: Carlos Monteiro

 

Add a little March to your madness

I’m a well known lurker on the CASE advancement services list serve.  So, as I was scanning it the other day a conversation stream that caught my attention.  The member indicated their school was brainstorming new ways to ramp up fundraising efforts associated with March madness.  After all, it’s just around the corner.

 

 

And just like that I remembered one of my favorite posts from the dearly departed APRA blog.  It too was a creative fundraising spin on March madness.  The crazy thing is that the organization who adopted the idea, Citizen Effect, has nothing to do with sports or college.  They just implemented a great idea.  I’m all about that!

Here’s how it worked.  They asked donors for a $10 gift to fill out an NCAA tournament bracket “entry.”  Winning entries were then eligible for prizes.  The winning donor at each bracket level had the opportunity to direct winnings (ie, accrued donations) to his or her choice of project efforts sponsored by Citizen Effect.  How awesome is that?

After the NCAA tournament was over and all the donations were tallied, Citizen Effect sent out a lovely follow-up piece, found here on the Marts & Lundy blog.

 

Love it to pieces!  Can’t wait for March Madness!

Augment your data quality program with Data Profiling

What is Data Profiling?  I just recently learned this term and it is probably something that we should all have in our vocabulary, if not in our systems management repertoire.  According to an article written by Laura Sebastian-Coleman on the TechTarget blog, Data Profiling describes analysis techniques used to characterize important features of data sets.  Profiling provides information about field types, column relationships and content values.

When we have a level of confidence about the data values that reside in our data base, we have the information we need to identify unexpected conditions in our data, that left unchecked, will lead to deteriorated information.  If your organization is embarking on upgrading your data quality practices or implementing a data quality framework, this series of articles (actually an excerpt from Ms. Sebastian-Coleman’s book) is an excellent place to begin.

If you have a great idea you’d like to share related to data quality, let us know!

 

 

 

Save the Date {3-6-2015} for APRA-GH’s Winter Workshop

Imagine this conversation, if you will.

A development officer stops by my office for a moment to say hello.  While he or she is there, they say something like, “Diane, what do you exactly do?”

Feeling self conscious, and assuming that this person doesn’t really want an in-depth explanation, I laugh and reply “Oh, I just crunch numbers.”

The development officer leaves without the answer to their question and I just did myself and my organization an incredible disservice.

 

True confession:  I’m not in touch with my personal brand.

 

And I’m not alone.  We mistakenly think that branding is for consultants. Or marketing people.  Or job seekers.  Everyone else but us.

Sadly, that’s just not true.  When we neglect to identify our specific talents and the way that we apply our talents to contribute to our organizations’ successes, we undermine our profession, our jobs and our own professional reputations.

 

It is time to speak the truth.  Not boastfully, but with matter-of-fact sincerity.  Even enthusiasm.

If you can relate to my story, you’ll want to join us for APRA-Greater Houston’s winter workshop where we’ll be spending the day discussing professional branding, networking and our presentation/image.  Registration will be opening this week.  Hope to see you there!