COMMON GROUND CONSULTING LLC

Keep the Lights On Afterschool — October 20th

On October 20th, join 1 million Americans and 7,500+ communities nationwide in celebrating the afterschool programs that keep our kids safe, inspire them to learn and help working families. http://bit.ly/r2kP2n

Bullying: It Stops Here

CNN, Facebook, Cartoon Network and Time Inc. have teamed up for a special multi-platform effort aimed at taking a stand to help stop the bullying crisis. Tune in to the AC360° Town Hall “Bullying: It Stops Here” which first aired last Sunday, October 9. It is re-airing this week along with a special week-long series that follows.

Join the conversation by leaving your thoughts, stories and messages in a comment below. Follow @AndersonCooper and @AC360 and use hashtag "#stopbullying" on Twitter.

If you or someone you know is experiencing bullying or harassment, please reach out for help. Here are some organizations that can assist you:

Suicide Prevention Lifeline

The Trevor Project

Pacer Center's Kids Against Bullying

Anatomy of a Grant Proposal

As we get so many requests for grant-writing assistance, we're re-posting this wonderful piece by Florence Green, originally appearing on Guidestar's website. It has terrific, practical resources and tools ...

As nonprofits across the country seek funding for their increasingly important work, developing winning grant proposals is more important than ever. Your nonprofit colleagues have shared these free resources on IdeaEncore for both the beginner as well as the experienced grant writer.

Check out these tool kits, guides, and articles on grant writing basics:

• Basic Grant Writing from Merrimack Valley Food Bank, Inc. includes practical tips for researching grants and writing a proposal, including what actions to take when the grant has been received or denied.
• Grantwriting: Basics for Beginners, from grant writing expert Carol Geisbauer is invaluable for people who are new to grant writing.
• University of Kansas's Community Tool Box contains information on almost every aspect of nonprofits, including a guide for writing a grant that includes an outline of the important components of a grant proposal.

Check out these resources for more in-depth information and guidance on specific components of a grant proposal:

• The Center for Nonprofit Excellence, United Way of Central New Mexico, has shared how-to guides about the specific components that most grant proposals should include.

  • Grant Writing Toolkit—Needs Statement will help you draft a needs statement, one of the first and most important components of any proposal.
  • Grant Writing Toolkit—Program Plan will guide you through writing a program plan for your proposal.
• Grantwriting—Program Development, from Carol Geisbauer Grantwriting, addresses program development—an important first step that can, when done right, facilitate the process of grant writing.
• Samples of Grant Proposal Components contains a compilation of samples for each of the 11 components of a grant proposal. It was assembled with permission from successfully funded grant proposals shared on IdeaEncore for a series that appeared in GrantStation.
• If You Evaluate It, They Will Fund: Program Evaluation Essentials, a presentation from Cecilia Harris on Nonprofit Webinars, discusses the importance of program evaluation in attracting grants and foundation funding.

How useful did you find this article? Give us your feedback

Flo Green, IdeaEncore Network
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Florence (Flo) Green is co-founder and vice president of IdeaEncore Network (www.ideaencore.com) which envisions a future in which every nonprofit shares what they know. Nonprofits can use our online information resource exchange to save time/money by reusing shared knowledge; by uploading files/links for others to use (for free or to sell); by making their expertise visible by "liking," rating, and commenting; and by embedding their branded online libraries—that display IdeaEncore resources—within their Web sites.

Celebrate Make a Difference Day on October 22

For more than 20 years, USA WEEKEND Magazine and HandsOn Network have joined together to sponsor Make A Difference Day, Millions of Americans will unite in a common mission to improve the lives of others on Saturday, October 22, 2011. http://bit.ly/oYeiQD

Working with Board Members

Lessons in Working With Trustees

By Holly Hall

Holly Hall, an editor at The Chronicle, is contributing guest posts based on her reporting from the annual meeting of BoardSource, an organization that seeks to help trustees to do their jobs better. The conference took place last week in Atlanta.

Why do we need you?

That’s what anybody recruiting a board member should address before making a pitch. But nearly nobody does.

Most people neglect to say which skills matter and instead assure potential board members that the job won’t be much work. What they should say, says Susan Decker, a senior consultant at BoardSource, is exactly what talents and connections the charity wants to tap in a potential board member.

Ms. Decker offered that tip as part of a two-day course in Atlanta for trustees and staff leaders that covered nonprofit boards’ responsibilities and how to train new trustees.

While the course was not inexpensive—$895, or $795 for BoardSource members—participants were provided with numerous tips, several books, and a thick binder of sample policies and exercises for trustees. They also received reading materials on topics such as dealing with problematic trustees and the relationship between the board chair and chief executive.

Among the tips that Ms. Decker and others shared during the course.:

• Create a special orientation for board chairmen. Many charities provide an orientation for new trustees, but people who lead the board may not get everything they need from such programs. The skills and abilities those trustees need to be successful are markedly different from those of rank-and-file board members.

• Recruit board members with good skills in listening and building  consensus. “Soft skills,” such as the ability to be diplomatic while asking hard questions, are just as important when recruiting board members as other skills such as legal expertise and desirable qualities such as ethnic diversity. But charities and board nominating committees often ignore soft skills.

• Create “dashboards” for nonprofit board members that show key pieces of data at a glance. Board members, worried about their responsibility to provide fiscal oversight, often spend enormous amounts of time on minute details of financial reports when they could instead undertake more productive activities to lead the organization.

To avoid this tendency, charity leaders should create a “dashboard” of key, easy-to-understand financial information that can be quickly shared at every meeting.

While every organization is different, a financial dashboard could include the current and prior-year figures for the following: cash balances in checking, savings, and other accounts; endowed funds, if any; current revenue compared with projections; expenses; and operating reserves.

Save Service in America - Sign This Letter

Urge Congress to Step Back from the Cliff -- Sign Letter to Save Service

Respond by Friday, October 7th, 8 PM EST/5 PM PST

Action Item: Sign a letter to save service.

As you know, last week the House introduced a bill that would eliminate the Corporation for National and Community Service.

In response, the Save Service Coalition is spearheading a letter to appropriators to Save Service. We really need your organization and the organizations you serve on this letter. We know that you and thousands of local agencies depend on national service and the human capital that it provides to meet increased demand in communities across the country.

This is the time to show Congress that the Corporation and its programs have deep support in those communities. YOU know that abolishing the Corporation will:

• Withdraw vital support from 70,000 nonprofit organizations that rely on national service members to fill the gap between the services that state and local governments are able to provide and what citizens require.
• Remove nearly $1 billion in private, philanthropic dollars leveraged by organizations across the country.
• Lead to the elimination of more than 80,000 AmeriCorps positions nationwide, when over 500,000 applied for those slots last year.

Elimination of the Corporation is fiscally irresponsible and a bad decision for the American people. Signing this letter makes that case to Congress and lets Members know what the impact is in their Districts.

To add your organization's name to the growing list of signers, please sign up online.  The deadline is Friday, October 7 at 8 PM EST/5PM PST.

Click here for a .pdf draft of the letter.

Thank you for your continued passion.

PS -- If you have concerns about whether you can sign this letter as a 501(c)(3), please click here.

 

National Safe Schools Day is TODAY!

Back-to-school time conjures up images of bright yellow school buses, fresh pencils and notebooks, and green schoolyards to play in at recess. But this picturesque ideal ignores a sobering truth: America’s schools are not safe places for all students. According to GLSEN’s 2009 National School Climate Survey, 61.1% of LGBT students felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and nearly one in five were physically assaulted (e.g., punched, kicked, injured with a weapon) because of their sexual orientation.

Tragic events in recent weeks remind us that there is so much work left to do in order to make schools safe and affirming places for all students. October 5th is National Safe Schools Day – an opportunity to spread awareness of the situation of our schools and work together to change the school environments that fail to protect our youth.

Across the country today – from Michigan to Massachusetts, from California to Arkansas – activists are organizing a variety of events to champion this important cause. The Safe Schools Action Network is hosting a rallies in various cities, including Washington, DC, to support local safe schools campaigns.

Can't be in our nation’s capital for the rally? There’s plenty of work you can do in your own community! Check out GLSEN’s guide on making a positive difference in the wake of multiple tragedies across the country in the past few weeks.

Celebrate National Safe Schools Day on October 5th by taking action to make America’s schools respectful, affirming, and safe places for all students.

National Bullying Prevention Month

Everyone—students, parents, educators, community members—has a voice in raising awareness of bullying.

National Bullying Prevention Month (October) unites communities nationwide to promote bullying prevention through creative resources designed to engage, educate, and inspire. All schools, organizations, and communities are invited to partner with PACER on this important issue. PACER offers free web-based resources that can be used by schools, parents, and students to promote bullying prevention. Activities include interactive websites, classroom toolkits, letter-writing campaigns, contests, live events, and much more!

PACER offers free toolkits for student-led activities and downloadable posters and other visual displays, as well as bookmarks and other promotional items. Everyone is encouraged to sign the online "The End of Bullying Begins with Me" petition.

Whether you are an educator, student, family, or individual you can take an active role during the month, other exciting opportunities include:

• Sign up as a National Partner (national organizations) or Champion Against Bullying (schools, local organizations)
• Add your name to the digital “The End of Bullying Begins With Me” petition
• Talk with your local media about bullying prevention and the activities happening in your own community
• Order bullying prevention bookmarks
• Share your story, poem, artwork or video
• Hold a community event
• Tell why “you care about bullying prevention”
• Spread the word on social media
• Use PACER’s creative classroom toolkits to raise awareness
• Visit the ACT section of TeensAgainstBullying

Save AmeriCorps

The Save Service Coalition learned yesterday that the House of Representatives has issued draft legislation to shut down the Corporation for National and Community Service and eliminate funding for AmeriCorps, the Social Innovation Fund, the Volunteer Generation Fund and Learn & Serve America. While we are pleased that the House bill includes funding for the National Senior Volunteer Programs, the bill dissolves the entire service enterprise, cuts over 100,000 jobs, and eliminates essential services that children, seniors, veterans and entire communities rely on.

Please visit the Save Service Take Action page to write and call your Members of Congress immediately to prevent this House bill from becoming law.

All of this comes at a time when the nation's investment in service should be growing to create jobs and better provide services to local communities. We will continue to work with the tens of thousands of Americans who are engaged in the Save Service initiative to ensure our country's policymakers recognize the value national service provides to our country and the critical role that the Corporation for National and Community Service plays in support of the 70,000 nonprofit and community organizations that mobilize Americans in service.

As we said with the slight glimmer of good news that we shared regarding the Senate's mark last week, this is a marathon not a sprint. We will continue to mobilize to fight all threatened cuts until we reach the finish line. But, we will need your help.

Again, we need you to make your voice heard immediately. Please visit the Save Service Take Action page to write and call your Members of Congress today.

U.S. Charitable Giving: 5 Quick Facts

• Total charitable giving has increased in current dollars in every year since tracking began in 1954 except in: 1987, 2008, and 2009.

• Total charitable giving was 2% of Gross Domestic Product in 2010, a decline from the level of 2.3% seen in 2000 and 2005.
• There are more than 1.28M registered 501(c)(3) organizations with the IRS. But in June 2011, 275K lost their tax-exempt status for failure to file legally required documents.
• Family foundations provided approximately 48% of all grants by independent, community, and operating foundations in 2010.
• The largest pledged gift in 2010 was $250 million worth of art and furniture from George M. and Linda H. Kaufman to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

These statistics can be found in the annual report: Giving USA 2011.