Bottom Line: Four Workshops That Will Help Your Nonprofit Survive the Economic Crisis

To help nonprofit managers navigate the choppy waters ahead, TSNE is offering a series of free workshops focused on quick – but essential – information that can help your organization sustain itself through the crisis.

We are putting the finishing touches on the series and will send an email notification as soon as registration opens. To receive details and registration information, sign up for the TSNe-Training Announcements list.

Third Annual Be the Media Mini-Conference

Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of
New Media for Grassroots Organizations

The annual Be the Media Mini-Conference will help participants understand the link between strategic communications and organizing strategies as well as learn more about essential communications tools and techniques.

Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Time: 9 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. (lunch provided)
Location: NonProfit Center
Cost: $15 – $35 sliding scale, includes lunch
Sponsored by: Progressive Communicators Network and Third Sector New England
Co-sponsored by: Project Think Different, Boston Women’s Fund, Resist and Press Pass TV

Communications and media work are powerful tools for organizers and nonprofits working on community and social issues, but they can also present challenges, particularly for under-resourced groups.

In recent years, the development of new media tools such as social networking sites, blogs with multi-media content, YouTube and cell phones as mass communication devices have both given groups more options and raised questions about where to focus already limited staff and volunteer time. At this year’s conference, we will explore not only how to implement these tools, but identify what are their best and most impactful uses for grassroots organizations.

The conference is designed to serve change makers at levels of communication experience including those who are doing communications work as part of their current positions, such as organizers, executive directors or policy advocates.

Massachusetts nonprofit social media survey

Being very interested in how nonprofits are using social media ourselves, we’d like to pass along a survey whose results we look forward to seeing.

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Talance is launching the Massachusetts Nonprofit Social Media Survey, whose objective is to gauge how Massachusetts nonprofits are using social media.

The results will help delineate where nonprofits fall in social media adoption rates, how that varies (for example by the size of the org), and what kind of benefits they’re receiving from their efforts. The findings will provide solid practical value for nonprofits that want to benchmark their own practices.

The survey will be open until Nov. 21, 2008.

Anyone can receive a free executive summary of the survey results when they become available this winter. Every organization that submits a completed survey will receive a complimentary copy of the full survey report, available in February.

Registration now open for Capacity Building Training Series

Beginning this fall, we will offer nine (9) workshops designed to help you make a clearer connection between daily management functions and organizational mission — and develop systems that support this alignment.

The workshops will be held monthly from September to November 2008 and January to June 2009 at TSNE’s NonProfit Center. Workshop topics include fund development, financial literacy, marketing and communications, and governance.

You can enroll in one workshop or in multiple workshops. Each will provide you with field-tested tools and concepts to take back to the office to use and share.

The cost for each three-and-one-half-hour session is only $79 (the full-day Effective Supervision workshop is $99), and a discount of $40 will be offered for organizations that enroll in five or more different workshops at the time of registration. TSNE is also offering a discount of $10 off the workshop price for each additional person attending the same workshop from the same organization.

Register now! Space is limited, so register early to ensure availability.

TSNE Capacity Building Fund Grants

The Capacity Building Fund (CBF), a program of Third Sector New England, is announcing another round of grants for 2008. It is a two-part process, beginning with Letters of Intent to Plan that are due on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, by noon. We are holding information sessions later this month to provide an overview of the grants and the application process.

Full details on the guidelines and application process can be found on our website. Please review all information about the Capacity Building Fund, particularly the Letter of Intent to Plan guidelines. We encourage you to read the application in its entirety.

Information Sessions in July

The CBF will be hosting information sessions, and while not mandatory, interested parties should plan to attend one of the following meetings:

Using Google Analytics?

Google Analytics now offers benchmarking statistics. Google looks at the data to determine which category it belongs in, and then removes any identifying information so that your data is anonymous when it goes into the benchmarking aggregate.

However, “for sites of a similar size, a category of industry verticals can be chosen when there is a sufficient number of accounts in that category.” Which means in order to compare your statistics to an appropriate category, there have to be enough organizations signed up.

So if you’re already using Google Analytics, sign up! (Especially any nonprofit capacity building organizations out there…) Hopefully they’re not too far off from being able to flesh out a nonprofit vertical – you could be the last organization they need to add a category.

(For now, categories under “Society” hold the most promise.)

Idealist.org June Promotion

Need to post a job? Idealist, an interactive website where people and organizations can locate opportunities and supporters, is inviting all nonprofit organizations to post their job openings for free throughout the month of June.