1. List Your Priorities of Programming Ideas
2. Elements to Use in Action Steps/Approaches/Strategies (Working Together)

• Strategic Planning (What, where, when and why baseline)
• Maximizing Assets: People, Organization, Effort, Space, Allocation of costs, Labeling, Cost allocation plan, Assignment of job function.
• Referral and Intake Systems
• Cross Pollination: Using resources already available and maximizing capacity.
• Whom do you serve: Geography, community, age and service type. (Who shows up in the Service Plan or the Strategic Plan?)
• Reality Check on ability to serve
• Equal Access Goal (Where are the cases? Where are the resources?) Geo coding for allocating resources. (Transportation weight to consider. How do you manage yourself to complete all of your daily tasks?)
• Low Lying Fruit
• 20-40 Minute Rule
• Day Job Syndrome (Capacity to change, evolve, develop vs. the day to day job) (Capacity to change, evolve, develop vs. the day to day job)
• Investment Risk Scale of Capital (Can what I am committed to doing be used for something else if I am wrong?)
• Management Choices for change vs. Institutional Choices for change
• Defining Outcomes
• Branding: Ownership, reporting, sharing, confidence and leadership
• Communication: web, telecommunicating, Co-location, transparency, team responsibility, and risk
• Continuous Quality Improvement (How do you learn?)
• How do you compete? Niche vs. General and Narrow vs. Broad. What does your mission allow?
• Who are my Funders?

1. 1. Donors
   2. Foundations
   3. State
   4. Federal
   5. City/Town
   6. Community
   7. Individuals
   8. Your Organizations Assets

If you are interested in overcoming barriers check out the previous post:

http://mynonprofitwebsite.com/blog/2008/04/30/nonprofits-evolution/

How do you stretch a dollar at your nonprofit? You accept more in kind contributions. Know what you use consistently each month and letting the community know what that is, will provide a means for businesses to donate if they do not have the cash. It is amazing how quickly it adds up. For example, a specific toner cartridge costs $20 plus, a ream of paper $4, toilet paper $7 (family size), paper towels $6 (family size), gas cards, etc.

Use your web site and solicitations to inform a person or business how they can help all year long. If your nonprofit is only asking in November and December, your placing your request at risk of ending up in what i call the Maybe Motivated Pile.

In the last two months of the year I received 63 requests for donations from nonprofits and picked three. However, certain solicitations during the year stood out and received a donation to fulfill our family contributions.

My point:  Make giving a year long process and provide for many levels of opportunities to inform and have people participate in the organization.

It is important for a nonprofit to plan on how it is going to raise money or support for its organization. To help nonprofits in their outline of the planning the process I have provided 6 questions below.

1. Do you have a Strategic Plan?

2. Do you have a Development Plan?

3. Is the Development Plan incorporated into the Strategic Plan?

4. Can you describe for your nonprofit each outcome in three sentences or less?

5. Is each outcome for the nonprofit something that can be publicize?

6. Do you know what it costs the nonprofit to deliver each outcome?

If you answer no to any of the six, your nonprofit needs to improve to be more successful in raising money.

This week in observing Earth Day my six year old and I had fun in the woods.  His conversation went something like this;

“The world is perfect and correct when I am walking in the woods. Then, next winter we cut down trees and in the spring we use them to cook our food. Then we use the leaves to make the fire with. The planet is real. It is important for animals to live on the earth; us too.

Are we an animal??

We need to be nice to nature, do not kick nature and kill it. If we are nice to nature, it will be nice to us.  We take care of nature like pets.”

Today we planted 26 trees that were grown by us and involved no use of vehicle transportation  to an area effected by construction and used fallen trees to cook our dinner and conserve our use of foreign fuels.  Any organization with its staff or community can start trees in a small space to be used elsewhere locally.

What measure of return does a donor want or expect to receive with their donation?

What percent of success does the donor expect?

What is a passing grade for a program to be considered successful?

Depending on the service or population there are results on many programs throughout the country. A passing grade ranges from 60%-100%.

If the donor invested the money they would expect a minimum return of a government bond around 5%. If the donor invested in their retirement future, a return of 8%-15% would more likely be expected.

Therefore, can the organization provide a report to the donors as to what outcome the organization achieved with their donation?

The time of accepting donations and not reporting back is closing. Organizations need to be able to report outcomes.

Harvard University Faculty are using the Internet to publicly release their articles.  The power of exposure to the masses will increase circulation of their articles.  The articles will be available for free.

It was found that the circulation of their articles in expensive scholarly journals was limiting their exposure to a small group of people and not providing sufficient access and  exposure of their works.

Distribution of their research  as widely as possible will likely create more collaborations and opportunities.

The same is true in the sharing of successful programs and their outcomes.  The use of the Internet  is a great tool for promoting an organizations brand and successes.

Where is the leadership? How many have to die? Thousands of youth killed by youth. Youth have been speaking out and seeking relief but find adults not willing to listen and support them. WHO MUST BE SACRIFICED IN DEATH TO MAKE THE ISSUE IMPORTANT?
How many Virginia Tech’s, Northern Illinois and Columbine’ killings have to happen before you pay attention to the crisis? Did the government forget to tell us that there was another battle going on here in this country?

What donor will make an impact? What organizations will make an impact? What will Obama, Clinton, or McCain do about this War in the USA? Which Candidate has the ability to reach this generation and have the biggest impact? What will you do?

Serious issues and Generation O wants to be heard. EMO speaks out through his weekly cartoon: http://mynonprofitwebsite.com/blog/category/emo-cartoon/

In 2004 in the USA:
Total Homicide deaths 16,611
Total Suicide deaths 31,647
Total Injuries due to Firearm deaths 29,036

Ages 1-4 Homicide is 4th likely means of death (354) 2.2 per 100,000 (car accidents is first)
Ages 5-14 Homicide is 4th likely means of death (318) .8 per 100,000 (car accidents is first)
Ages 5-14 Suicide is 5th likely means of death (292) .7 per 100,000 (car accidents is first)
Ages 15-24 Homicide is 2nd likely means of death (4,877) 11.7 per 100,000 (car accidents is first)
Ages 15-24 Suicide is 3rd likely means of death (4,214) 10.1 per 100,000 (car accidents is first)
Ages 25-44 Homicide is 5th likely means of death (4,877) 8.5 per 100,000 (car accidents is first)
Ages 25-44 Suicide is 4th likely means of death (11,403) 13.6 per 100,000 (car accidents is first)

With the billions being spent overseas to keep other countries safer for their citizens, many individuals are at risk here. Should there be a stronger policy on domestic violence? How many people must die before we each make it a priority. I ask, is it time to declare War against the youth dying in our own streets each day?

Protect our Children: Create the support to stop the thousands killed each year by those who kill. Teach our youth and citizens that killing others does not solve the problem or that killing of one self does not solve the problem.

I recently came across thesimpledollar.com. A web site dedicated to making your money saving simple. The sight was set up by Trent Hamm,  who in April 2006 went through a complete financial meltdown.  You can read more about him at (read my “financial biography” here). He addresses your every day concern of throwing yourself head first into trying to figure out every nuance of fixing your financial situation. He uses himself as an example of what he did to get the picture and within eight months had paid off all of his credit card debt, his vehicle, and also established an emergency fund. He says,

“What is The Simple Dollar? http://www.thesimpledollar.com.
The Simple Dollar is an exploration of personal finance from the perspective of a late-twentysomething who just realized that he needs to get a grip on his money. ”

His list of 100 great ways to save money can be found by clicking on this link.

For my spouse, five and nine year old the setting was all set for Sunday to watch the football game with popcorn. We were to watch the New England Patriots against the Superbowl Champs the Colts. Both teams are undefeated for the season.

Wrong: First commercial, I am scrambling to stop the showing of a advertisement of an R rated film of about a killer. The first time was a big surprise, the second and third time just got me me to have to rethink what to have as the family event. It is not my intent to subject my children to watching over and over images of someone creating massive amounts of killing.

So instead of a relaxing family time I had to manage someones lack of judgement and inattentiveness to children for an event I thought was for families. This is not the first time major league football has been broiled in controversy of whether an action is family appropriate. If you take the track record of the commercialization of the football event I would advocate that it be given a rating of PG-13.

Family events are important to instilling values into each other as a family unit. Children learn from their parents. Violence is not a value I wish to instill to my children.

I want to instill the positive aspect of sports, such as working as a team, the use of strength, thinking and outwitting the opponent as positive. The constant message of conveying excitement to seeing “The Killer” was just way inappropriate. Which impression does the football wish to leave on a child? Violent actions are not. Youth violence is up. Who is to blame? What is the Cause? Which image does the football league want children and their families to remember?

I have already decided that the Football games are inappropriate for the five and nine year old due to the uncensored nature of the commercialization. Trust is an important condition a customer should be able to have from a business and the National Football League does not take that seriously enough.

I challenge the National Football League and its teams to make a difference among their fan base as well as their home states to support youth violence and domestic violence prevention programs.

Science has provided an outcome for which no organization is prepared. The chance of survival after a brain injury has become increasingly likely. However, that does not match the resources available for long-term or permanent care being needed. The costs are enormous and living in the community requires resources to be developed in many cases from scratch. Surviving a car accident or a war injury are two of the largest growing areas. Just in the past two years for the US military 30,327 individuals were diagnosed with injuries sufficient to be labeled wounded. Another 20,000 were not considered wounded but have brain injuries. The military, government and nonprofit sector are ill prepared to handle the volume of need. So those in need wait and despair.

Which organizations can provide the will and commitment to build the capacity?