Capacity-building tools Tuesday (December 4, 2018)

Tools and Resources

• Join the conversation: Good alternative to Eventbrite (r/nonprofit)
• Folks of r/nonprofit, looking for input demonstrates the power of the subreddit nonprofit. Ask questions; offer solutions, advice, or support; learn something along the way.
• From Case Foundation, November 30 (newsletter):

  In 2016, the Milken Institute collaborated with the U.S. Small Business Administration to form the Partnership for Lending and Underserved Markets (PLUM). The goal was to "develop actionable solutions to long-standing barriers that constrain minority entrepreneurs from accessing capital to start and grow business." The institute formed pilot programs in Baltimore and Los Angeles, documenting their research along the way.
  
  This month, the PLUM initiative released a capstone report that investigates the current state of minority-owned small business in order to identify actionable solutions. The report gives seven strategies to overcome capital access barriers, including increased transparency of small business lender engagement and coordinated economic development. Read more about the research, and their solutions, here.

  
• Polaroider turns your pics into Polaroid-like snaps. The free tool has limited capabilities but is cool, still. One limitation is that the modified pictures download as PDFs, not image files.
• How to Make Your LinkedIn Company Page Stand Out is full of actionable tasks. Read, act! (Social Media Examiner)
• Care2's 7 Surprising Benefits of Volunteering is written for people. But can nonprofits and governments use the information to encourage people to volunteer?
• Looking for quotes? Check out swissmiss' collection.
• The 2019 Cause Awareness & Giving Day Calendar for Nonprofits is here! (Nonprofit Tech for Good)

At work

• Author Julie Zhou writes in The Making of a Manager: a Handbook for New Leaders:

  I’m not an expert manager. Most Friday afternoons I end up thinking of all the ways I wish I’d done better that week for my team — listened better, coached better, directed better, managed my own psyche better. I imagine I'll look back in another ten or twenty years and shake my head at all the things that seem hard today.
  
  But when Stephanie and Leah, editors extraordinaire from Penguin reached out to me about the idea of writing a book, they helped me realize something: that for a certain segment of managers — namely people thinking about management, or new to it, or still navigating their way to confidence in their first few years — the fact that I’m not an expert and still remember very clearly what it’s like to grapple with questions like "what’s the best way to deliver bad news?" or "how can I make my meetings suck less?" or "how can I improve my relationship with my report?" gave me half the reason that I should write this book now.

  So maybe plan on buying copies for all your managers, supervisors, volunteer leaders, and others this March. (h/t swissmiss)
• LinkedIn Unveils its New LinkedIn Pages, with Updated Sharing Options and Improved Management Tools (Social Media Today via Nonprofit Tech for Good)

Learn something

• Faves December 4-15 from 42 Free Nonprofit Webinars For December 2018 : Engaging the Volunteer of the Future (December 4), Fundraising Forecast 2020 (December 5), Learning To Share Your Sandbox: Developing Effective Partnership Agreements (December 6), Data Enrichment 101: Best Practices to Optimize Your Donor Database (December 13).
• The best kind of network is the one you build when you don’t need help is as true for your personal life as it is for your work life. Take the time to read this. And share.
• Build Staff Buy-In for Volunteer Engagement, December 13. Free.
• Do you work with data? Do data viz? Check out Data Journalism to help you up your game.
• The 2019 Best Nonprofit Conferences Calendar (Every Action via Nonprofit Tech for Good)

Good reads

• I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me a lot happier — and that's a big problem for social media companies (CNBC) and comments on Hacker News.
• Revelations in a Wheelchair: A recently disabled New York City photographer gets an education in the discrimination that people like him must face. (NYT via swissmiss)
• The world's 17 goals:

  In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 goals for a better world by 2030. These goals have the power to end poverty, fight inequality and stop climate change. Guided by the goals, it is now up to all of us, governments, businesses, civil society and the general public to work together to build a better future for everyone.

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