What I’ve learned from working with mission-based organizations

 

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned, in no particular order:

1. You need to make sure that your mission, operations, and desired outcomes are aligned with each other.
2. Movements for equity, inclusion, and belonging have the potential to revolutionize both mission-based organizations and philanthropy.
3. Carefully tailored one-to-one desk-side coaching usually increases a worker’s effectiveness much more quickly than classroom training.
4. The nonprofit/philanthropic sector in Massachusetts is different from the analogous sector in any other state in the U.S.A.
5. Poverty is an insufficient reward for devoting one’s professional life to a nonprofit organization.
6. In a mission-based organization, many problems that initially appear to be about information and communication technology are really about organizational culture, knowledge management, or a combination of organizational culture and knowledge management.
7. Age discrimination is alive and well in mission-based organizations.
8. It makes much more sense to aim to run a nonprofit organization like a highly effective organization, rather than to aim to run it like a business. There’s nothing inherently superior (or inferior) about businesses.
9. Every human being is eligible to help others and to be helped by others; moreover, it’s a mistake to stigmatize being helped by others.
10. Bringing token members of various demographic minorities into the building isn’t enough; real power means being at the table when crucial information is disseminated and crucial decisions are made.
11. When you decide to solve a problem, you need help from the people who are deeply affected by the problem in order to determine:

• the real nature of the problem
• the possible solutions
• a clear and specific idea of what success in solving the problem would look like

I invite you to leave comments about what lessons you’ve learned from working with mission-based organizations!

Or, if you prefer to send me a private message, you can do so by using the form shown below:

 

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Workforce development for the nonprofit tech professionals of the future: It will be a consortium, not a building with a dome!

 

It’s been about a year and a half since I starting agitating for a Massachusetts Institute of Nonprofit Technology, an initiative that will kick off by training the nonprofit data analysts of the future.

The concept has morphed and evolved a great deal in that time, thanks to all the great input from Massachusetts stakeholders, but also from a team of ELP fellows from the Center for Collaborative Leadership.

One thing that is quite clear is that there is no need to create a new institution, or raise up a building with a splendid dome.  (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology can rest easy, without fear of competition, or brand encroachment.)  I believe that all of the necessary institutions exist already here in the Bay State.  What is needed is a consortium that can knit them together for this purpose, some funding, and some candidates.

It’s a pipeline, or perhaps a career ladder that the consortium needs to build – not an edifice.  Although I love the splendid domes of MIT, we can simply admire them, and hope that eventually some of the people who work and study under those domes will become part of the consortium.

Here’s what I think we need:

1.  Allies from workforce development, job readiness, and college readiness programs.  These are the folks who will raise awareness of the coming need for technology professionals who can provide data analysis and other data services to nonprofits, and guide them to the next rung of the career ladder. Examples include Economic Mobility Pathways (EMPath), Shriver Job Corps, International Institute of New England, JFYnet, Jobs For the Future, National Fund for Workforce Solutions, SkillWorks, Boston PIC, YearUp, and Massachusetts Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
2. Allies who provide relevant training and education to candidates who aspire to careers in data services and data analytics for nonprofits.  Examples include Bunker Hill Community College and Tech Foundry.
3. An organization that is able to place, mentor, and coach candidates in entry level data services positions at local nonprofit organizations.  That’s TNB Labs.  These entry level workers will be known as “data support analysts,” or DSAs.
4. Allies from local nonprofit organizations who are willing to host (and pay for the services of) a DSA for a period of one or two years.  TNB Labs will be the official employer of these workers, providing them with a salary, benefits, a modest sum for further professional development, coaching, and mentoring.  The DSAs will be working on site at the nonprofit organizations and dedicating themselves to tasks assigned by the nonprofits.  Examples of distinguished nonprofits that could play this role are Community Servings, Saint Francis House, Community Catalyst, Health Care For All, Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, Perkins School, City Year, Jewish Family & Children’s Services, Cambridge Health Alliance, Family Service of Greater Boston, Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, Greater Boston Food Bank, the Boston Foundation, AIDS Action Committee, and the Home for Little Wanderers.  (Not that they’ve actually signed on for this, but that they would be great members of this consortium.)

At the conclusion of the one or two year placement at a nonprofit organization, I think that any of the following outcomes would count as a win:

• The host nonprofit hires the DSA (with a raise and a promotion) as a long term regular employee.
• The DSA lands a job providing data services at another nonprofit organization.
• The DSA lands a job in a different field or sector that is congruent with his/her/their career aspirations.
• The DSA is able to apply to a four-year degree program, transferring course credits, on the job experience, two-year degrees, or certifications that he/she/they have earned.

The latter scenario – of advancing in higher education – brings us to the final category of allies needed for our consortium.  The best example of this kind of ally is UMass-Boston, which has programs in related areas, such as:

• Information Technology (undergraduate degree)
  
• Nonprofit Management (graduate degree)
  
• Human Services (graduate degree)
  
• Public Administration (graduate degree)
  
• Program Evaluation (graduate level certificate)

In addition, our consortium has a great ally in an individual UMass-Boston faculty member, Michael Johnson, whose research focus is decision science for community-based organizations.  He has expressed a generous desire to be a mentor to community college students in this career ladder, and to encourage those who are qualified to apply to be Ph.D. students in this field.

And that’s just UMass-Boston!  I’m not as familiar with the offerings of other distinguished colleges and universities in the area, but the Boston University program in nonprofit management and leadership , the Nonprofit Leadership program at Wheelock, and the Institute for Nonprofit Practice at Tufts come to mind immediately as potential allies.

So here we are. The need is there for data service providers who can serve the missions, programs, and operations of nonprofit organizations.  If we can weave all these allies together into a network, we can meet these needs.

All that we require is:

• Allies who are ready, willing, and able to pitch in.
• Public awareness that this career ladder is available.
• Funding to assist candidates cannot afford tuition for college coursework and other forms of training.
• Funding to assist nonprofits that would like to host a data service analyst from this program, but lack the (modest) funding to support one.

Let’s do this!

“Don’t tell anyone what we’re doing”

 

Back in the 20th century, when I first started working in Massachusetts in the field of nonprofit technology, it seemed to me that the unofficial motto of every nonprofit was “Don’t tell anyone what we’re doing, because if you do, they’ll know what we’re doing.”

I wish I could tell you the story of my first experience with this tacit rule, but the people involved are still living, and they would never want me to mention their names or give anyone any information about the programs that they ran.  So please use your imagination.  All I can say is that all of the relevant facts about this organization’s programs are freely available to today on this organization’s web site, for anyone who cares to look it up. As far as I know, providing the names and phone numbers of the people directing the sites at which the programs are offered has not led to any catastrophes.

We’ve come a long way in the Massachusetts nonprofit sector, thanks to leadership from folks at organizations such as the Boston Foundation, the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, and the Caring Force at the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers.  They have done some hard work in fostering collaboration, and with collaboration comes more freely shared information about what each nonprofit is doing.  (In my opinion, sometimes information sharing is the cause, and sometimes it’s the effect.)

I’m much obliged to people who have taught me a lot about the importance of nonprofit collaboration, such as Tom McLaughlin (who does a great deal of hands-on work to make it happen), Heather MacIndoe (who is doing academic research on the interplay of nonprofit collaboration and competition in the Boston area), and Susan Labandibar (who is pioneering some important new ideas about how nonprofit technology assistance providers can support organizations in collaborating for greater mission success.)

However, the new spirit of openness is much more than a regional phenomenon; it is an information age phenomenon.  As Beth Kanter and Allison Fine have explained in their groundbreaking book, The Networked Nonprofit, we are living an age where every stakeholder is a free agent online.  People who have strong ties or no ties at all to a nonprofit can use any number of social media channels to make facts and opinions about the organization available to everyone. While the privacy and security of client data is still an extremely high priority, nonprofits have already lost most of the battles in the war against transparency.  So they might as well embrace the practice of sharing information with other organizations and start looking for ways to make their programs, operations, and missions complementary.

Transparency, accountability, and collaboration in the nonprofit sector are mostly positive developments – especially when compared to obsession with control, covering up wrongdoings, and stonewalling. As Louis Brandeis said, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Even if it were not, it’s clear that greater openness is now a fact of life in our culture.  Our focus should not be on fighting the information age, but in balancing between its imperatives and the need to respect the privacy of the innocent and vulnerable.

 

Pro bono help for Boston area nonprofit professionals: Three opportunities

I am often asked if I can offer pro bono assistance to nonprofit organizations that need help aligning their technology strategies with their overall organizational strategies.

The good news is that there are three different events in the near future where I’ll be offering pro bono strategic tech consultations:

1. At the Annkissam table, October 29th. (Massachusetts Nonprofit Network Conference & Expo, Sheraton Framingham.)  I will also be one of the facilitators at a conference workshop on knowledge management for small nonprofits, along with Mollie Murphy, Kevin Palmer, and Jim Fisk.  For more information, please follow this link.
2. At the Venture Cafe on November 3rd. (Cambridge Innovation Center, Kendall Square.)  The co-hosts of this event are Annkissam, Tech Networks of Boston, and 501Partners.  I will be one of 21 nonprofit technology mavens!  This event is currently booked to capacity, but you can put yourself on the waiting list by following this link.
3. At the Annkissam table, November 17th, (Providers Council Convention & Expo, Boston Marriot Copley Place.)  For more information, please follow this link.

When I provide strategic pro bono assistance to nonprofits, it’s on the following basis:

• No charge to the nonprofit organization
• No sales pitches to the nonprofit organization
• No further obligation on the part of the nonprofit organization

If you are a Boston area nonprofit professional in need of strategic technology assistance, then I hope to see you at one or more of these events!

Data Day 2013 in Boston

 

I’m excited about Data Day at Northeastern University tomorrow, which is being co-hosted by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Boston Indicators Project.

I’ll be offering pro bono strategic tech consults at this event; my time is being underwritten by Tech Networks of Boston. If you’re planning to attend, please come say hello to me! Just look for this sign.

 

And now, a word from your Senior Technical Advisor and Strategist…

I am totally delighted to announce that I have joined Tech Networks of Boston as their Senior Technical Advisor and Strategist.  It’s a pleasure to count as immediate colleagues my friends Susan Labandibar and Michael Fenter, and to be working with the client engagement team headed up by the awesome John Marchiony!

Here’s the TNB mission:

• Engage with people at all levels of the client organization so that they can learn, manage information, and communicate easily in a safe and supportive computing environment.
• Use experience, skills, and knowledge to help our clients build a mature information technology function that aligns with organizational mission and goals.
• Enable nonprofit organizations to use innovative and effective information technology tools to serve human needs.

Talk about mission alignment!  I’ve already dedicated my professional life to these goals (plus a few others), but now I will be an integral part of an organization whose motto is “we’re better together,” rather than a lone nut! The ultimate in desired outcomes is that the world will be a better place, because the organizations that Tech Networks of Boston is serving will be succeeding in their missions.

At the same time, I want to assure my current clients that I will continue to be available to them on the usual basis, whenever they wish.  My commitment to TNB is for four-fifths time, to allow me to continue to work with clients as a solo practitioner.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to be in touch through the usual channels.  You are also welcome to contact me at my new office:

Tech Networks of Boston
1 Wadleigh Place
South Boston, MA  02127
617.269.0299 x (359)
888.527.9333 Fax
deborah.elizabeth.finn@techboston.com
http://www.techboston.com

A community garden as a use case for interoperable capacity mapping and resource matching tools (Redux)

This is yet another article that I’ve salvaged from my now-defunct first blog, with help from the Wayback Machine. It was written in the run-up to the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington, DC.  We were then preparing for the first-ever open door meeting of our informal group of colleagues who are interested in online tools that assist nonprofits and philanthropies with capacity mapping and resource matching. As I look ahead to the 2013 NTC, I’m also remembering our conference session in 2011, and asking myself whether we’ve made all the progress that was possible.  There have definitely been some victories – such as the convergence of IdeaEncore and Capaciteria.  There have also been some defeats, such as the decision of the Boston Foundation and Third Sector New England to shut down the Nonprofit Management Resources project.  I invite you to post comments about how we can move forward, and how we can do better.

Wed 01 Dec 2010 07:10 PM EST

Now that we have an open-door meeting scheduled at the upcoming Nonprofit Technology Conference, I’ve been working on explaining why multiple online tools for capacity mapping and resource matching should converge.

I keep coming back to a hypothetical community garden as a good use case.

Let’s say that you belong to a neighborhood group that wants to turn a vacant lot into a community garden.  This is an unincorporated community group with no employees or funding.  You need a lot of information and resources from different knowledge bases:

• Are there already groups within a ten mile radius that have experience in creating community gardens?·
• Are there established organizations that are looking for neighborhood-based partners?
• Would it be advisable to incorporate as a nonprofit?
• Would it be advisable to seek a fiscal sponsor, and how would we find one?
• Is there an individual or organization within a five mile radius that would let us use their rototiller twice a year?
• Is there a hardware store within a five mile radius that will donate wheelbarrows and seeds to community gardens?
• Is there an urban entrepreneurship program in our town that will help us sell produce from the garden?
• Is there an expert in biohazards who will help us certify that this vacant lot, which used to be an industrial site where toxic chemicals were processed, has been converted from brown space to green space?
• Is there a squad of volunteers who will help us weed the garden once a week during the growing season?
• What sort of liability insurance will be needed?
• Will we need any permits from the city?
•  Is there a soup kitchen within a ten mile radius that would accept some of our produce?
• Is there an individual or organization that will allow us to use their van on weekends to transport volunteers and supplies to the garden?
• What sort of memorandum of understanding would we need with partners or others who share their assets, expertise, resources, or capacities with us?
• Is there an individual or grantmaking organization that can donate $5,000 to cover services and supplies that we cannot otherwise procure?

Now, there are a lot online tools out there that might help your group.  The tools aren’t interoperable, but they exist.  Some are national or even international:

• Craigslist. For information about surplus supplies, job openings, available office space, and a thousand kinds of resources on offer.·
• Freecycle. Also for sharing surplus goods.
• IdeaEncore.  For sharing best practices in the form of templates, white papers, slide decks, and other documents.
• The Extraordinaries (also known as Sparked) and Groundcrew. For deploying volunteers whose efforts are available on a remote basis through mobile devices, rather than through traditional channels.
• Social Actions. For search and aggregation by issue of a range of opportunities to take effective action – including jobs, volunteering, petitions, micro-loans, and donations.
• Great Nonprofits.  For help in deciding which organizations are most likely to use resources well and to be good strategic partners.
• Capaciteria.  For help in deciding which consultants and service providers are most likely to help organizations achieve their goals.
• InterEthos.  For help in obtaining anonymized data sets from other nonprofit programs, in order to establish baselines and formulate appropriate goals.
• Open Indicators Consortium.  For WEAVE, the free data visualization platform , which will help nonprofits, philanthropies, and their many stakeholders understand community trends before creating action plans and setting goals.
• Pledgebank.  For gathering commitments to take an action or give a donation, on the condition that others make complementary commitments to the project.

Some tools are more local.  Since I’m in Massachusetts, it’s easy for me to point to some great examples from the Bay State:

• Nonprofit Management Resources.  For search and aggregation of  answers to questions frequently asked by nonprofit managers.·
• Massachusetts Nonprofit Database.  For information about all of the nonprofit and philanthropic organizations across the state.
• Massachusetts Philanthropic Directory.  For information about the state of giving and philanthropy.
• NPO-Connect.  For sharing expertise in the form of mentorship.
• Mass Nonprofit Network Training Calendar.  For access to information about professional development opportunities.
• MetroBoston Data Common.  For help in obtaining data from regional planners, in order to understand the needs of the communities to be served.

In the best of all possible worlds, we will need to mash-up this information – not just in terms of mapping where the resources are, and not just in terms of mapping where the unmet needs are, but in providing some sort of tool that will help individuals and organizations capture various kinds of information and put it to use in fulfilling a mission.

It would be highly desirable for your community garden group to be able to use a single login for all of the online tools that might supply information to answer your questions, so that you can put the pieces of the puzzle together and save the results of your searches.  What I envision is that you would have something like an online project worksheet, in which you created a wish list of components needed for success in your initiative, and then filled in the blanks.  This worksheet would be password protected, and you would be able to invite potential donors and partners to view it and to offer assets, expertise, capacities, or other resources to help make the vision a reality.

The power of bringing all of this together through an online suite of tools is especially clear in these tough economic times: the tools are out there, the impact of each would be multiplied by making available through a project worksheet, and it looks very likely that scarcity of funding can be overcome by clever use of currently under-used information and resources.

Basic concepts in technology planning for nonprofits

I had a delightful time at last week’s meeting of the Boston 501 Tech Club.  The theme was technology planning (a topic close to my heart), and Gavin Murphy of Annkissam (a colleague, esteemed client, and friend) gave an outstanding overview that I recommend to any nonprofit professional who has mastered his/her own field and is ready to think about the big picture in technology for his/her organization.  Naturally, during the Q&A time after Gavin’s presentation, I did some nitpicking on the topic of metrics, but never mind.  What you see below is the complete set of Gavin’s notes for this presentation, with no editorial changes from yours truly.  Many thanks are due to Gavin for permission to post his notes!

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Technology Planning
Presented at the Boston 501 Tech Club
Gavin Murphy
Chief Operating Officer
Annkissam

1. What is Tech Planning?

• “Technology” can means lots of things, from office wiring and networks to social networking and RFID chips.
• Today we will focus on concepts of technology planning that should be universally applicable to whatever planning you need to do.
• One key concept is recognizing that most decisions involve trade-offs; there is rarely a “right” option, rather different options will present different trade-offs (upfront cost, ongoing cost, quality, time, other resources or risks, etc.).
• At the end we’ll talk about some resources that are available for people that are interested in exploring more specific topics, and we’ll also have a short Q&A session.

2. Strategic Alignment

“Plans are worthless. Planning is essential.”  – Dwight D. Eisenhower, general and president (1890-1961)

• Technology strategy (and planning) should support organization strategy.
• Show of hands: how many people are part of an organization that has a strategy (and you know what it is, on some level)?
• How many people’s organizations have a technology strategy (and you know what it is, on some level)?
• If you don’t have an organizational strategy, that’s a bigger issue!  And, frankly, one that should be addressed first.

3. Why Plan?

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin, scientist

• Planning will help you be more adaptable to change.
• The act of planning will force you to think through the resources you have to commit to the process (both time and money) and tradeoffs that different options represent.
• The executive leadership needs to be involved in the planning process to some degree, although other staff or by someone from outside the organization can manage the process.
• Even if your plans change, the act of planning will get people engaged in the options and will help to avoid “shiny object syndrome”.  Ultimately, planning will help you respond to both expected and unexpected changes to your organization or environment.

4. Planning is a Process!

• It’s not an event, or even a single project (although there could be a project to kick it off or reevaluate things).
• Similarly, planning can produce documents that are quite helpful, but only to the extent those documents are used to guide the decisions of the organization.
• It’s important to budget time and resources to technology planning and implementation, just as you would dedicate ongoing resources to other critical aspects of your organization.
• One potential trap is committing to an ongoing technology obligation without anticipating the resources it will take to maintain; for example, maintaining your own servers or establishing a social media presence.
• It’s possible that technology is not a critical part of your organization, and that’s fine too as long as you are engaging in the process of evaluating tradeoffs to come to that conclusion.

5. Importance of metrics and measurements

• Once you have decided on a strategy, the next thing is to think about is how to measure your progress.
• Metrics are one way to make sure your technology strategy is closely aligned to your organizational strategy.
• For example, if data security is a concern, you might track the percentage of your computers that have AV or disk encryption installed; if outreach is an organizational imperative then perhaps Twitter followers or Facebook friends might be a better metric.
• Metrics should be as quantitative as possible, to minimize the risk that people will make subjective judgments and obscure the true picture of how things are going.

6. Need to set goals and track success (or failure)

• Once you have chosen your metrics, you should set goals for those metrics and track your progress over a preset time period which should be long enough to judge results but short enough to preserve momentum.
• If you succeed in achieving your goals–great! Adjust your goals for the next time period to be a little more challenging and keep trying to meet them. It’s important to avoid “autopilot” goals that are too easy to meet and never adjust up.
• If you don’t meet your goals, that’s ok too. Now you have valuable information and you can either adjust your plan, your metrics, your goals, or the resources you are applying to technology. After a few cycles you should be able to find the right balance and establish a pattern of success.

7. Things went wrong?!

“Everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face.” – Mike Tyson, Boxer

• If things go wrong, that’s ok! That’s all part of the process.
• The benefit of having a plan is that at least you will know when things are going wrong, which is always preferable (even if nothing can be done about it in the short run) to finding out everything has already gone wrong in the past and now things are in crisis.

8. Resources

“Those who plan do better than those who do not plan even though they rarely stick to their plan.” – Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

• Volunteer groups: 501 Tech Club, NetSquared, Meetup, etc.
• Orgs: Common Impact, NTEN, etc.
• Mailing lists: Mission-Based Massachusetts, Information Systems Forum, etc.
• Consultants: NCN, lots!
• In house vs external resources; incentives but long term commitment with in house folks, external resources tend to me more expensive but should have particular skills or expertise that might be hard to have in house (too expensive, only need them periodically, etc.)

Michael Fenter will be joining Tech Networks of Boston!

I’ve been doing a happy dance about this, because we’re all about to see fantastic people working together!

Susan Labandibar is the founder of Tech Networks of Boston (TNB), a passionate environmental activist, my friend, my colleague, my sometime client, and a fellow Boston Technobabe.

Michael Fenter is a consummate  technology professional, a man who cares deeply about making the world a better place, a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, my friend, my colleague, and my neighbor.

I was thrilled when Susan called me recently to say that she had hired Michael.  Two people I admire deeply will now be on the same team, and the beneficiaries will be nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts that need IT support.

Both Susan and Michael are individuals with a profoundly spiritual calling – though not necessarily in the denominational or doctrinal sense of that phrase.  They believe in service to mission-based organizations, and they manifest their commitments in the form of very practical assistance.  Their heads may be in the clouds, but their feet are on the ground.

Susan has a talent for hiring great people, and I hope that the other members of her organization’s staff won’t think I’m disregarding their wonderful qualities.*  However, it’s especially delightful when two of my special buddies work together. I’m expecting to see a great leap forward for TNB team, as they expand their “Collaborative Technology Management” offerings.

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* Likewise, there are other firms in the Boston area that provide first-rate IT support to nonprofit organizations.  It all depends on finding a really good fit between the support model and the client organization’s needs – however, I will say that the other two firms that have really impressed me are Baird Associates, NPV, and InSource Services.

See you at the Boston 501 Tech Club!

If you’re a nonprofit professional in Massachusetts with a strong interest in information and communication technologies, then please come to the next Boston 501 Tech Club event; it will be on January 30 at Space With A Soul.  The topic will be one that is very close to my heart:  technology planning.  It’s a free event, but you need to register for it.

I’m very proud of my history with the Boston 501 Tech Club (and also with the Rhode Island 501 Tech Club).  First time attenders are often pleasantly surprised by how warmly they are welcomed, and by how many solid professional relationships begin there.

If you’re a nonprofit professional in an area that doesn’t have a local 501 Tech Club, the good folks of NTEN will be happy to coach you about how to start one.

The Weave data visualization platform: how to get a free training and a free account

Heads up, mission-based organizations in Massachusetts!   Powerful data visualization tools (and the skills to use them) are within your reach.

For free.

Thanks to the MetroBoston DataCommon, all you need to get started is to sign up for one of their trainings.  The DataCommon is a joint project of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Boston Indicators Project; if you’ve been admiring not only the insights but the great graphics that you find on the latter’s web site, then you’ll have no trouble seeing the value of the free training.

An enormous added value of taking the MetroBoston DataCommon training is that they walk you through the process of creating a free Weave account. This means that the version of Weave that you will be using is already loaded with crucial data sets from sources such as the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  You will be able to analyze, understand, and communicate your organization’s mission and impact, while using hard data about regional conditions to provide a context.

Of course, this opportunity is going to be less helpful to those who are not within an easy traveling distance of the MetroBoston DataCommon headquarters at MAPC.  What I would like to see is regional planning agencies and nonprofit associations in other states offer similar resources and trainings.

What if we had a pro bono training on outcomes measurement for nonprofit professionals in Massachusetts?

As you can probably guess, I spend a lot of time these days worrying about outcomes measurement for nonprofits; I also devote time to discussing this topic with experts and with nonprofit professionals.

As I talk to some of the most impressive mavens in this field I  sometimes ask, “would you travel to Massachusetts at your own expense, to give a free day-long training on outcomes measurement to nonprofit professionals here?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained – am I right?  (Or as my dear sister once put it, I am The Mouth That Knows No Fear.)

A few really stellar experts actually agreed to do it, if a training event could be arranged to suit their schedules and other reasonable needs.  Of course, I am stunned, overwhelmed with gratitude.  Never underestimate the kindness of mavens!

So now I turn to my nonprofit colleagues in Massachusetts, with another unscientific survey.  I want to get a sense of who would be interested in day-long free training.  This survey is for them.  If you’re not a nonprofit professional based in Massachusetts, please do the honorable thing, and refrain from participating in this survey.

A word of gratitude for an online community: Mission-Based Massachusetts

Today is Thanksgiving, so I want to express some gratitude to a community of colleagues here in Massachusetts.

I started the “Mission-Based Massachusetts” (MBM for short) email list in 2005, in order to provide a forum for people who care about nonprofit, philanthropic, educational, community-based, grassroots, socially responsible, and other mission-oriented organizations here in the Bay State.

My inspiration for starting the MBM list (and several other projects) was a series of conversations with Tim Gassert of the Boston Foundation, starting in about 2003.  We agreed that nonprofits in Massachusetts needed some sort of online tool that would help them stay current with each other about upcoming events, best practices, and available resources.  At the time, I hoped that a highly reputable institution, such as TBF or Third Sector New England, would take on the task, but neither was able to espouse the cause.  (Later, when the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network was organized, I hoped that MNN would sponsor it, but had no luck there either.)

It didn’t seem to me that an individual should take on such a critical task, but in 2005, I hunkered down to the task of creating, moderating, recruiting members for, and maintaining the MBM list as a lone volunteer.  Fortunately, my friend John McNutt (then living in Massachusetts, but now teaching at the University of Delaware) kindly volunteered to be the alternate moderator, thus allowing me to take some urgently needed breaks.

I’m deeply grateful for the way that MBM members have coalesced into a peer network, a group of people who are helping each other make the world a better place.  People constantly tell me in person or email me how much they have benefited from participating in this community.  They thank me, but the truth is that it weren’t for each of them, the Mission-Based Massachusetts group would not be thriving in this way. I also believe that as a community, they have greatly benefited the nonprofit sector in Massachusetts, and the many people served by the sector.

It takes a lot of effort to maintain the MBM list, but I’m not really a lone individual anymore.  In addition to John (to whom I’m deeply grateful), and Tim (who continues to inspire me) I have more than 1,400 colleagues in group who are helping me and each other.  It is indeed an occasion for gratitude!