Infographic: How to Achieve the Perfect Work Life Balance

Via, In Power Women.

20 ways to network that don’t feel like networking.

Say the word “networking” and many people think of attending awkward events, anxiously clutching business cards, likely looking for the nearest exit. With a reputation for being disingenuous, one-way, and simply uncomfortable, it’s understandable that many people prefer not to network at all.

However, what if we shifted that view? What if we thought of networking as a way to meet people with whom we share mutual interests and aspirations? That it wasn't about racking up tons of names and business cards, but rather about cultivating a strong and supportive community? And instead of being one-way or one-time, it’s about creating long-term relationships to nurture and grow?

Too often we leave out the “mutual” “supportive” and “long-term” components of networking.

For me, it’s just wanting to meet new people wherever I am and be helpful to others whenever possible. Below are a few ways you can build your network and nurture your network.

Building your network: Pain-free ways to meet people

The trick: Go to an event where the subject matter is something you’re truly interested in and there are activities to bond over. Not a fan of group events? It never hurts to connect with people one-on-one.

• Go on an informational interview: Is there someone whose career you admire? Reach out to them to see if they are willing chat about their career journey and offer advice. Keep in touch by sharing your progress and resources related to their interests (see below).

• Ask for an introduction: Let friends and family know you’re looking to meet interesting people in your field.

• Attend a workshop: Workshops often allow you have conversations with other participants, inadvertently introducing you to new people. Don’t let the opportunity slip!

• Attend a conference: Although conferences might be full of people, it’s not always easy to introduce yourself: You get busy with the various speakers or just stick with your team. So, if you can, figure out who will be at the conference ahead of time and  try schedule a time to meet.

• Join a club: One word: Meetup. Don’t see a Meetup near you that you like? Create one.

• Join the board of a nonprofit: This is obviously a bit more complicated than other suggestions, but board membership is a fantastic way to meet new people. You often don’t just meet fellow board members; you can also connect with their network as board members are often responsible for bringing new supporters to an organization.

• Volunteer: Volunteering allows you to help others, meet people who share your passion, and learn more about your community.

• Connect with a coworker: Sometimes we ignore the people right next to us. If there is a coworker you’d like to get to know more, meet up after work (or for lunch) and stay in touch if either or you leave the organization.

• Reach out to your alumni group: Alumni doesn’t just apply to colleges, either. Have you completed or participated in any fun programs? Connect with your cohort.

• Harness social media: We could write an entire article about this but think about how you can turn online relationships into face-to-face (or Skype!) meetings.

Nurture: How to help the people in your network

• Make introductions: It’s an easy and meaningful way to help others grow their networks.

• Host a party: You can have a small get together in your home or a restaurant. Websites like Grubwithus make it easy to set up a dinner or happy hour. I did one a sometime ago and it was great to connect people who might not have met each other otherwise.

• Send a thank you note: Whether by email or snail-mail, a short note thanking someone for helping you out lets them know you appreciate their support…and who doesn’t like to be appreciated?

• Share a resource: Keep an eye out for interesting articles that speak to what people in your network are passionate about or problems they are having trouble solving.

• Share a skill: We’re all good at something — what are you good at and would enjoy being the go-to person for in your network?

• Make a recommendation on LinkedIn: You can craft a great recommendation in just a few minutes.

• Share praise! I have a friend I brag about to everyone I meet; she’s sharp, generous, and a joy to be around. Once someone asked me, “Do you tell her how much you adore her?” Good point! Let the people in your life know you admire who they are and what they do.

• Stay in touch online: One of the easiest ways to keep your network lively is to be in constant contact and social media makes this easy. You can do many of the aforementioned actions online (like sharing praise, a recommendation, or a resource). Try to hop offline occasionally, too, if possible.

• Ask them what they need: Seriously! Just ask.

Via IdealistCareers.org 

Can your dream job find you?

When it comes to social media in the job hunt, much advice focuses on being “squeaky clean” so as not to offend potential employers. However, this also implies that hiring managers are only researching you when they come across your resume. What if employers were using social media constantly to spot potential employees?

Over on Harvard Business Review, author Jeanne C. Meister highlights three recruitment trends. What’s noticeable is that employers aren’t just using social media to check out applicants; instead they are using analytics and apps to help them find potential hires. Here’s one that stood out to us:

Companies have been watching the rapid growth of MOOCs (massive open online courses) — two of the leading MOOC providers, Coursera and EdX, have tallied more than 7 million unique users since they launched in April 2012 and May 2012 respectively — and are now finding ways to offer their own free courses. Aquent, a global staffing firm that finds jobs for marketing, creative, and digital professionals is creating a MOOC to teach job candidates HTML5. So far, about 10,000 people have participated in the HTML5 MOOC and 300 of them then enlisted Aquent to help in their job search. Companies wanting to capitalize on the gamification movement are recruiting graduates of MakeGamesWith.us, an online MOOC that teaches aspiring game developers how to build an iPhone game. It will be only a matter of time before more companies get in on this and start launching MOOCs to recruit new hires and train them in skills needed for success at their company.

Read the rest of the article here.

Non-Profits Have an Important Role in Social Change

Nonprofit organizations are one of the top two ways adults are most likely to get involved in positive social change. On average, about half of adults agree nonprofits make it easy for people to be involved in social change.

Source: Walden University’s 2012 Social Change Impact Report. 

Infographic: How Volunteering Increases Job Opportunities

The Corporation for National & Community Service has recently released a report, Volunteering as a Pathway to Employment, which shows just how valued volunteering can be in the workforce. The study discovered that volunteering is linked with a 27 percent increase in odds of employment, and provides “social capital and human capital,” which are directly related with better job prospects.

Some of the benefits volunteering can provide are professional contacts, expanding networks, leadership opportunities, social relationships, knowledge, and work experience. Volunteering has the strongest impact on rural communities and individuals who lack a high school diploma.

CNCS also provided an infographic for their collected data:

One interesting finding was that economic conditions and time don’t seem to impact the relationship between volunteering and employment.

The nonprofit sector has been aware of the powerful effect volunteering can have on your skill-set and job opportunities for quite a while, but it’s always encouraging to see statistics reflecting these views.

Written by Aine Creedon for Non-Profit Quarterly.org

Investing in talent: How and why foundations are supporting professional development

Anyone who knows anything about the nonprofit sector knows that nonprofits attract passionate, committed, caring people – but that those people must operate on a shoestring budget, where needs perpetually exceed resources. This “nonprofit starvation cycle” is described by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, as quoted in a sector white paper:

[Not-for-profits are] so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations — let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems — acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs.

To break this cycle, the article suggests that funders must take the lead. Traditionally, grant-making organizations have funded nonprofit projects and programs, but in recent years, some innovative donors have begun to see that investing in talent and leadership development is a key piece to capacity building in the nonprofit sector.

James Temple, director of corporate responsibility with Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Leader for PwC Canada Foundation, has this to say: “Programs and priorities are the easiest to measure and foundations want to see results. But if we don’t invest in smart, strategic people, how would our money be used effectively anyhow? There is a critical need for foundations to fund human resources and for grantmakers to say funds can be used for salaries because this will create stronger more vibrant charities.”

While the majority of funds will continue to support overhead and the work of organizations, Nadien Godkewitsch, manager of programs at the Toronto Community Foundation (TCF), says, “It is important to set aside funds for strategic professional development to help nonprofits move beyond day to day activities.”

Challenges in the sector

The TCF was one of the first foundations to take this approach. In 2004, the foundation began to see a looming leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector. “A lot of charitable organizations in Toronto were being run by founders. We were concerned that as those founders retired, there wouldn’t necessarily be people behind them to handle succession,” says Godkewitsch.

Charitable organizations were also “increasingly squeezing their limited funds into programs and were not able to do what private sector does - helping employees become stronger leaders, ensuring professional development.” In response, the TCF launched the Vital People grant in 2004 to provide opportunities for professional development for talented people within the nonprofit sector. In the nine years since, the TCF has provided 83 Vital People grants with total investment of close to $400,000.

Katherine van Kooy, president & CEO, Calgary Chamber for Voluntary Organizations (CCVO), says “Most nonprofit organizations are pretty sophisticated in their approach to professional development but the budget set aside for staff development runs out pretty quickly if travel or significant conference fees are involved.” She adds, “We know from work we’ve done that funding for professional development in our sector does not come close to demand. For organizations that would like to make an investment in their staff, it’s a real challenge to put together funding.”

Professional development

Like many nonprofits, the CCVO is a relatively small organization engaged in diverse work. Van Kooy says, “When we hire someone, they may have new areas of responsibility that they’ve never dealt with before. Our work also changes depending on issues emerging in sector. To allow staff to deepen or expand their skills enables them to do a better job.”

In the past, funders have sometimes invited nonprofit staff to join their own staff for workshops so the nonprofits can benefit from corporate knowledge and expertise, but new partnerships for professional development are emerging.

Innoweave is an initiative of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation that helps community organizations learn about, assess and implement new tools and approaches that can help them achieve greater impact. Managing Director (SiG@McConnell) Aaron Good says, “Many leaders have been to great workshops but came away without knowing what to do next. It’s important to help people figure out what they will do after a workshop or training session. We also try to connect them with a coach who can help them answer key questions and work through their plan in a way that allows them to fulfill their mission.”

Some support for professional development is more indirect: PwC sponsors one of the aspects of CCVO’s annual conference that brings together multiple stakeholders including nonprofits, government and the corporate community. A number of other organizations, such as the United Way, support this conference by paying for opportunities for nonprofits to participate.

Still, some funding directly supports professional development. In early 2013, Todd Minerson, executive director of the White Ribbon Campaign, the world’s largest effort of men and boys working to end violence against women, applied for a Vital People grant from TCF. After six years as executive director, Minerson wanted to test an idea with peers and received funding to attend the Harvard Business School in July.

Minerson says, “The Vital People Grant enabled me to access a strategic nonprofit leadership opportunity at Harvard Business School that was simply inaccessible to us otherwise. White Ribbon is looking at developing social enterprise innovations that I was able to test with professors and peers at Harvard, along with exploring case studies of real organizations facing similar challenges. This grant enabled us to build a win-win for the future.”

Hiring great people

Sometimes funding means that nonprofits can hire talented staff they would not otherwise be able to afford. The Educational Outreach department of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, ON was able to hire a YouTube science content star and to second a physics teacher as a consultant for a year, thanks to a FedDev grant which included funds to support talent. Greg Dick, director of educational outreach with thePerimeter Institute sees this grant as a significant investment and says, “We are very fortunate that both the private and public sectors recognize the need for, and support the development of talent.”

Advice to nonprofits

“We know we do important work in the nonprofit sector but it’s tough to identify ourselves as leaders,” says Godkewitsch. “But seeing ourselves and staff in our sector as leaders driving change, addressing trends, and building on assets in our community should encourage us to think more about professional development.”

Katherine van Kooy notes that “People feel differently when they have an opportunity to grow and develop their skills, to be exposed to different perspectives. It may not pay back immediately but it shapes thinking and provides a toolkit that can be used at different points along the way, in ways that are sometimes hard to quantify.” Van Kooy’s experience has been that investing in professional development for staff helps with retention, but she also notes that, in a mobile market, some organizations may also be concerned that if they invest in someone’s skills, that individual may be more marketable to other employers.

Temple encourages nonprofits to understand the philanthropy arm of their funders, and their corporate strategy for the next few years. “Be bold and curious,” Temple says. “Build relationships and partnerships and find out what your nonprofit can do to help the funder.

Advice to funders

“We are at a time of great change and enabling people to step back and focus on what they are hoping to achieve and how they will do so is really important,” says Aaron Good of Innoweave. “We can’t just keep doing the same thing as funders.”

To funders who may be hesitant around the idea that supporting talent may be less quantifiable, Good says, “This is all about mission and impact – how will you measure success in the next 3-5 years, how will you get there, what processes will you put in place to make sure you get there.”

Temple suggests that capacity building is “patient work” that “typically requires an investment of three to five years before meaningful improvements can be achieved. The benefit — enhanced outcomes and sustainability — is worth the investment.” He suggests that taking 20% of funds out of operations to invest in talent is “not wasteful. It is strategically in alignment with our goals and helps create a more effective impact.”

Van Kooy says, “Investors should be prudent and mindful of ROI, but funding specifically for development opportunities for leaders is often not a massive investment.”

Van Kooy also emphasizes that “a one-thousand dollar grant should not cost a thousand dollars of time to apply.” She notes that some professional opportunities arise quickly and suggests a need for some shorter grant cycles to meet this need.

According to Good, “There is definitely room for other approaches and room for other funders to benefit from this type of program.”

Moving toward partnership

For a long time, Temple says, grantees and grantors have spoken two languages and have sometimes worked at cross purposes. This new approach to funding people allows a change from a sponsorship model to a partnership model, where both nonprofits and funders offer benefit to one another.

“It’s no longer about dollars and cents, but shared values between charities and communities and foundations.”

Susan Fish is a writer/editor at Storywell, a company that helps individuals and organization tell their story well. She has written for the nonprofit sector for almost two decades and loves a good story.

The Rise of the Nonprofit Sector

A recent story from Bloomberg suggests the recession may have had a lasting negative impact on our society, specifically on the cognitive performance of those who lost their jobs during this time period. Indeed, these are stressful times for most, but perhaps a gleam of hope may be taken from this dark period.

In a time when industries were on a steep decline, the nonprofit sector actually witnessed growth, surpassing that of business and government sectors. Now, more than ever before, the nonprofit industry is responsible for the health of our economy, employing 16% of the employment share of New England alone.

And with nonprofit employment continuing to grow, perhaps the key to many of our careers is to join in on some of the jobs these causes create. It may relieve the economic stresses we face, while working towards the betterment of our society.

This infographic was provided by the University of San Francisco’s Online Master of Public Administration, containing all the research needed to understand that the nonprofit sector is indeed on the rise.

Source: onlinempa.usfca.edu