On Board: 5 Great ideas for your next board meeting

Don’t go to your next board meeting without some of these great ideas in giving and volunteering. Below are some quick hits to consider….

1. The Candidates and Your Work-Life Balance

The presidential candidates were interviewed by the Families and Work Institute about their platforms on work-life issues. The Washington Post sums it up, but you can also get the full transcript here. One of the candidates is seems concerned about work-life issues from the standpoint of employees, the other seems more concerned with how it affects businesses. Guess who stands where?

[TAKEAWAY: Prepare your organization now for possible changes to the FMLA and how it might affect your clients.]

2. When Blogs Compete, School Kids Win

For the month of October, bloggers across the country are competing to see who can raise the most money for projects they’ve chosen from DonorsChoose. DonorsChoose, as you know, is the site that lets teachers request materials for their classroom and lets you donate money to for those materials. Bloggers like TechCrunch, Engadget, and some guy named Scoble are participating in the Blogger Challenge 2008. DonorsChoose is keeping tabs on who’s collected how much, and so far they’re at more than $200,000 in total donations. If you haven’t been to DonorsChoose before, check out the 47 Austin classrooms listed. Current requests include a projector, blocks, books, materials for kids with disabilities, and other items, with most of them needing about $200. OR choose a blog and give through them – to foster the spirit of competitive fundraising!

[TAKEAWAY: Ask local bloggers to compete to raise money for your nonprofit or charity.]

3. Great Idea for Thanking Supporters

The ASAE likes how the Alzheimer’s Association and DonorsChoose sent donors an e-mail with a link to an online “thank you” video, thanking them for their contribution and telling them exactly how the money’s going to be used. Nice touch.

[TAKEAWAY: Video is so easy and inexpensive, and video makes it a little more personal, I think. Of course, you could use the video to get more donations, too, but a special one just for donors can really strengthen that relationship.]

4. Let Donors Follow Their Money

USA Today ran a storyabout giving that was all over the place, but a couple of nuggets stood out. The first is that, “Millennials and Generation Xers, especially those 20- and 30-somethings starting careers, may not have the bucks to be major donors, but they are finding ways to help others and prompting big changes in the way charities raise money.” And a lot of this is via the Internet. Young donors are responding especially well when nonprofits let them track the impact their donations are making. “The group’s website tracks its projects through videos and written storiesfrom the field, Google maps and testimonials from donors.”

[TAKEAWAY: If your NPO has a website, why not create a page that shows progress toward some goal. A lot of the race sites do it already, and it seems to work.]

5. For the Sake of Argument

Are you the devil’s advocate on your board? Arm yourself with information from both sides of the argument at Debatepedia. It’s just what it sounds like: an online wiki of both sides of hundreds of issues, from the death penalty to education, the presidential candidates, wave energy, surrogate mothers, and lots more.

[TAKEAWAY: Okay, some of this stuff is weak. But it's good to know wha the other side might throw at you. Plus it's kinda fun to read.]