Building Essential Management Skills for Successful Community Organizations
2007-2008 Series
The management of nonprofit organizations is a complex and unique task, made all the more challenging by the resource limitations that many of the GTA's nonprofit organizations find themselves battling.
Five Good Ideas is a lunch and learn program where industry or issue experts discuss powerful yet practical ideas on key management issues facing nonprofit organizations. The sessions are most useful for management staff and board members at small and mid-sized nonprofits.
Each expert presents five practical yet strategic ideas and explores with the audience how these ideas can be translated into action. At the end of each session, participants self-organize in small groups and continue the discussion to generate the best and most relevant of all ideas. The "good ideas" are published on our website as a lasting resource tool for nonprofits.
These are the sessions to date:
| Institutional Change: Turning a Ship... it takes time! | Alok Mukherjee, Chair, Toronto Police Services Board
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - 12:00 to 2:00 PM | | Stay tuned for the summary. | | Everyone's heard the refrain: 'Institutional change takes time. Be patient.' The notion that change takes time is perhaps one of the greatest sources of conflict and mistrust between organizations and seekers of change. While it is true that real, lasting change is time-consuming, there is no formula or model to quantify or predict the time required for an institutional change process. At the same, the issue of time and patience poses a challenge for volunteer boards that typically have a limited period of office and are anxious not to be dismissed as ineffectual or irrelevant. In this interactive session Alok Mukherjee will identify and explore the concrete ways in which a volunteer board committed to genuine institutional change can achieve significant results within its finite term of office.
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| Reaching Out in a Web 2.0 World | Jason Mogus, CEO, Communicopia
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - 12:00 to 2:00 PM | | Stay tuned for the summary. | | The success of online communities like Facebook and YouTube is phenomenal: they help organizations reach more people, engage them in new ways, raise more money, and improve the way organizations work. However the tools themselves don't make this happen; the 'web thinking' behind these phenomena makes them truly transformative. Web 2.0 tools are developed with participation at their core, on open systems and in a highly collaborative way. Ultimately they give individuals more freedom and control over their interactions. Jason Mogus will provide an overview of the most common Web 2.0 tools, explore the larger cultural trends driving this technical change and discuss how the social / community sector can use them to further its mission. He will also challenge us to examine how our older thinking and decision models are holding back success in this new interactive world where the audience is truly in charge.
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| Building a Movement | Mary Rowe, Vice President, Urban Programs, Blue Moon Fund
Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 12:00 to 2:00 PM | | Stay tuned for the summary. | | Building a movement for social change takes passion, energy and resources. Social movements have a lifecycle: they are created, they grow, they achieve successes or failures and eventually dissolve and cease to exist. In this session Mary Rowe will highlight this lifecycle by examining a variety of tools to encourage innovative, holistic approaches to building a movement. Mary's long and productive career has focused on facilitating solutions to complex problems in the public realm. In particular she played an instrumental role in advocating for a new deal for cities in Canada as Director of Ideas that Matter and currently works with a US philanthropic initiative fostering self-organization in urban communities. |
| Building Networks | Rahul Bhardwaj, President & CEO, Toronto Community Foundation
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - 12:00 to 2:00 PM | | Stay tuned for the summary. | | In today's world, collaboration, partnership and 'adding value' are important to any recipe for success of a non-profit organization. But you can't do it alone. In order to achieve results and impact, organizations and their leadership must expand beyond their traditional partners and stakeholder groups in order to create synergistic and innovative relationships that energize, excite and lead to change. By developing broad based networks, leaders of organizations can increase their influence, relationships and ability to deliver on their organization's mission. Building a network can be daunting for many. This presentation will help you to develop a framework for building your own network, and in doing so you will see that building a network is not the same thing as networking, that it really is better to give than to receive , and how two "no's" do, in fact, make a "yes". |
| Hiring the Right Person | Suzie Addison-Toor, Engage Consulting
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 - 12:00 to 2:00 PM | | Stay tuned for the summary. | | Finding the right person for your team is incredibly important! A Non profit’s success depends upon the strengths and talents of their employees. They are the thinkers, the creators, and the innovators that drive an organization. They deliver the services, create relationships with your stakeholders and become the organization’s link to the community. Hiring the right person requires a careful investment of time and effort- a tall order when you are pressured by a lack of time and resources. A successful hire opens up the potential to promote and enrich your organizational culture and enables innovation and growth. On the other hand, a mistake in hiring is costly and exhausting for an organization in the long run. In an environment where our budgets are stretched and our HR resources are scare, a creative and intentional look at how we are hiring our people could be just the ticket! |
| Turning around your Organization | Paul Davidson, Executive Director, WUSC
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 12:00 to 2:00 PM | | Stay tuned for the summary. | | How can you work with your Board, donors, staff and other stakeholders to introduce significant change without alienating long-term supporters? How can you shift from seemingly endless consultative processes towards a bias for action and results? How do you ensure that new visions for your organization honour the past, but are not constrained by it? For example, in the corporate world, turnarounds are often achieved by hiring a new leader, firing staff, and changing the Board. What are the five good ideas that can help social purpose organizations take practical action to achieve meaningful organizational change? Paul Davidson has held leadership positions in the public, private and voluntary sectors. He will share his experience and lessons learned from leading turnarounds in each sphere. |
| Using Your Voice to Deliver Your Message | Bonnie Gross, President, SpeechScience Inc.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 12:00 to 2:00 PM | | Stay tuned for the summary. | | Remember the last time you 'listened' to a public speaker with your head bent over your BlackBerry? You managed to get some work done, but imagine how the speaker felt! Don't let that happen to you! Learn to use your voice to captivate your audience and deliver your message effectively. Bonnie Gross will lead this interactive session, offering tips and tools to ensure that your next presentation won't be delivered to a sea of bowed heads. Bonnie is a speech language pathologist and a professional trainer focusing on fearless public speaking, voice, language training and communication skills. |
Location
St. Michael's College - Elmsley Hall, Charbonnel Lounge MAP
81 St. Mary Street (St. Mary Street/Bay Street - 2 blocks south of Bloor Street).
Closest subways are Bay Station and Wellesley Station.
Parking
is available off St. Joseph Street (two blocks north of Wellesley Street West on the west side of Bay Street).
Registration
There is no cost for the workshops and a light lunch will be provided on a first come first served basis.
To attend any of our sessions or manage your attendance, first enter your email:
If you have any questions please email Stephanie Saunders.
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