Nonprofit Utopia Podcast

Making the Most of Your Volunteer Management Program Session 2

Making the Most of Your Volunteer Management Program Session 1

I have worked with a number of nonprofit leaders who live by the adage, "If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail." Often, when it comes to volunteer management, they don't pay quite as close attention. After all, volunteers are not salaried employees, and they are often brought on for ad hoc projects. The tendency is to give higher priority to processes that have greater budget impact. However, leaving volunteer management up to chance is doing your organization and volunteers a great disservice. The organization misses out on opportunities to leverage volunteers to grow capacity. At the same time, volunteers who are looking at volunteerism as a way to develop professionally are left feeling unfulfilled. Careful planning is necessary to create win-win situations for your organization and volunteers.
 
This session will show you how to assess your organization's readiness for volunteers, develop a volunteer management plan and develop policies and procedures. Nonprofit Utopia members will be able to download sample documents from the online community.
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How to Use the Media to Effect Systems Change

According to Lawrence Wallack, a prominent health researcher, "media advocacy is rooted in community advocacy and has as its goal the promotion of healthy public policies. It can be differentiated from traditional mass media strategies in a number of ways. Media advocacy shifts the focus from the personal to the social, from the individual to the political, from the behavior or practice to the policy or environment. While traditional media approaches try to fill the 'knowledge gap,' media advocacy addresses the 'power gap'."
 
Join us for a lively discussion with Sarah Karp, a reporter with WBEZ in Chicago. We will talk about ways you can engage the media to bring about systems change in your own communities. You will learn
 
1. What makes a story concerning systems change newsworthy 2. The differences between a news story, press release and op-ed
3. The subtle differences between working with print media versus radio and other media
3. The do's and don'ts of working with the media
4. How to ride the news cycle

Effecting Change Through Policy Advocacy Session 3

Generally speaking, when we think of organizational capacity building, we think of activities like board development, strategic planning and program evaluation. One often overlooked method for improving organizational capacity is developing issue advocacy campaigns. Not only do issue advocacy campaigns help develop leadership capacity for staff and stakeholders, but they can effect systems change, creating the environment to produce positive outcomes for your clients, communities and organizations. Valerie F. Leonard, the Founder of Nonprofit Utopia, LLC, will walk you through the process of creating issue advocacy campaigns and engaging community and public officials. Nonprofit Utopia members will have access to handouts to help them implement lessons learned immediately.