I took the "Technology-enhanced Fund Raising" show to the local chapter of the Association of Fund Raising Professionals today and was pleased that the members seemed to find it useful and instructive.
I'd put together the list of links and tech ideas during a two-day marathon internet research extravaganza a couple of weeks ago. I had a gig to speak to the intro to nonprofit management class at High Point University. These are the local students who want to get into nonprofit management or are already there and going for the professional certificate or degree that will help them get ahead.
I've long felt that the education I received-- at the same institution, though in the Computer Information Systems field-- was simply inadaquate when I tried to apply what I learned to the nonprofits I was working with in Nepal and India. The CIS department is in the business school, and is preparing its grads to go out and grab the big bucks supposedly floating around ready to be plucked like the brass ring at the merry-go-round. When I finished my coursework there, unfortunately, the big money bubble had burst, and all the ads were looking for 3-5 years' experience, not entry-level folks like me. So much for the retirement endowment scheme I'd dreamed up.
I proceeded to give myself a graduate course in nonprofit technology-- it's all online and the information out there is plentiful and the folks already working in the field are amazingly generous with their advice and often their time. For the former newspaper reporter I am, internet research came to me like the tide at the beach...a force of nature.
I put that research skill to good use to come up with the talk I gave today, basically an outline of the three-hour class, which itself is an outline of probably about three weeks of a semester course on the subject of Technology and the Nonprofit. What I'd really like to do is teach the whole course, and I'm trying to make that dream a reality.
Anyone who wants to see the handout from that talk, just click the following link. I'd appreciate additions anyone might like to add!
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