Note from Beth: I met Matthew Scharpnick, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Elefint Designs, a strategic design studio that works with good causes, at the Data for Good Conference in Chicago. One area that he works on is data visualization for nonprofits. See for example, his case study about how to create an informative data visualization that provides context around a complex and controversial topic. Since he does data visualization 24/7, I asked him what his best advice was for … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2015
The Secret Every Successful Nonprofit Leader Knows About Being Productive
I'm facilitating a peer learning project on practical networked leadership skills for emerging nonprofit leaders. As we all know, living in a networked world creates opportunities for abundance. But having many choices and opportunities requires developing a special set of skills in order to be successful. These skills are: self-management and attention training. That's the focus of one of the sessions - so I have been reflecting a lot on this topic to come up with some useful exercises, … [Read more...]
The Benefits of Using Data to Bring Mindfulness to Your Work
Never in a million years did I ever think I would use data and mindfulness in the same sentence. For the past two months, I've been wearing a rock in a bra, a device called Spire. You think of it as a fitbit for stress developed by the Calming Technology Lab at Stanford University. You wear it in your bra or clip it to your waist, and it measures your breath. It streams data to an app on your phone like your step count, but more importantly gives you a report on whether you are calm, … [Read more...]
@knightfdn Offers Free Webinar Series on Taking Giving Days to the Next Level
Note from Beth: I've been facilitating a community of practice of community foundations, Knight Foundation grantees, over the past two years, that have been using the Knight Foundation Giving Day Playbook to take their practice to the next level. Starting in August, Knight will host a Webinar series that will address a range of topics, from how to land corporate sponsorships to using a Giving Day to build your community foundation’s brand. And, because more and more communities are actively … [Read more...]