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Practical Strategies for Growing a Nonprofit Organization

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A Summer Learning List: 15 Books, Blogs, and Podcasts for Nonprofit Professionals

May 20, 2020
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Blogs & Newsletters, Books, Donor Newsletters, Management and Leadership, Personal Growth and Productivity, Podcasts

As the pandemic restricts where we can go and what we can do, there will undoubtedly be time for some extracurricular reading/listening this summer. Below are 15 books, blogs, and podcasts that I would characterize as essential reading/listening for any nonprofit professional. A SUMMER LEARNING LIST: THE BOOKS 1. Donor CARE: How to Keep Donors Coming Back After the First Gift (John Haydon, 2020) Nationally, nonprofits retained, on average, just 45% of donors from one year to the next in…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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Media Monitoring: Tools for Mastering the Management of Digital Information

March 15, 2020
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Evernote, Netvibes, Nozbe, Personal Growth and Productivity, Start.me

Among the many responsibilities we have as nonprofit leaders is media monitoring: serving as air traffic controllers for the daily, ubiquitous flow of digital information from social media, websites, email and the like. For the sake of simplifying the discussion that follows, let’s put the information in two buckets: Current Events: In this category are things like a local elected official introducing a bill that stands to impact our organization, the local paper reporting on an issue related to our…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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The Remote Nonprofit: Meeting Your Mission Virtually

May 31, 2019
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Blinkist, Books, Evernote, G Suite, Management and Leadership, Nitro Pro, Nozbe, Personal Growth and Productivity, Remote Work, Snagit, Software

In thirty years’ time, as technology moves forward even further, people are going to look back and wonder why offices ever existed. (Richard Branson, CEO, The Virgin Companies) Remote nonprofit work is more prolific than you think. The 2018 Digital Adoption Report found that 41 percent of employees at nonprofits it surveyed were working exclusively outside the organization’s office delivering programs and services, working from home, or telecommuting. (NTEN, Digital Adoption in 2018). The report also found that roughly 12…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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An 800-year-old Antidote to Information Overload: The Fine Art of Commonplacing

September 9, 2018
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Evernote, Personal Growth and Productivity, Software

American author and philosopher, Criss Jami, has aptly described the challenges we all face every day in our personal lives and organizations in dealing with information overload: In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on. (Criss Jami,…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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Financial Productivity at Your Fingertips: The FileThis App

July 28, 2018
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Evernote, FileThis, Personal Growth and Productivity, Software

Keeping all of your various financial statements in order can be a real drag, particularly if they’re still arriving by snail mail. But even if you’re getting them delivered electronically, you’ve still got to figure out where to store them. You’ve also got to do that filing regularly if you don’t want to have a mess on your hands. What a pain! Enter FileThis: financial productivity at your fingertips. FileThis is an app that acts as your personal and business…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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Do without Doing: Life Lessons on Happiness & Productivity from an Unlikely Source

July 16, 2018
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Books, Personal Growth and Productivity

[D]own through the centuries, man has developed a mind that separates him from the world of reality, the world of natural laws. This mind tries too hard, wears itself out, and ends up weak and sloppy. Such a mind, even if of high intelligence, is inefficient. It goes here and there, backwards and forwards, and fails to concentrate on what it's doing at the moment. It drives down the street in a fast-moving car and thinks it's at the store,…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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Favorite Evernote Integrations: Easy Expense Tracking Using Evernote, Zapier, and Google Sheets

February 18, 2018
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Evernote, Personal Growth and Productivity, Software, Zapier

Favorite Evernote Integrations: Easy Expense Tracking Using Evernote, Zapier, and Google Sheets It’s no secret that I’m an Evernote fanatic. The reason is really simple. Because it integrates so well with many other applications that we all use, Evernote saves me from doing a lot of small but necessary tasks. This allows me to focus confidently on other more important things, which is a key to being more productive both personally and professionally. As author and financial advisor, Nathan W.…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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Integrate Evernote: Add a Note to Evernote for Every New Calendar Entry

January 27, 2018
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Evernote, Personal Growth and Productivity, Software

Integrate Evernote: Add a Note to Evernote for Every New Calendar Entry It’s no secret that I’m an Evernote fanatic. The reason is really simple. Because you can integrate Evernote with so many other applications, you can automate a lot of small but necessary tasks and save time. This allows me to focus confidently on other more important things, which is a key to being more productive both personally and professionally. As author and financial advisor, Nathan W. Morris, has…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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4 Travel-related Evernote Uses to Enhance Productivity

December 9, 2017
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Evernote, Personal Growth and Productivity, Software

Back-to-back conferences took me from Baltimore to Los Angeles to Denver and then back to Baltimore over a period of 2 weeks this fall. That led me to thinking about these 4 travel-related Evernote uses to enhance productivity: (1) keeping track of travel reservations and receipts, (2) catching up on reading while en route, (3) chronicling the journey, and (4) making the most of time spent in conference sessions. 1. Tracking Reservations and Receipts One challenge of a relatively long,…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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Improve Your Productivity with Evernote & Find Things Fast

October 26, 2017
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Books, Evernote, Personal Growth and Productivity

As “Jacks of All Trades,” we in nonprofit work spend some portion of our time each week being knowledge workers. As such, we have to acquire, analyze and manipulate information. Because the volume of information coming our way can be vast and there is often a need to retrieve it down the road, we need a simple system for storing and finding things later. Without such a system, the longer the passage of time that exists between saving and retrieval,…

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By Barbara Hopkins
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Recent Posts

A Summer Learning List: 15 Books, Blogs, and Podcasts for Nonprofit Professionals May 20, 2020
Media Monitoring: Tools for Mastering the Management of Digital Information March 15, 2020
The Savannah Bananas’ Lesson for Fundraisers: Focus on Fans February 2, 2020
The Nuts and Bolts of Email Fundraising December 8, 2019
How to Write a Fundraising Plan: A Nonprofit Primer July 22, 2019

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