Effective Nonprofits: Assessing your Nonprofit

A fast-paced educational presentation for staff, board member, and volunteers

-Judy Sharken-Simon and Carter McNamara

Changing times have resulted in declining funding, increased demand, and escalating expenses. Nonprofit organizations need to become more efficient and effective at what they do, but how?

In this fast-paced educational session for staff and board members/volunteers, you will conduct an organizational assessment of the life stage of your nonprofit. From this, you will gain insights, learning how to project future needs, make decisions proactively and anticipate challenges. In addition, you will learn about strategic issues that organizations face as they grow and develop and the role of the board in each of these stages.

The next portion of the morning is geared to nonprofit staff . (Board members are welcome to stay if they wish.) Dr. McNamara will provide an introduction to Action Learning Circles (or peer-learning) outline the benefits, and guide participants through a practice session. This important tool will help them begin to apply key elements of the educational session to real life goals and plans.

You and your board member/volunteer are encouraged to register for this program as a PAIR to receive the discounted rate. Additional staff and volunteers from the same nonprofit will also benefit from special pricing.

Judy Sharken Simon is an organizational consultant who has worked with nonprofit organizations for over fifteen years. As a senior consultant with Wilder Foundation for over ten years she authored The Nonprofit Field Guide to Conducting Successful Focus Groups as well as The Five Life Stages of Nonprofit Organizations. Judy assists clients with organization development, including life stages work, strategic planning and board development.

Carter McNamara , PhD, is a nationally recognized expert with 25 years of experience in organizational development . His firm, Authenticity Consulting, has helped hundreds of organizations around the U.S. and Canada develop Action Learning groups. Among other things, he is the founder and developer of the the Free Management Library, one of the world's largest collections of well-organized, free, online resources for nonprofit organizations, cited frequently on links pages of national and regional nonprofits, associations, colleges and universities.