Note from our President,
Sharon C. Gherman

by Sharon C. Gherman, Funding Exchange, Inc. President/CEO

This month’s article on organizing your office is one I’m going to tuck away for the future… there are some great ideas to help you decide where to start ‘digging out’.

My own resolution is to use this year’s holiday season (Christmas through New Year’s) to clean out and organize my computer files. I inherited a computer full of files when acquiring Funding Exchange, and – like most folks in a new job – it took awhile for me to learn the job well enough to know what I should keep or delete. By the time I figured that out, however, I was busy enough that I never had the time to tackle this painstaking job. So this Christmas, if you call me you’ll understand if I sound a little distracted…

We’ve been working hard to get the word out about Sustainable Pathways: Developing a Financially Healthy Organization. This is a new audience for us – nonprofit leaders and board members as opposed to the development staffs who attend our grantwriting and grant management trainings – and we’ve been excited to hear positive feedback about how Sustainable Pathways training is stimulating new fundraising goals and opportunities for organizations.

We’ve also found that as a result of the training, sometimes the teams are coming up with completely new, more effective and efficient ways of accomplishing their mission to take back to their boards for consideration. The time spent rubbing shoulders and sharing ideas with other nonprofit leaders has turned out to be an excellent incubator for reaffirming an organization’s mission and learning about the most effective ways to do your good work.

So if you’re a foundation or corporate giving program officer, I’d be happy to talk with you about making Sustainable Pathways training available to your grantees. And if you’re a nonprofit leader or board member, consider sending a team to Sustainable Pathways training. We’ve included a short article in this edition to give you some ideas for creative ways to raise the tuition.

Enjoy the rest of your summer – here in Alaska we always take a deep breath at summer solstice, as the days begin their long slide from twenty two hours of daylight every day toward just two hours of daylight around Christmas. It causes us to appreciate even more the few weeks of summer remaining.

– Sharon

Funding Exchange helps nonprofit organizations create a sustainable fundraising plan. Sustainable Pathways: Developing a Financially Healthy Organization is offered to nonprofit leadership teams in webinar or workshop format. Click Here for more information or to register.