Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Class #13 Post

            In today’s final class, we started off with sharing what each of us enjoyed most about the course with professor Lippe as well as a way that the course could be improved in years to come based off of our experience. Subsequently we discussed how our site visits went with our contenders for the grant award. Every group was given the opportunity to describe their experience with the class as well as state why or why not their site visit organization deserves the requested portion of the grant. Additionally, after sharing our experiences and making cases for which organizations deserve the grant, we all took a vote (using Roberts rules as usual) and the motion to provide UTEC and the LCHC with 5,000 dollars each passed almost unanimously.


            Additionally, we discussed our ceremony that is upcoming this Thursday as well as assigned roles to those who volunteered (MC, presenters etc.) It was decided that the ceremony be moved to a larger location because we expect a decent turnout of people to be attending. At the end of class, we had our last snack together (cake and cookies that professor Lippe so graciously provided) and said our goodbyes (for now). Overall I feel that everyone thoroughly enjoyed the course and we became close friends with all of our classmates because of it. 


Monday, December 11, 2017

Service Project Blog Post

Wreckers or builders

In world filled with wreckers, who are you going to be my friend?
What path are you going to choose?
Who’s life are you going to change?
What kind of a impact are you going make?
Who are you going to be?

Life’s full of choices and wonders
And you are the best choice
You have the ability to dream, plan and inspire greatness
So don’t be afraid
Don’t hesitate
Don’t question
Don’t doubt
Because impossible is a misconceptions of I’m possible

So be builders, find meaning in the wreckage
Create new possibilities
create your own path
Risk it all
Be a rebel
Make a difference

In a place of organized chaos
running feet,Busy bodies,Smiling faces and Bright minds
Teach
Create
Inspire
Make a difference

Be
Bold
Optimistic
Youthful
Sincere
Adventurous
Nurturing
Gentle
Involved
Resilient
Loving
Strong
Caring
Loyal
Unique

Builders

Pictures From the Service Project


























Class #11 Post

First, we discussed the only grant proposal we received, which was from the Lowell Community Health Center (LCHC). The general consensus of the class was that we liked their proposed project and it aligned well with our own goals, but a few felt that the project may have been designed just to get a grant from us. The scores we gave the LCHC on our rubric ranged from 48 to 58 out of 61 with an average score of 54. Next, we discussed each one of the organizations that were nominated by a member of the class. At the end of the discussions, we voted on which organizations should be considered for a grant which are the following: Mental Health Association of Greater Lowell, South Bay Community Services, UTEC, Wayside Youth and Family Support Network, and Lahey Health Behavioral Services. Then, we discussed our upcoming service project at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lowell and finalized most of the remaining details. Lastly, we met with our partner for the service project and worked out the details on how we were going to run our station.


Class #10 Post

Tyler White
Experiencing Philanthropy

November 20th (Assignment #10)
Week 10 Class Summary and Photos
Prior to class on November 20th, our mock nonprofit groups were tasked with creating grant proposals. Under the assumption that we would be seeking $10,000 in start-up funding for general operations, each group was required to complete a common application form, which was ultimately turned in to Professor Lippe. Professor Lippe gave each groups proposal to an outside source for further review, and we are awaiting their decision on which group “won” the $10,000 grant. We also did another exercise prior to class, which involved individually exploring the 990-tax form for the Greater Lowell Boys and Girls Club. We were required to answer multiple questions regarding that tax form, pertaining to revenue versus expenses, employee salaries, yearly growth, etc. Both exercises were designed to prepare us for Mondays class.
During class, we discussed the 990 form in greater detail. We identified what implications an organizations finances had on our decision to fund that nonprofit, and ultimately concluded that tax forms are an excellent tool to thoroughly evaluate a viable grantee. Based on our experience with the mock grant proposals and the tax form, we split into two separate groups to discuss what criteria we look for in a nonprofit’s grant proposal. Since we created our own proposals and shared ideas as class, we knew exactly what we were looking for in a real proposal. In our separate groups, we brainstormed ideas for a rubric that would be used to grade incoming proposals. After a half hour or so, we reconvened as a class, and combined the ideas from both groups. With the guidance of Professor Lippe, we were ultimately satisfied with the quality of our rubric by the end of class. Each student was able to contribute and share their opinions on what criteria are most important to identifying a worthy nonprofit. Looking forward to next class, we will use our rubric as a benchmark to score incoming applications. Each student will review an application(s) individually, and then discuss our grant proposal scores more thoroughly during next weeks class. This will ultimately give us the opportunity to examine our favorite organizations in greater detail, and select “finalists” who will receive our grant.
Two groups discussing what to include in our rubric (pictured below):
 

 

Friday, December 1, 2017

Class #9 Post

November 14th 2017 We did a lot of cool and fun things in class today. We started off the class by doing an icebreaker exercise where one had to pick a couple of words and an image to describe yourself. This was difficult but very interesting to see what people chose to describe themselves. Everyone then got some marketing and development brochures from various nonprofits in order to compare them. We were able to see what the brochures did well and what we didn’t like. We then describe the differences between marketing and development. After, we split up into our mock nonprofits groups and worked on our marketing and development for our groups. We had to write elevator pitches for our mock nonprofits and then present them in front of the class. This was really educational and fun to do. It made us be able to describe our mock nonprofit and its goals in a conversation which is similar to what happens in real world. You see someone at a coffee shop and only had two minutes to tell them about the nonprofit you are working at and get them interested in the nonprofit and its mission. Overall, todays class was a lot of fun and really educational as well












Class #8 Post

This week was a bit of a whirlwind for our class, as we had our last class session cancelled due to a storm in Lowell which caused a lot of power outages on campus. We had to discuss two week’s worth of reading material/assignments as well as play catch-up with our mock nonprofits and service learning project.

 As an icebreaker to get everyone engaged and to get conversation flowing, we went around the room identifying performance indicators and performance goals relevant to our own life. This was related to our management dashboards and logic models that we were tasked with creating for our nonprofits. Professor Lippe started us off with her example: her goal being to get as much exercise as possible and her indicator being miles spent biking or running per week. There were a huge variety of goals (though ones related to academics were popular). It was interesting to hear what each classmate values/finds important in his/her life and the exercise additionally got us thinking critically about how to implement and formulate successful performance goals and indicators.

We then moved onto to discussing our logical models and management dashboards. Professor Lippe pulled up Tyler’s work as examples and we talked about them as a class.

We then moved on to talking about Peter Drucker’s book, The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization, which we had to read for class two weeks ago. For our discussion question, Professor Lippe asked us which Drucker question we thought was the most difficult to implement. We voted by show of hands and there were votes for every question. Each “team” then got a chance to defend why they thought a specific question was the most difficult to implement. I think we came away from the discussion realizing that all five questions are very important in the world of nonprofit development and management, perhaps with all five even being equally as significant.

We then divided up into our mock nonprofit groups to share our mission statements with each other. There is a group who envisions working with foster kids, trying to provide services to close the gap between foster care and real life (no abrupt aging out/getting dropped from the system at 18). There is another group who theoretically wants to provide service dogs to military veterans. Still another group imagines working to engaging children with environmental issues through innovative technology. The last group hypothetically wants to provide tutoring to ELL students in public schools, with the short-term goal of helping them succeed on standardized testing. We all critiqued each other’s mission statements and then discussed how these statements were the guiding factor in everything else we were to develop as part of these mock organizations. Our goals, theory of change etc. all had to align under our different mission statements. We then had a brief discussion about the purpose of creating our own mock nonprofits, concluding that the experience would better allow us to judge the grant applications that we will be receiving shortly. We continued to work in our mock nonprofit groups for a while, collaborating about our management dashboards and finalizing our logic models to submit to Professor Lippe.

The last part of class we spent discussing our service project. Last class, Vanessa was put in charge of reaching out to the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell. She presented what she and one of the directors had discussed about our project, stating that there were two options for our class to choose from: working directly with the children in some capacity or working on the weekend to help set up a makerspace for the children. As a class, we decided that we’d rather work with the kids. As we all have vastly different interests and areas of expertise, we decided to combine a bunch of different program ideas into one as a kind of station playday. We envisioned setting up multiple different stations (each focused on a different area) for the kids that they would travel around to. We loosely defined the purpose at this point as trying to expose the participants to different hobbies/subjects (we left the exact wording up to group crafting the mission statement). We then divided into groups, one to work on the mission statement and outcome measurements for the project, one to plan the logistics and one to create the individual stations and activities.

This week was a bit of a whirlwind for our class, as we had our last class session cancelled due to a storm in Lowell which caused a lot of power outages on campus. We had to discuss two week’s worth of reading material/assignments as well as play catch-up with our mock nonprofits and service learning project.

As an icebreaker to get everyone engaged and to get conversation flowing, we went around the room identifying performance indicators and performance goals relevant to our own life. This was related to our management dashboards and logic models that we were tasked with creating for our nonprofits. Professor Lippe started us off with her example: her goal being to get as much exercise as possible and her indicator being miles spent biking or running per week. There were a huge variety of goals (though ones related to academics were popular). It was interesting to hear what each classmate values/finds important in his/her life and the exercise additionally got us thinking critically about how to implement and formulate successful performance goals and indicators.

We then moved onto to discussing our logical models and management dashboards. Professor Lippe pulled up Tyler’s work as examples and we talked about them as a class.

We then moved on to talking about Peter Drucker’s book, The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization, which we had to read for class two weeks ago. For our discussion question, Professor Lippe asked us which Drucker question we thought was the most difficult to implement. We voted by show of hands and there were votes for every question. Each “team” then got a chance to defend why they thought a specific question was the most difficult to implement. I think we came away from the discussion realizing that all five questions are very important in the world of nonprofit development and management, perhaps with all five even being equally as significant.


We then divided up into our mock nonprofit groups to share our mission statements with each other. There is a group who envisions working with foster kids, trying to provide services to close the gap between foster care and real life (no abrupt aging out/getting dropped from the system at 18). There is another group who theoretically wants to provide service dogs to military veterans. Still another group imagines working to engaging children with environmental issues through innovative technology. The last group hypothetically wants to provide tutoring to ELL students in public schools, with the short-term goal of helping them succeed on standardized testing. We all critiqued each other’s mission statements and then discussed how these statements were the guiding factor in everything else we were to develop as part of these mock organizations. Our goals, theory of change etc. all had to align under our different mission statements. We then had a brief discussion about the purpose of creating our own mock nonprofits, concluding that the experience would better allow us to judge the grant applications that we will be receiving shortly. We continued to work in our mock nonprofit groups for a while, collaborating about our management dashboards and finalizing our logic models to submit to Professor Lippe. 

Monday, November 27, 2017

Class #7 post

 Class #7














 


        During this class we completed three major tasks; working on our mock nonprofits, discussing what kind of leaders everybody is, and our service project. The 4 photos above depict the 4 different mock nonprofit groups. Last week was more of a brainstorming/preliminary ideas discussion. This week we got a lot more in depth as we began to work on Logic Models. These logic models contain information pertaining to the nonprofits mission, theory of change, customers, desired outcomes, and much more. Working on and completing this sheet will lead us to a better understanding of what we want to do with these nonprofits, and will hopefully help raise questions that would need to be answered before the organization started asking for funding.
        For the second part of class, we did an exercise exploring what types of leaders we were, and the qualities of being a certain type of leader mean. There were 4 types of leaders, ranging from autocratic to democratic, bossy to friendly, and somewhere in between. It was a pretty even mix of the 4 different types of leaders. There was obviously no wrong choice, and we discussed what it meant to be each type of leader, and what the pros and cons of each type might be, and how it might affect productivity in a work environment. This was a great exercise for the class for two reasons. The first is that we each learned a little about ourselves and about our classmates. Talking in groups with the people who were the same leadership type, led to a realization that we were very similar in more ways than we expected. The second reason it was important to do for the class is because of our service project. We will be performing a community service project soon and leaders will emerge throughout the planning and performing of this project. Learning what types of leaders we have in the class will help us better understand how to work well together, allowing everyone to have their input and ideas heard, without causing much if any friction.
        We spent the last part of class discussing what we want the service project to be, who we want to help, and other logistical concerns. We have made it obvious that we want to make an impact, and that we believe the best impact does not come from charity, but from empowerment, and other, more complex types of philanthropy. We don’t want to just give them fish, we want to teach them to fish. We want to give them skills or ideas that will stick with them, and help them be better people moving forward. We have a lot of ideas whether its helping the homeless or going to the local Boys and Girls Club, so this decision will need to be made in the coming weeks.