Advanced Organization Academy Topics
1. Effective Public Relations for Established Downtown Organizations
This lively four-hour workshop focuses on using public relations to build a positive public image and garner resources. Participants will learn how to shift from haphazard P.R. efforts to a strategy that puts the organization in a positive public spotlight. This interactive session covers the benefits of positive public relations efforts, effective P.R. methods and tools, and public relations strategy development. Participants leave the workshop with a “quick-and-dirty” P.R. plan to use immediately.
2. Capitalizing on the Changing Nature of Volunteerism
This informative half-day workshop covers ways that Main Street organizations can sustain an essential volunteer base in today’s changing volunteer climate. Participants will learn about volunteer trends, generational volunteer preferences, recruitment tools and technology, how to compete for volunteers, and will leave with an understanding of how to develop a volunteer management strategy and to effectively communicate their organization’s volunteer needs.
3. Diversify Your Revenue Sources!
Established downtown organizations need regular, predictable income to sustain their organizations and to ensure a viable future. This half-day session informs participants about various sources and methods they can use to broaden their funding base.
Content includes:
§ Fund-raising roles & responsibilities
§ The importance of a diversified, sustainable funding base
§ The seven traditional sources of downtown funding
§ “Growing” existing donations
§ New funding options from standby sources
§ Ideal revenue mixes for organizations at different life stages, and
§ The importance of Business Improvement Districts, planned giving programs and endowments.
4. Conquering Leadership Transitions
Every organization faces changes in staff and/or volunteer leadership, which can either threaten or re-energize non-profit organizations. This stimulating half-day workshop helps organizations identify potential transitions and how to navigate them successfully. Participants will learn how to retain valuable personnel, how to manage both planned and unexpected staff and volunteer transitions, and how to direct healthy, planned leadership transitions in order to sustain and strengthen the revitalization program.
5. Survive and Prosper from Organizational Transitions
This half-day workshop is designed to give local staff and volunteers the skills and information to navigate the organizational life cycle, from start-up to maturity. Participants will learn about::
§ Predictable organizational growth patterns
§ The difference between normal and reactive change, and how to manage both
§ Typical points of transition that can move the organization forward or backward
§ Strategies for managing change to build a better downtown and organization.
6. Strategic Leadership for Main Street
This intensive 1.5 day, two-part workshop is designed to enable seasoned downtown directors develop a clear strategy to take their organization and their own skills to the next level. Limited to 16 directors, the session enables staff to understand their key organizational challenges and to identify the strategic leadership role that they must perform to move the organization forward. Utilizing organizational and leadership self-assessments, planning exercises, group discussion, and one-on-one coaching with Harris and Redman, participants identify “next level” organization strategies, various obstacles to achieving those growth strategies, methods for overcoming obstacles, a pathway for personal leadership in guiding change, and a plan for “selling” organizational growth at home. Participants will leave the workshop ready to be change agents for organizational maturation.
Contact Donna Ann Harris at donna@heritageconsultinginc.com or Stephanie Redman at stephanie.redman@gmail.com to learn more about pricing and availability.
