opportunity – Trina Isakson

Your small Canadian nonprofit can’t afford professional development?

I’m a firm believer in on-the-job learning, including professional development. I believe it can not only strengthen an individual’s effectiveness in a job, but also can positively impact employee engagement and retention.

But conferences, workshops, courses and other professional development opportunities can be expensive for nonprofits on tight budgets. This is where the Leadership Grants Program from PricewaterhouseCoopers comes in.

Deadline for applications: October 29, 2010

The PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada Foundation Leadership Grants Program provides funding for professional development opportunities for staff and volunteers who work at small- to medium-registered charitable organizations in Canada.

The grants are available to both staff and volunteers, individuals or groups.

The application process requires some thinking as well as endorsement from highers-up in your organization, so be sure to take time to prepare your submission.

Anyone want a strategic management report?

This summer I’ll be completing some of my last master’s courses to complete an MBA in Community Economic Development. One of the courses, Strategic Management, requires a final project that assesses a variety of characteristics of an organization. I’ve figured that rather doing a report for distant company or organization XYZ, I’d like to do one for a nonprofit that might find value in the results of the report.

The topics the report that I need to produce for this course include an overview and analysis of topics such as:

Organizational life cycle
Organizational and governance structures
External operating environment
Financial indicators
Operational strategies
Marketing, financial, and research & development strategies
Leadership
Alliances and partnerships
Performance measurement tools

The report will include suggestions for changes (if any) to strategy or structure that may enhance the success of the organization in fulfilling its mission, along with a time frame for these changes.

There is no limit to the type of organization, but the organization does have to be large enough to have a variety of programs/activities and possible partnerships. I also need to have access to financial statements.

Obviously this report is limited in the sense that I am expected to include pre-determined sections, whereas an interested organization may only want a few areas to be examined. I could provide a complete or abridged report if this is the case. Or perhaps an organization is willing to support a graduate student by providing information to help inform such a report without any interest in the actual report.

In any case, if this is of interest to you and/or your organization, be in touch by the beginning of July.