YNPN Meet and Greet Pics

Photos from the May 21st YNPN San Diego Meet and Greet are now on the YNPN SD blog. Be sure to check it out: http://ynpn-sd.blogspot.com/. Big thanks to Timely Photography for the amazing photos, to Hard Rock Cafe for hosting us, and to the amazing volunteers who made the event possible!!!

Updates on board applications

YNPN San Diego had a GREAT first Board of Directors meeting which I will blog about more later, but for now, I wanted to let you all know a brief update to our board application process.

Through the end of 2008 we will not be accepting any new board members, BUT we will still be taking applications. We are about to have a total of 12 board members and have decided to wait on bringing on any new folks until this group has settled in, worked together, and created a foundation. Please continue to send in your board applications and we will review them for our next cycle of board members. More details to come.

As for committee applications (same form as the board application online). We will continue to accept these on an on-going basis right now. There is no change at this time. Once we have committees up and running (more details to come on this as well), committees will individually be reviewing and accepting committee applications.

SO...if you are some one who is interested in the board and committee work, we will hold off on accepting your application for the board until our next cycle, but we will review your application for committee work as soon as possible.

THANKS to everyone for your patience as YNPN San Diego develops its processes and structure. We hope that all of our efforts to establish clear processes and structure help to better serve the YNPN San Diego members. Please post your questions and comments about the board application process here.

~Emily "Ed" Davis, Board Chair, YNPN San Diego

Interested in joining the YNPN San Diego team?

Lately, YNPN San Diego has been getting a lot of attention from the young nonprofit professional community in San Diego! We are so excited to have all of the questions and interest in the organization. Many of you have asked questions about how you can get involved and what the process if for joining the Board of Directors or a committee. Well, here are some answers...

The biggest thing to remember is that we are a very new organization...we are working through transition and learning the best strategies to support our members in a sustainable way for the volunteers at YNPN San Diego. Originally, I was accepting applications for the board and committee and reviewing them one-by-one, setting up follow up calls and sending out a ton of emails. As the board is growing (we have our first meeting on Tuesday!) we have more capacity to share in these responsibilities.

We currently have seven board members and just as many pending applications. At our next board meeting we will decide how many board members we want and what expertise we need. We will also determine procedures for processing board applications. Board and committee applications may be processed on a monthly or quarterly basis.

If you are interested in joining a committee or the board, these are the steps:

1. Go to the YNPN San Diego website where you will find the application and the descriptions for the board positions and committees.
2. Download the application and fill in the corresponding information
3. Submit your application (in xml format) along with your resume to sandiego@ynpn.org.
4. A YNPN San Diego Board Member will file your application and begin tracking your interest in the board and/or committee(s) on our spreadsheet.
5. If you are interested in a committee:
1. Your application will be submitted to the corresponding committee for review and approval.
   
2. The committee chair will contact you to welcome you to the committee and provide you with relevant orientation information for the committee. (Schedule of reviewing and accepting applications TBD.)
   
6. If you are interested in the Board of Directors:
1. Your application and resume will be reviewed on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly) by the board development committee.
   
2. Someone from the board development committee will contact you about setting up a follow up call or interview. This will be an opportunity for you to ask questions about YNPN San Diego governance responsibilities and for us to inform you of the commitments, etc.
3. Your application will be taken to the next board of directors meeting for discussion.
4. If your application is approved, you will receive a welcome email including all the details for the board of directors meeting schedule and other relevant information including orientation.

The YNPN San Diego Board of Directors currently meets monthly, on the third Tuesday of every month from 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. If you are interested in attending a meeting and are not a board member, please contact us at sandiego@ynpn.org.

Priorities for our board include:

• Outlining vision, goals, and strategies for the next year.
  
• Establishing board structure (i.e. bylaws, board development, strategic planning, policies and procedures, etc.).
• Creating committees and providing leadership to those committees from board members.
• Determining fiscal structure through independent 501(c)3 status or fiscal sponsorship.
  

Committees will begin to form and meet on an as-needed and eventually, on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Thank you to everyone for your patience and support as we begin to form our new, exciting, and dedicated team of leaders! Please post your questions and comments here about the application process.

YNPN SD and Board Development

Every group has a different approach to starting up their nonprofit based on mission, support, volunteers, personalities, and so on. One of the hardest pieces can be setting up the foundation for the nonprofit, or the infrastructure. Volunteers are usually pretty interested in the programming...after all that is usually the way that we express our missions. We still need to infrastructure to make it all run smoothly though.

This is a big part of why I went to graduate school for Nonprofit Management. I wanted to learn how to do this well. That experience along with my board membership at YNPN Denver and other governing roles has provided me with a framework to share with YNPN San Diego.

In the last two months we have really made a lot of head way in setting up structure at YNPN San Diego. We have recruited YNPN San Diego general members, event planning committee members, and now board members. While we are not technically a board of directors until we have LLC or incorporation status, we will certainly operate like one. We will create a board book with processes, procedures, and policies; we will manage subcommittees; we will serve as the governance and fiscal managers of the organization; and much more! We will look at fiscal sponsorship and independent 501c3 status; we will set ethical guidelines and inclusiveness policies; the list goes on...

One of the challenges I have faced in this is recruiting board members...the truth is that we have had an ENORMOUS amount of interest and it has been hard to keep up! It's a good problem to have certainly and we must balance our capacity with our credibility and responsibility to respond to our members.

Initially, I and other board members set up follow up calls with interested board members after their applications and resumes were submitted. As more people demonstrate their interest in the board, the more internal communications and calls there are. Anyone who has tried to schedule meetings knows just how time-consuming this piece can be. So, we have had to revise our strategy to set up monthly calls and as we continue to grow we will probably have to revise it again. This is just an example of growth and flexibility that occurs at a startup nonprofit.

We have to pace ourselves as a team so that we don't burnout (and we all know what that looks like) and track our efforts. It takes extra time for all of this and it is important that we have a board who recognizes the amount of effort that will go into the first year of YNPN San Diego.

I feel confident that we do and will have an excellent team committed to YNPN San Diego's mission and development. I am so excited about our first board meeting on June 17th, to begin to discuss these issues. I hope to begin to explore the vision and goals of the group as well as gain some insight into managing board development. Thanks so everyone for your patience while we continue to work as a 100% volunteer-run organization and meet the needs of emerging leaders in the nonprofit community!

Please share with me questions, thoughts, or stories you have about board development. I look forward to hearing from you!

The process of starting up YNPN San Diego

Emily and I have provided consulting to a number of start-ups in our own consulting practices EDA Consulting and Nonprofit Management Employment Alternatives, however for me, this is the really exciting part--to be in the trenches creating an organization.

When Emily and I met for the first time a little over two months ago we never thought that YNPN San Diego would gain so much momentum so quickly. A couple of nights ago we had our first ever informal board meet up. It is great to be with people who are just as passionate about nonprofits as we are.

This has been a learning process for all of us. We now have five official board members and we are a team. We are learning how to communicate with one another, what our strengths and weaknesses are, what we have and don't have capacity to do. We are truly trying to create a sustainable organization as Emily put it, "something that will continue without us." It has been fun and challenging. For example at first we thought we would assign people to board positions and then over time we realized it would be best for people to see what their interests are, what they have capacity to do and then in a few months people will find a fit with the board position that works best for them. This just one of the many adjustments that we have made along the way.

So far we have:
-Created our website/listserv/marketing materials
-Filed LLC Paperwork
-Had our first successful meet and greet event with over 50 people in attendance!!

Now we are planning to:
-Have our first official board meeting
-Recruit a few more board members and many more committee members
-Create a formal plan and goals for the rest of the year
-Get fiscal sponsorship
-To Apply for 501c3 status

If you are in the process of started or already started your own nonprofit, what was it like? Have you experienced some of the challenges we have? We'd love to hear about your experiences.

What a great event!

It was clear from the YNPN San Diego Meet and Greet last night, May 21st, 2008, that there are a great many emerging leaders looking to connect with one another. I have never under-estimated the importance of networking and last night just affirmed my commitment to it all!

I was amazed at the number of people who came out to become a part of YNPN San Diego if they weren't members already. I was also in awe of the generosity demonstrated by the attendees! We are really at the grassroots level, just beginning our journey to becoming an independent nonprofit or a fiscally-sponsored organization, but we couldn't do all of this without the efforts of volunteers and the kindness of donors!

As I said to many folks last night, I am new to the San Diego area and was hoping that setting up a Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) here would help me learn more about the nonprofit community and the individuals within it. I was right...I learned so much from everyone last night and wrangled up some opportunities for myself and for YNPN San Diego.

I would love to hear what you thought of last night's Meet and Greet. Share your experience here or provide suggestions for future events. We want to hear from you, so use your voice loud and clear!

Thanks for a great night and I hope to see you all again soon!

Emily Davis, Founder and Board Member, YNPN San Diego

Meet and Greet May 21st

YNPN San Diego will host its first official Meet and Greet networking event on May 21st from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at HARD ROCK CAFE!

Click here to access the Evite and RSVP!

Young Workers Seek Ways to Improve Nonprofit Work Force

From Philanthropy.com

Young Workers Seek Ways to Improve Nonprofit Work Force

By Candie Jones

Chicago

As nonprofit groups increasingly compete with business and government employers to attract young workers, many people in their 20s and 30s are pressing charities to improve salaries, offer greater opportunities for career development, and do more to promote the diversity of their work forces.

In follow-up conversation to a survey of 1,650 released by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network last year, which found burnout and low salaries threatening to drive young charity workers away, members of the group held a conference here to discuss how they can bring about changes that will reshape nonprofit organizations in ways that make them more inclusive and give greater opportunities to emerging leaders. more