One of the findings of the 2009 study “An Assessment of Capacity Building in Washington State” was the need for “101-level” training for boards and their executive directors. Currently, learning opportunities in these topics are available episodically, or not at all, in most communities. The Nonprofit Essentials Training (NET) Program was created to fill this identified gap in services.
501 Commons, with the support of Social Venture Partners and the Statewide Capacity Collaborative, has developed the NET Program.
NET’s goals are threefold:
- To build the number and quality of local presenters who can deliver trainings on key areas of nonprofit capacity, focusing especially on communities outside King County.
- To design and maintain curriculum on nonprofit board and management subjects and to act as a “utility” to connect presenters, nonprofits, and sponsors.
- To evaluate the learning process and incorporate improvements as needed or adjust to changing needs in the ecosystem.
NET will offer learning opportunities in these subject areas: Board Leadership, Nonprofit Financial Management, Making Technology Decisions, and Strategic Planning. A session on Human Resources is in development. In addition, the Volunteer Centers of Washington offers a training on Volunteer Management. The sessions are longer than usual, running 2.5-3 hours, and are built using an adult learning model that focuses on engaging, enabling, and empowering participants.
In order to address the problem of unequal service distribution by geographic region, NET is building a community of presenters statewide. During the development of NET, we heard that many expert presenters and consultants in Washington are willing to generously donate their time to deliver these trainings because they want to help develop the capacity of nonprofits statewide. Since we want to keep the cost of the learning sessions under $40 per person, when possible, we are asking the trainers to volunteer their time to deliver the prepared curriculum and be compensated only for any out-of-pocket costs. 501 Commons will assist with the registration and logistics planning.
We are currently recruiting trainers and presenters who would like to deliver this curriculum, sponsors who would promote the sessions to nonprofits in their community and/or underwrite the small costs of a session, and organizations who want to increase their impact by participating in this new learning opportunity.
If you are a potential trainer in any of these topic areas and are willing to deliver NET trainings in your community or elsewhere in the state, contact us. If you know people in your organization or in your community who have the expertise to do trainings on Board Leadership, Nonprofit Financial Management, Technology Decison-Making, Human Resources, or Strategic Planning, send them this information and ask them to participate. Potential candidates include active community members who have served on multiple boards, local CPAs, educators, or nonprofit or technology consultants.
For more information, please contact Greg Scully at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Would you like to sponsor a training for nonprofits near you?