June 27, 2011
The Bayer Center blog has been a lot of fun! With a busy and small staff, however, it has been a challenge to keep it up.
We are leaving the blog up because there’s a lot of good stuff on here (and you never know, we may come back to it). In the meantime, we’d love to talk to you on Facebook or Twitter!
Like the Bayer Center on Facebook!
Follow the Bayer Center on Twitter!
June 24, 2010
Are you proud of your organization’s tagline? Does it summarize your mission in a quick and memorable little bundle?
Strut your stuff at the 2010 Nonprofit Tagline Awards. Nancy Schwartz’s Getting Attention blog annually highlights the best collections of a few well-chosen words that organizations use to help people understand and remember their mission. While your mission statement guides internal decision-making and provides depth of meaning to those who have decided to work or volunteer with you, a tagline helps you communicate with those who have just encountered you for the first time.
You can submit taglines in several categories – for the agency, for a program or for a fundraising or marketing campaign.n Everyone who submits a tagline gets the report when it gets published. You can learn from the winners and maybe get inspired to overhaul your tagline.
http://gettingattention.org/nonprofit-taglines/overview-nonprofit-tagline-awards-report.html
Bring home the trophy!
[Note: There is no trophy.]
June 10, 2010
April 1, 2010
“There’s no law that says you can’t eat and blog at the same time.”
This mantra is written on the cardboard shell of one of the Mexican Taco Hot Pockets I just nuked for lunch. No, I didn’t make that up – see pic at right for proof.
It struck me as amusing at first, but then it made me think.
I give classes and seminars to nonprofits about social media on a fairly regular basis. And, on a fairly regular basis, the most frequent question I hear is “when are we supposed to make time to do social media?” That’s what people say. What I hear is “we aren’t convinced social media is worth our time.”
Think about it. Yes, nonprofits are busy. Super-busy in most cases, with little breathing room. We manage, however, to make time for new programs and other activities that we have deemed to be important and mission-critical. If social media makes your list of important and mission-critical, you’ll make time for it. Even if that means blogging while eating (as I am doing at this very moment).
Along these lines, here’s an article with some tips on making time for social media:
http://www.vintage-va.com/2010/02/no-time-for-social-media-make-time/.
April 1, 2010
flickr photo: David Michael Morris - Lecturn view
Editor’s note: I posted this quote moments after it came to my mind. It haunted me some through the day, so I workshopped it. I think I like this version better:
February 23, 2010
We really aim to create conversation here on our blog, and to that end, we aim for thought-provoking topics. Sometimes, though, more prosaic topics deserve addressing, too.
Despite the well-known dangers in assuming, I assumethat you think Word 2007′s default paragraph settings are as stupid as I do. Hence, a brief primer on changing them.
February 19, 2010
Who’s that new person answering the phones at the Bayer Center…?
That’s Shelby Gracey, our new Office Coordinator!
Shelby started working for the Bayer Center just this month and we are tickled to have her with us. She came to us from Keystone Oaks School District, where she served as the Technical Facilitator, or as she puts it “the tech person.” Shelby has an A.S. in medical administration assisting, but has spent very little time in the medical field and more time working with other types of nonprofits.
One of those nonprofits just happens to be the Sunset Hill United Presbyterian Church, where her husband is the minister. Shelby serves as the congregation’s Director of Music, which includes coordinating and performing music for church services, directing a 28- member adult choir, teaching music for the Youth Club, and assisting with the bell choir.
These two jobs keep her pretty busy, but in her spare time she likes to spend time with her husband and children (two left in high school and one away at college) and play with her dogs (three beagles and a cockapoo). In addition, she loves to read and considers dining out a form of entertainment since it gets her out of the kitchen.
Shelby is a Florida native, having moved to Pittsburgh’s South Hills around 20 years ago. She said everyone likes to ask “how could you possibly leave Florida?” but she adores Pennsylvania – including the snowy weather.
Please join us in welcoming Shelby to the Bayer Center family!!
February 5, 2010
The U.S. public debt burden is $7.75 trillion, and “most economists agree that our rising deficit poses a very real threat to the health of our future economy.” We could start paying down this debt – as many Americans are struggling to do with their own personal finances – but our federal government continues to run up even larger deficits.
One of the reasons we cannot reign in our spending ways is our political leaders continue to care more about representing the interest of their state, and getting reelected, than about the future health of the U.S. economy. Take Senator Ken Conrad (D-ND), Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, for example. Sen. Conrad is adamant that Congress and the President need to reign in their irresponsible spending ways and pass a balanced budget. He has even gone on record as saying:
“Yes, the small things are important to my state, but I also recognize that the big things are what matter from a national perspective. What really matters is that we have an overall (budget) plan that is balanced.”
As Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Conrad has arguably more clout over this process than any of his Congressional peers. So, in practice, how does he use this influence? Well, Sen. Conrad awarded his home state of North Dakota with the third highest amount of federal earmarks per capita of any U.S. state ($213 per capita versus the U.S. average of $41 per capita for fiscal 2008 -2009).
In a time when we as a country are spending 10% of our revenues ($250 billion) to repay our federal debt, and Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consume another 57% of our budget ($1,430 billion), it’s good to know our leaders are “looking out” for our best interest. Oh, least I forget, the current 2011 budget request is likely to add another $1.6 trillion to our growing public debt (Did you know that China and Japan, collectively, own $1.5 trillion of U.S. debt?), which went before the Senate Budget Committee this week. The best part of it all is that the Obama administration projects the entitlement programs and the interest on our deficit will “absorb 80% of all federal revenues by 2020.” Therefore, let’s all be clear, our current political leaders, much like their recent predecessors, are fully aware of the approaching fiscal crisis and are doing nothing to avert it.
Speaking of fiscal crisis, let’s not forget about our own state’s budget woes. Last year, the state of Pennsylvania took 101 days after its constitutional deadline to pass its $28 billion budget. PA was the last state to pass its budget amidst the worst recession since the Great Depression. By August of last year, most of the state’s 67 counties could not afford to fund their nonprofit agencies without state money. (Harrisburg did manage to pass an interim budget that would pay the state’s 71,000 government workers, but nonprofit agencies were not included.) During a time of great community need, and declining public contributions, foundation funds, and already scaled back government contracts, Pennsylvania politicians could not decide on how to fill a $3 billion hole in our budget (or 10% of the total budget, which is pretty “cheap” in comparison to our projected 33% federal budget hole for fiscal 2010 – 2011). Instead, nonprofits were forced to take out private loans to continue to operate; reduced their services; furloughed or reduced their staff; and, in some cases, closed their doors altogether.
The bad news for nonprofit agencies and Pennsylvanians alike is the fiscal picture in Harrisburg is sure to only get worse because of the looming debts in both the state employees’ and teachers’ retirement funds. PA legislators entered the millennium with a pension surplus and spent the surplus funds despite the fact that they would one day have to deliver on this “accounts payable”, just as their federal counterparts did (remember Al Gore’s 2000 platform promise to create a Social Security “lockbox”?). Unfortunately, the “payable” starts coming due in 2012, and the Tribune Review and Post-Gazette both estimate it’s going to cost the state approximately $3.5 billion (the Trib says $4 billion, the PG says $3 billion). Mind you, this money will not be used to improve our schools, create new jobs, or improve living conditions in our cities and rural communities, but rather will cover the state’s entire employer contribution for state workers and half of the employer contribution for school workers for fiscal 2012 – 2013. Essentially, the folks in Harrisburg are imitating the same fiscal irresponsibility of their federal counterparts. May the most irresponsible lawmaker “win”, I guess?
February 2, 2010
