Over the last six years, I have planned and facilitated numerous retreats for a multitude of organizations. Through this work, I have learned some best practices that I’m pleased to share with you.  With my Associate Meg Wade, we put together this 13-page “How-to” guide for planning a retreat. For any of you planning a retreat, we hope this will give you some helpful tips to make your retreat a success. If you need any assistance at all with planning or facilitating an upcoming retreat for your organization, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Here's some blog posts sharing stories from some of the retreats I facilitated: 
LA Poverty Department
Echo Park Time Bank
Beverly Vermont Community Land Trust
Green LA Coalition
Public Matters
Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition
Alliance for Biking and Walking
LA Urban Rangers (pictured above)

Having just returned from facilitating a Board retreat, I can tell you first hand there’s something very powerful about assembling your organization’s leadership to make important decisions.  Here are ten tips to make your retreats in 2011 a success:

1. Designate a Planning Lead or Committee:  The Executive Director, Board President and ideally another Board member should meet a couple of times before the retreat to plan a successful gathering. If you bring in an outside facilitator, they should also be involved in this planning process.  

2. Decide a Location:  Ideally, you want to choose a location that feels “far away”. Of course, you have to balance far away with what all of your leadership has the capacity to make it to. Here’s a link to 12 sites in Los Angeles.

3. Decide Who to Invite:  Will it just bet your Board of Directors or will you invite staff, volunteers and/or other community stakeholders? If you bring in non-Board members, be clear up front their role in the decision making process will be.

4. Engage Participants Before the Retreat:  Ask for their input in developing the agenda.  Run the draft agenda by them before the retreat and make modifications based on their input.

5. Develop an Agenda:  While there’s a time and place for informal chatting during a retreat, it’s best to develop a clear agenda with goals and outcomes.  Prioritize the three or four biggest decisions you need to make and give time for them in the agenda.  Here’s a link with more info on planning a successful agenda. 

6. Use Retreats to Make Big, Long-Term Decisions:  Retreats are great for strategic planning – developing your mission, vision, values, strategies, goals and objectives.  They are also good opportunities to discuss/resolve big issues your organization faces.  Avoid routine business at retreats.

7. Plan for Engaging Activities:  Don’t just plan one long group discussion – mix it up with small group work, one-on-one work, various team building activities, games and fun.  Tailor these activities to the folks that will attend.  I’m a big fan of two-day retreats that include an overnight, giving more time for folks to deepen their relationships with one another.

8. Plan for Meals and Movement:  Some of the most valuable time at retreats occurs during informal discussion during meals or physical activities like walks, bike rides or games.  Avoid “working lunches” and instead give folks the opportunity to chat.  Remember to take a 10 or 15-minute break after working for 90 minutes.

9. Allow for Flexibility:  Inevitably, some agenda items take longer and others take less time.  If you’re making good progress on something valuable to your organization but haven’t finished it yet, give yourself the option to work more on it.

10. Designate a Facilitator:  Either designate one or multiple people within your own organization to facilitate the actual retreat. Or, if you have the capacity to hire an outside facilitator, that would give everyone in the organization's leadership the opportunity to fully participate in the decision-making process. Professional facilitators bring a variety of tools and methods designed to provide a space for everyone to participate in the decision-making process. Even more valuable, a facilitator can help your group navigate through the sometimes-challenging territory of making tough decisions. Here’s a link to seven reasons why a facilitator can be of value to your organization. Please contact me if you’re interested in having me facilitate your upcoming retreat.  Thanks and happy retreating!   

With Thanksgiving coming up, this is a time of year to reflect on what we have to be thankful for.  When it comes to nonprofit fundraising, it’s important to thank your donors more than once a year.  In fact, saying “thank you” just might be the two most important words you can say in fundraising.  Here’s 10 quick ways to add some variety to the way you thank your donors.

1. Write a personalized thank you note after each gift.

2. When a positive story comes out in the media, forward it to you top donors and include a personalized thank you note saying they helped make it possible.

3. Schedule a face-to-face meeting with your top donors at least once a year and be sure to thank them at some point during the conversation.

4. Set up an automatic thank you message after anyone donates online.

5. Acknowledge your donors in your annual appeal (and when you mail it to your supporters, personalize that donor thank you page with a personal note).

6. Say thank you in person whenever you come across one of your donors in person.

7. Listen to your donors and find out what they are interested in.  Thank them for sharing with you.

8. Thank a donor in front of other folks if that donor hosts a house-party or some other fundraising event.

9. Mail the donor a holiday card and/or a birthday card.

10. Ask the donor how they would like to publicly be acknowledged for their gift and do what they say.

I welcome any other suggestions you have. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

(Some recent facilitation I did at the Alliance for Bicycling and Walking Retreat...thanks Yvonne Bambrick for taking the photo)

I understand that nonprofits have limited budgets and are usually much more willing to hire a consultant to help with fundraising than facilitation in this shaky economy.  Let me attempt to make a case for why a facilitator can be a valuable investment for the leadership of your organization to make.  

The job of a facilitator is to increase the overall effectiveness of a group.  Specifically, a facilitator can help your group with the following:

1.  Improve the overall effectiveness of your meetings:  A facilitator works with your organization’s leadership to develop an effective meeting agenda beforehand and then works hard during your meeting to ensure the group achieves the goals and outcomes it set in its agenda.

2.  Help you make important decisions:  A facilitator understands the process of decision-making and can help move your group through that process in a structured way that engages everyone within your group.  

3.  Make your meetings more efficient:  Ever been in a meeting that goes off track?  A facilitator helps keep a group focused and intervenes when a group veers off track.

4.  Help you manage conflict:  Conflict can derail a group or be harnessed to help creatively solve a group’s problems.  A facilitator knows how to deal with conflict.

5.  Allow everyone to participate in the decision making process:  Facilitating a meeting is a lot of work and if a member of your group is in charge of doing it, it makes it harder for them to participate in the meeting.  A facilitator serves the whole group by allowing everyone to participate.

6.  Helps everyone be heard:  A facilitator listens to every word that is said and reflects much of it back to the group so the person saying it feels like they have been heard, and the group hears it again so there’s a better chance they actually hear it.

7.  Helps you solve problems:  Facilitators have a variety of tools to help a group creatively understand and solve problems that involve group activities and discussions.

While you probably don’t need an outside facilitator for all of your organization’s meetings, there are usually a few very important times where an organization could use an outside facilitator such as during a strategic planning process, board development process, annual workplan session or any other time where your organization needs to make a big decision, have a needed discussion or build a stronger team.

For more information about my work as a facilitator and tips on facilitation, check out my facilitation flyer.  If you would like to discuss further, please comment or contact me.  Thanks. 

Fundraising Events play a key role in developing a nonprofit organization's relationship with its donors and the broader community.  Over the years, I have attended some really inspirational events and real disasters.  If your organization is planning an event, I encourage you to follow my Top 10 Tips for Fundraising Events.  Good luck with your event!

 
Every month I email out a newsletter with tips, updates, lessons and upcoming trainings.  Here's a link to the full newsletter.  If you would like for me to email future newsletters to you, please contact me.  Thanks and enjoy!

(photo of a brainstorm listing some possible fundraising strategies)

Earlier in the year, I worked with the leadership at LA Voice and SOAR Charter School to create fund development plans for their organizations.  If you’re organization is about to engage in this very important process, I suggest the following 10 tips:

1. Engage your Board:  Creation of a fund development plan is a great way to get your Board involved with fundraising.  If they help create the fundraising plan, they are more likely to implement it.

2. Decide how much you need to raise:  It’s easier to get folks involved to raise funds to meet a specific goal, rather than just having some vague sense for how much you need to raise.

3. Diversify your funding sources:  Discuss different sources of funding and choose to pursue at least three sources (individuals, foundations, government, corporations, earned-income, etc).

4. Prioritize:  While there are lots of good ideas out there for fundraising, you can’t do them all.  Prioritize strategies your organization has the capacity to do that yield the strongest results.

5. Create a Workplan:  Fill out a workplan that contains the following details:  What action you will take, when will that action occur by (month/year) and who will be responsible for carrying out that action. 

6. Give yourself time:  Putting together a fund development plan can take anywhere from one to three months, depending on how frequently you meet with other folks creating it.

7. Evaluate your past fundraising:  Just because you’ve “always” done some fundraising strategy doesn’t mean you need to keep doing it.  Evaluate past strategies and decide if the benefits outweigh the costs.

8. Learn from this Process:  A fund development planning process gives everyone involved the opportunity to build their capacity as fundraisers (something even veteran fundraisers can use).

9: Don’t forget about your Plan!:  Refer to your fund development plan on at least a monthly basis and make sure the workplan you created from it is integrated into your workplan.

10. Follow-up:  Make sure your Executive Director and at least one board member commit to engaging everyone else in the organization to implement the plan.

If your organization can use the services of an experienced consultant to create your own fund development plan, please contact me. 

Here's a link to another two-page flyer I recently created that describes the fundraising services I provide along with 10 tips for nonprofit fundraising.  Enjoy!

Here's a link to a two-page flyer I recently created that describes the facilitation services I provide along with 10 tips for successful facilitation.  Enjoy!

1. BUILD YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Recruit a diverse group of people that believe in your mission

2. DECIDE THE “BIG PICTURE” OF YOUR ORGANIZATION
Have the Board decide the organization’s mission, vision, values and long-term goals (I recommend doing this at a weekend retreat).

3. DEVELOP YOUR WORKPLAN
Based on your long-term goals, develop a plan – What actions will you take? Who will lead them? When will they occur?

4. DECIDE HOW WILL YOU FUND IT
Develop a plan to raise money - Who might want to support this effort? How will you cultivate these funders? How/when will you solicit these funders?

5. DECIDE YOUR LEGAL STRUCTURE
Some choices: 1) Become your own legal nonprofit  2) Go under the umbrella of an existing nonprofit  3) Go under the umbrella of a nonprofit incubator

Ways in which I can help:

-I’m a skilled facilitator and can work with your organization’s leadership to make important decisions during a retreat

-I’m an experienced fundraiser and can help your organization create a fundraising plan

To discuss further, please contact me.

Tonight, Tuesday June 15th, I'm leading a "Running Effective Meetings" Training at the LA Eco-Village, from 7pm to 9pm.  

This workshop explores the key components necessary to ensure meetings are effective and result in decisions that help an organization move forward.  These components include: developing an agenda, knowing people’s roles and responsibilities, having a decision making process, facilitation and good listening skills.

Fee: $35 (sliding scale available)
Reservations required: crsp@igc.org or 213/738-1254

Here's a link to my my Top 10 Tips for running good meetings.

For more information Ron Milam’s work as a facilitator, click here.

I will also lead another Introduction to Facilitation training on July 28th from 7pm to 9pm at the LA Eco-Village.

L.A. Eco-Village is located at 117 Bimini Pl. near 1st and Vermont in Los Angeles    directions

I'm pleased to report the International Institute for Facilitation and Change has published another one of my articles in their online Bonfire newsletter - "Facilitation Skills - Listening".  I'm thrilled to contribute to a broader understanding of facilitation through this work and hope you find it useful, whether your facilitating a meeting or just spending time with people you care about. The International Institute for Facilitation and Change's website has a number of helpful articles on facilitation that I have found valuable and encourage you to check them out. 

Last night, I attended a high-energy fundraiser for Senator Barbara Boxer that President Obama spoke at.  A diverse crowd packed to hear the President, including my own elected representatives - Council President Eric Garcetti and County Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas. 

I attended to not only support the cause,  but to also experience a major political fundraiser. 

As a Consultant, I’m always curious to learn from events I attend.  Here’s five elements from last night’s event that you may want to replicate if you are planning your own fundraising event: 

1. Feature a keynote speaker that many will fork out the extra bucks to see.

2. Stick to a relatively short program – they kept it to India Arie (who sang some inspirational songs), the chair of the DNC, Senator Boxer and then the President.

3. Their speeches celebrated progress they made while asking people for their ongoing support.

4. They personalized some of the invitations – the invite I received for this event came from my Council Member.

5.  They effectively dealt with challenges as they came up (including some hecklers in the audience that the President very effectively responded to by saying he heard their concerns, was working on it and then went back to his speech - to the applause of his supporters).

And at the end of the day, they raised an estimated $3.5 million dollars!  Even though my contribution was relatively small to the overall amount they raised, it was a gift I needed to give some thought to, and one that I’m glad I made.  

For more tips on planning an effective fundraiser, check out my recent blog post on the topic.

Last Friday I attended a town hall meeting hosting by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood and Barbara Boxer.  I appreciated their willingness to listen to citizens like me, and also gained inspiration from many of the suggestions made by other attendees. 

In the afternoon I attended a session facilitated by Metro.  As the microphone went from speaker to speaker, I jotted down 10 quick suggestions for improving transportation in Los Angeles. 

With a little dose of humor and seriousness, I offer the following to you (to make it fun, I presented these in a David Letterman style top 10 list):

#10.  Real Voices on the Bus:  As a cyclist, I often take the bus when I need to make longer commutes across town.  While the overcrowding doesn’t bother me so much, the robotic voices announcing the various stops sometimes does.  I propose an art project where Metro goes out into the communities surrounding its bus lines and record the names of stops from people who actually live near them.  Imagine taking the Wilshire Rapid from Dowtown LA to Santa Monica and hearing the diversity of voices along the way.

#9.  One ticket One Way:  I also find myself taking my bike on the train to places like Long Beach (where I will be facilitating some focus groups around bicycling for the City of Long Beach).  I wish that the one-way ticket I buy on the Red Line would also work for the one-way trip I’d make on the Blue line. 

#8.  Transit-oriented development:  LA developed around the trolley car and enormous potential exists to develop affordable housing and other buildings that are a short walk to a Metro stop.  I’m excited to see the statewide SB 375 get implemented.

#7:  Fast track bicycle plan implementation:  Cities like New York and Mexico City are transforming their streets so that they are safer and more enjoyable places to ride at a much faster pace than we are.  Why couldn’t the City of LA fast-track implementation of its Bicycle Master Plan in a year?  We’ve got good ideas on paper – let’s allocate the needed resources to make it reality.

#6. Bike Boulevards: My brother lives in Vancouver, Canada, which has developed an impressive network of Bicycle Boulevards.  These are quiet, residential streets that have several design features that make cycling pleasant:  traffic circles instead of stop signs, occasional barriers that limit auto traffic but let bikes through, good directional signage and prioritization when crossing major boulevards.

#5. Transform Parking Lots:  Los Angeles lacks adequate supplies of affordable housing and park space.   Why not convert some existing parking lots into uses that will serve more people and create a more sustainable city? 

#4.  No Free Parking:  For the parking lots we keep, let’s charge a real market rate rather than subsidizing parking.  Professor Don Shoup at UCLA has written extensively about this.  When people pay a higher cost for parking that reflects the true cost of parking, they are more willing to explore transportation alternatives.

#3. Legalize street vending around Metro Stops:  In Mexico and Central America and many other parts of the world, public space is so vibrant because of street vending.  I love how there’s a weekly farmers market right outside the Wilshire/Vermont Red Line Station and would like to see that space used like that on a regular basis. 

#2. Curtail Investment in Transportation Projects that only promote Driving:  The elephant in the room is that the majority of transportation spending still goes towards projects that encourage driving – whether it be highway expansion, new parking lots or new roads.  I would like to see less money go towards these types of projects and more money towards building transit, bicycle infrastructure and pleasant places to walk.

#1.Ciclavia:  Ciclavia will transform LA’s streets by temporarily closing certain major boulevards to automobile traffic and opening it up to people to enjoy on foot, on roller-skates, or bicycle.  It builds community and sparks the imagination for what our streets could be. 

These are just 10 quick ideas – there are so many more and so many passionate folks working throughout the region to implement other innovative ideas for a sustainable and vibrant transportation system in Los Angeles.  I’m pleased to have the opportunity to work with many of them and am excited to see these ideas come to fruition.

Here's a link to my most recent email newsletter I sent out.  Enjoy!