Tonight, March 18, 2013 at 7 City Visions host Lauren Meltzer and guests discuss the growing impact and values of young philanthropists. Last year, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that three of the top five donors of 2012 were under 40. Two of the three live in the Bay Area. If you are interested in joining this broadcast and discussion, please visit KLAW’s website.
The following post was written by NCG member Aimee Eng. Aimee is Program Officer for theThomas J. Long Foundation and an alum of NCG’s 2012 New Grantmakers Institute (NGI). We recently asked Aimee why she decided to attend NGI and to share how she is applying what she learned at NGI in her everyday work.
Last Spring, I attended NCG’s New Grantmaker Institute. Although I had been in the field for several years, I was starting a new role as a Program Officer at a small foundation in the East Bay and was encouraged to attend the 2-day workshop.
The Institute provided me with a solid overview of the sector and a much needed “refresher” in many practical areas of grantmaking which has helped in my day-to-day responsibilities.
It was also a great opportunity to meet a diverse group of individuals working in corporations, large and small private foundations, and community foundations locally and expand my professional network. As I am the only Program Officer at a small foundation, I have learned to rely on many of these colleagues as peer resources to help support my work. I have stayed in contact with many individuals from my cohort over the past year working in various roles who have helped broaden my programmatic and geographic expertise.
The Institute also helped me to “brush up” my grantmaking skills and learn up-to-date information in the field. The session on legal and ethical issues was particularly helpful in clarifying what can sometimes be “blurry boundaries” in the sector. Also, the session on reading Financial Statements followed by NCG’s Financial Analysis for Grantmakers class has enabled me to heighten my comfort level in non-profit finance. As I review hundreds of proposals a year, it is essential that I am confident in my grantmaking skills including understanding how to read financial statements.
I recommend the New Grantmaker Institute not only to new individuals in the field, but also to those who are reengaging in this work and looking to exposing themselves to a new network of peers.
For more information about the 2013 New Grantmakers Institute, please visit the NGI event page.
For an additional member perspective on the New Grantmakers Institute, read NCG’s New Grantmakers Institute is Transformational! by NCG member Jessica Weare.
NCG’s 2010 Annual report is now available as an online document, a printable download and soon an interactive site. With a focus on storytelling, the report highlights how NCG and its members collect data and use metrics to measure and illustrate our successes. Available only electronically, our annual report aims to tell some of NCG’s success stories over the past year. We’ve included all the traditional data, and we want to showcase some specific snapshots of our impact in 2010.