No Break for Idealware Seminar this Spring

		March 2014 Upcoming Idealware Training Students around the country are counting the days until spring break--and summer vacation--but not us. At Idealware, we're ramping up our training calendar. Spring break is too crowded and noisy, summer still a long way off. Leave the tropics to the college students, crank up the heat at your office, and join one of our upcoming seminars. (If you truly can't stand this stubborn winter and have already fled south to wait it out, remember that you can participate in our online seminars from anywhere with an internet connection.) In March, we’re offering all sorts of different training models to match your needs. Mastering Your Mix: A Practical Approach to Integrated Communications is a five-week course designed to make your communications mix powerful and effective, and The Private Foundation’s Grants Management Toolkit will save your foundation time and energy in the system-selection process. Have a little less time to work with? We’re also offering a 90-minute session on email fundraising, and a two-part course on getting your office infrastructure into shape. Remember, we always offer recorded seminars atidealware.org/online-training, and all of our live sessions are also recorded, so you can listen to them at your own convenience. Read a little more about what we have to offer below, and make this spring break your most educational yet. back to top New Course: Mastering Your Mix: A Practical Approach to Integrated Communications March 19 to April 16Between more traditional channels of communications like direct mail, email, and newsletters, and all the new channels you’ve adopted—like social media, multimedia, and blogs—there’s a lot to think about when it comes to your organization’s messaging. How do you create and maintain a consistent voice across so many channels? How do you coordinate your various communications to work in tandem rather than competing, engaging constituents and inspiring them to take action rather than confusing, overwhelming, or annoying them? This brand new course is the perfect complement to our popular publication, A Practical Guide to Integrated Communications: A Workbook for Nonprofits. Over five weeks, we will help you to understand your communications. We'llexplore their roles in your messaging, and assess your current state of effectiveness before walking you through the planning, scheduling, and implementation stages of creating a communications plan. Along the way, you’ll learn to measure the response you’re getting to adapt your techniques for better results, and ultimately learn to holistically integrate your communications. Five Wednesdays, 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST, $200. Read More or Register>>> New Course: The Private Foundation's Grants Management Toolkit April 10 to May 8As a grantmaker, you work most efficiently when you have a comprehensive overview of your applications, reviewers, requirements, and payments. The right grants management system can save you time by pulling all of this tracking together in a single place, but the marketplace has never been more varied and complex. Researching all of the options, scheduling demos, and identifying your needs can take months. The Private Foundation’s Grants Management Toolkit can expedite the core elements of the process to a few short weeks. In this brand new series, Idealware’s grants management software experts will explore the available options for accepting and reviewing applications and tracking grants throughout their life cycles, take a look at what grants management systems do, and compare the strengths and weakness of the packages available for United States-based foundations. Then we’ll recommend packages that might work for your foundation based on our highly regarded research. Classes April 10 and May 8 from 1:00 – 2:30 PM EST, and nine system demos on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays fromApril 15 to May 1 at 1:00 – 2:00 EST, $400. Read More or Register>>> Single Seminars Thursday, March 20 - Getting Started with Email FundraisingFundraising via email requires an understanding of a number of different elements--designing an email campaign, writing an email, avoiding spam filters, broadcast email tools, online donation tools, and more. We'll walk through what you'll need to know to design your own email fundraising campaign. 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST, $40.00. Read More or Register>>> Thursdays, March 27 & April 3 - Covering Your Bases: Two Part Infrastructure CourseIn this two-part seminar, we'll cover the important pieces that keep your office up and running (and no, we don't mean coffee). In the first session, we'll look at how you can make the most of your hardware infrastructure, including computers, printers, phones, networking, and more. In the second, we'll go through what software you need the most to support your organization, including productivity software, email, scheduling, and collaboration tools. Throughout, we'll discuss how you can keep all this infrastructure secure, share and backup files, and save money and time. Two Thursdays, 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST, $65.00. Read More or Register>>> Thursday, April 17 - Measuring Your Mission: Using Data to Track Organizational Health and SuccessAs a leader of your organization, you'd probably like to see clear metrics to track your programs, outreach efforts, and the financial health of your organization. It can be daunting to define the right measures though -- where do you even start?  Based on NTEN's and Idealware's research into what's actually working for nonprofits, we'll talk through what you should think about to define your own data-based metrics strategy, and hear from organizations who have successfully implemented their own strategies. 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST, $40.00. Read More or Register>>> Check out our website for even more great online training:www.idealware.org/online-training back to top You received this email because you signed up for Idealware updates. If you are no longer interested in hearing from us, click here to unsubscribe. Idealware | One Pleasant Street, Suite 4E | Portland ME | 04101			INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONS March 19 Mastering Your Mix: A Practical Approach to Integrated Communications GRANTS MANAGEMENT TOOLKIT April 10 The Private Foundation's Grants Management Toolkit SINGLE SEMINARS March 20Getting Started with Email Fundraising March 27Covering Your Bases: Two Part Infrastructure Course April 17 Measuring Your Mission: Using Data to Track Organizational Health and Success SUBSCRIBE If you have received this email second-hand, you can subscribe on the Idealware website. Subscribe Now » DONATE TO IDEALWARE Have Idealware reports and articles saved you time? Money? Allowed you to make better decisions? If so, please donate what they are worth to you and help keep these resources coming. Donate Now » CONNECT WITH US Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to get more software resources, links, and news about Idealware.

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Get the tools you need with Idealware's seminars

		February 2014 Upcoming Idealware Training We've heard your requests loud and clear: You want more toolkits and courses. We're happy to oblige--and with a little effort, we've already kicked off one course with two more already coming up before spring has even sprung. Our courses all run from three to 10 weeks, depending on the topic, and are designed to take you from the beginning of a project all the way through to the end by covering everything you'll need to know along the way. We know that the keys to success include learning practical strategies, real examples, and personalized advice derived from experience, and our toolkit courses combine all of this support into one neat package. Just last week, we kicked off From Audit to Redesign: The Complete Nonprofit Website Toolkit. If you're curious about what one of our "toolkit" courses looks like, this one's a great example. Because there are a lot of steps to consider when it comes to redesigning your website--and many avenues you can take to accomplish them--we give you everything you need to make informed decisions about your website in one course, whether you're making a few tweaks or doing a complete overhaul. Although The Nonprofit Website Toolkit is now in its second week, it's not too late to sign up. As with all of our toolkits, every session is recorded, so you can catch up and review whenever you want and as often as you want. This particular course is 10 weeks long, so you still have plenty of time. We have several more toolkit courses (and a few shorter webinars) coming up to meet your tech training needs. If you've never taken a class with Idealware, we think the toolkits are a great place to start. You really get to know our trainers, and you walk away feeling like an expert, with a finished product to show for your time. back to top New Course: The Social Media Policy Toolkit February 19 to March 5As social media transparency and two-way conversations become the norm, many nonprofits are racing to develop social media policies that govern who does what, what's OK (and not OK) to say on behalf of the organization, and how to handle sticky situations. But even more than legislating these details, the process of creating such a policy can help you and other leaders in your organization engage in important discussions that will mature your organizational culture and better position you to take advantage of the tools and opportunities at your disposal. In this new course based on our popular Nonprofit Social Media Policy Workbook, we'll explore why the process is as important as the product, how to make these conversations productive and strategic (and maybe even fun), and why a social media policy is an important milestone of digital maturity. We’ll spend an entire hour on each of the following topics: responding to comments (especially negative ones) and personal voice vs. professional voice. Throughout this course, we’ll rely heavily on conversations and examples to help you create a policy that fits your organization. EveryWednesday, 1:00 - 2:00 PM EST, $95. Read More or Register>>> Want to learn more about this course? Check out the short promotional video we just posted here: http://youtu.be/nk6ZkHMrCio New Course: Mastering Your Mix: A Practical Approach to Integrated Communications March 19 to April 16Between more traditional channels of communications like direct mail, email, and newsletters, and all the new channels you’ve adopted—like social media, multimedia, and blogs—there’s a lot to think about when it comes to your organization’s messaging. How do you create and maintain a consistent voice across so many channels? How do you coordinate your various communications to work in tandem rather than competing, engaging constituents and inspiring them to take action rather than confusing, overwhelming, or annoying them? This brand new course is the perfect complement to our popular publication, A Practical Guide to Integrated Communications: A Workbook for Nonprofits. Over five weeks, we will help you to define your categories of communications, explore their roles in your messaging, and assess your current state of effectiveness before walking you through the planning, scheduling, and implementation stages. Along the way, you’ll learn to measure the response you’re getting to adapt your techniques for better results, and ultimately learn to holistically integrate your communications. Every Wednesday, 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST, $200.Read More or Register>>> Single Seminars Thursday, February 20 - Getting Beyond the Like: Social Media EngagementPeople “like” you, but what is that actually doing to support your organization’s bottom line? We’ll talk critically about how you can move constituents up a ladder of engagement from a simple “like” to actually get them to do something for your organization. Sign a petition, attend an event, join a movement and yes, even donate—it’s possible to get your constituents to do all of these things as a result of social media actions, but it’s not easy. Armed with case studies, industry research and plain old common sense and experience, we’ll work together to recalibrate your social media mindset in order to provide more value and cultivate a deeper commitment. 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST, $40.00. Read More or Register>>> In Person, Portland, Maine: Wednesday, March 5 - Tech and Donuts: Practicing Practical Program EvaluationFunders need evaluations that demonstrate how you're meeting your stated outcomes, but gathering the proper data can be complicated. However, all organizations should be able to know how they’re doing. We’ll walk through how you can evaluate your programs by showing what data might already "live" in your systems, presenting a practical approach to measure outcomes, and giving you strategies to grasp the effectiveness of your organization's programs. In this new spin on the Maine 501 Tech Club, which we’re affectionately calling “Tech & Donuts,” we’ll talk about our perspective on program evaluation, and why it’s so important. Having worked onUnderstanding Software for Program Evaluationand The Reality of Measuring Human Service Programs: Results of a Survey in the last six months, program evaluation is a topic near and dear to Idealware’s collective hearts, and we look forward to hearing your experiences. As an added incentive, we’ll be bringing donuts and coffee from Little Bigs in South Portland, another favorite of Idealware, to help you get through the second half of your work week. This is a casual meet-up at our office in Portland, Maine, and we encourage you to bring a friend or fellow nonprofit staffer, and meet some of the folks from Idealware in person. 8:00 - 9:30 AM EST, FREE. Read More or Register>>> Thursday, March 6 - FREE: 10 Ways to Integrate Your Communications You know that you should integrate your communications, but how do you get started? How do you take different channels with different audiences and allow them to shine individually while creating a cohesive voice for your organization? Let us help you with 10 steps that can get you going in the right direction. When we released A Practical Guide to Integrated Communications: A Workbook for Nonprofits, we were very pleased by the response. However, integrated communications is a dense, often confusing subject, which requires a little extra time upfront to get moving in the right direction. In this class, we’ll go over ten of the most straightforward, bang for the buck steps you can take to start making your communications work together for the biggest impact. 1:00 - 2:00 PM EST, FREE. Read More or Register>>> Thursday, March 20 - Getting Started with Email Fundraising Fundraising via email requires an understanding of a number of different elements--designing an email campaign, writing an email, avoiding spam filters, broadcast email tools, online donation tools, and more. We'll walk through what you'll need to know to design your own email fundraising campaign. 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST, $40.00. Read More or Register>>> Check out our website for even more great online training: www.idealware.org/online-training back to top You received this email because you signed up for Idealware updates. If you are no longer interested in hearing from us, click here to unsubscribe. Idealware | One Pleasant Street, Suite 4E | Portland ME | 04101