The Great Flood: Part 2 (Group Dynamics & Leadership)

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The Great Flood: Part 2 (Group Dynamics & Leadership)

While it was still raining, we pitched up our tents inside of the barn on the second floor loft (accessed by an old, sketchy ladder) so they could dry and hung up our drowned sleeping bags wherever there was room. A band of guys set out to find the canoes and rescue them from the river. I remember hearing that they took turns diving below the water to cut the ropes that the canoes were secured to, so they could be set free and brought up the gravel road to the barn. One of my friends came back with his teeth chattering, lips blue, shaking from head to toe. We recognized the signs of hypothermia and the guys who had remained at the barn helped him out of his wet clothes while the rest of us dug through our bags to find dry clothes and warm fleece jackets that would fit him. It was interesting to see how the experience of the flood wasn’t driving us apart but pulling us together.

The barn was fairly small with old musty hay scattered over the mud floors of long-vacant animal stalls and across the creaky floorboards of the barn loft. There were picture windows created by broken beams and missing boards that let in the afternoon sunlight that washed the previously grey and dreary surroundings with yellow and orange hues. When they midday sun banished the rain, we came alive.

Blue skies and puffy white clouds with a slightly warm breeze made for an idyllic day as clotheslines and hammocks were strung up from tree to tree. Everyone’s gear was drying, the lunchtime spread was being put out, we had fresh water from Jack who lived up the road, and the canoes had been saved from the flooded river one by one. We set out our camping chairs in the midday sun to dry and sat in circles, reading, journaling, and napping. People ventured beyond the barn and the little area that surrounded it, past the “No Parking” sign that stood between us and the gravel road we had walked up on earlier that morning, carrying our heavy packs and gear into what looked like hopelessness under a tin roof. I had been wrong about the barn.

We banded together, groups of people taking on cooking responsibilities, others visiting our new neighbour up the road to make the necessary phone calls to our leaders, exploration parties seeking to review the state of our underwater campground, and others who reviewed our situation and began to step up into roles of leadership and make choices.

The day passed quickly and we gathered together in the evening. This was a crucial moment for our group. Would the leadership that had formed be accepted and respected? I sat slightly nervously on the edge of my camping chair, wondering if the people around me would agree with the decisions that had been made or if our Swiss Family Robinson life would take an irreversible twist into a Lord of the Flies world of doom. I saw that my worry was wasted as people nodded along with the purposed plan in the near dark. Our group had avoided the possibility of major dissention and was getting along well.

By each person in the group working to our individual strengths and knowing what we were capable of (I wouldn’t have been able to drive into the river to free the canoes), we were able to settle ourselves into the barn and enjoy the nice weather that was to follow after the flood. The days we spent at the barn was a time that drew us close together as a group, allowed us to relax and enjoy each other’s company without having to wake up early and canoe every morning, and gave ample opportunity for reading and journaling, and enjoying the scenery around us. It was great to be able to enjoy the best part of our camping trip in harmony; as a group undivided and working together towards a common goal.

The Great Flood: Part 1 (Teamwork)

services@supportingadvancement.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The Great Flood: Part 1 (Teamwork)

It was a grey, but warm day as 32 college-aged students set out on the Buffalo National River in Arkansas. They had loaded their canoes earlier that morning with camping kitchens, food barrels, tent packs, and their own personal gear. The Destination: Mt. Hersey. Everyone called it “Mt. Hershey” instead, and they dreamed of a campsite with shady trees and grassy slopes.

The camp site was not what they had imagined in the slightest. It was a lumpy field with random patches of long-ish grass and bald spots that cracked and oozed with mud. After dinner was cooked and served, they had a community meeting where they decided to paddle hard the next day, some 30 miles, down to Tyler Bend (a luxury campsite compared to the field of mud they were currently occupying). Besides having nicer accommodation, they would be able to beat the forecasted rainstorm that was supposed to hit the Buffalo sometime in the afternoon the next day.

As the night wore on and dusk sunk into dark, there were no stars to be found in the sky. Clouds hovered above as the air warmed and the students shed their jackets and long layers of clothing. The last of the burning embers in the fire went out and the last of the students crept into their tents (which has been strategically positioned on patches of grass) to get some much needed sleep for the long paddle tomorrow.

After the last tent zipped up, the sky opened and rain began to drizzle down. All night, it rained down on the students encamped at Mt Hersey. The storm would rise and fall with shattering thunder and flashes of lightening that lit up the rising river and it was around four in the morning when someone thought to check the canoes. Shouts rang across the field and woke up other students, “We need rope! Who has rope?” All fourteen of their canoes (while tied to each other) had been picked up by the flooding river and were washed down about 50 feet, holding their position wrapped around a tree.

A few avid kayakers jumped into their river boats and paddled towards the canoes in the dark storm. They managed to secure them to the trees they were wrapped on so that if the river rose or fell, the canoes wouldn’t move any further.

Once the canoes were taken care of, the students began to wake up and mobilize. The river was still rising and the camp needed to be moved. The once grassy patches of grass where the tents had been placed were now under six inches of water and inside the humble abodes, sleeping pads and books began to float.

I stepped out of my tent and realized that there would be no dry feet on this day. As I began to see the situation around me I was amazed at how everyone had instantly pulled together. Everyone was out there in the torrential rain, taking down tents, grabbing their gear, hauling heavy food barrels, and making their way towards the base of a hill. When I got there a few guys had already begun to cut vines of thorns back from a winding path they had made up the hill. The camping gear for 32 students was moved from the flooding field, up the hill, and to a gravel road where we were able to rest before heading back down to do it all over again. Nobody stopped and sat down, we just kept on going.

By using each of our abilities in full force, we had managed to move camp before we found ourselves under water, and we had done it together. Once we had all of our equipment with us (no barrels full of cheese floating down the river) we began to look for a place to shelter. Somebody had found an abandoned barn just a ways up the gravel road on which we were currently gathered. We made our way there. It wasn’t much, but there was a tin roof, and the barn was dry inside we stepped out of the pouring rain and into what would become our home for the next two days. I looked around and wondered what he had gotten ourselves into. I looked for rats and mice in the corners and hoped that there wasn’t anything inside the barn that was crawling and alive, save a few bugs and spiders.

A Few Considerations on the Kintera Acquisition by Blackbaud

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

A few other considerations on the Kintera Acquisition by Blackbaud:

1. Reflects the "commoditization" of prospect screening. Most of the data sources these services use are similar. The value added will continue to be in the analytics to do database segmentation, and with some of the vendors, the ability to do direct appends of wealth/asset information directly to your database. We'll probably see more screening consulting services offered as value added by other vendors.

2. Consolidation in the industry, economies of scale and scope in the online services area. It's a good competitive strategy

re: GetActive-Convio and other vendors in the space.

3. Allows Blackbaud make additional inroads into providing software as a service, as they did a number of months ago with the e-tapestry acquisition. Many organizations are choosing hosted services which require less internal resources and expertise to manage.

4. Adds more robust email delivery capability to Blackbaud's portfolio of product offerings.

As with any acquisition, it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next year or two. Blackbaud and Kintera are built on very similar technology, eTapestry is not. Kintera has FundWare and Blackbaud has Financial Edge.

The overall customer base, management of it and product consolidation looks very complicated. It will probably take a while to see major changes.

In the competitive arena, it will be interesting to see how other vendors choose to compete and differentiate their products. Who will be the next candidate for acquisition?

Many of our traditional back end database vendors have not made great strides in their strategies for online engagement.

Data integration to our back end databases can be very challenging with our online community vendors.

Most of us don't have all the resources we need to support multiple systems.

Whoever solves all of this first and sells it to us at a competitive price ....

What have we all assumed?

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:00:00 GMT

We sometimes forget to reflect on how much our environment has changed in the last 5-10 years:

Much more scrutiny from external organizations such as Revenue Agencies. We have to be more accurate and adhere to more rules and regulations. The rules and regulations are increasingly complex to learn and to administer.
Donors have taken much more direct control of their philanthropy. We need to be much more careful in how we record gifts and then how we manage them once they have been received.
More complicated giving vehicles and more complex recognition and maintenance activities such as family foundations are becoming commonplace. This makes data entry, crediting and reporting more difficult.
We are all collecting and maintaining many more data elements. Just consider the management of email addresses alone. We’re also collecting cell phones, more information on interests, public information such as securities and have implemented new communication techniques such as email marketing.
We have all added new web enabled systems such as online communities, online giving, online event registration and others while still needing to maintain our back end database. Many of these projects have created incremental workloads without the addition of staff to manage the technology.
As we have all moved into larger and continuous campaigns, our data entry and maintenance volumes have increased. Incentive vehicles such as challenge gifts are harder to record and manage especially as these transactions flow through to the general ledger.
Privacy laws and individuals’ awareness of privacy and data exposure has made conventional tracing and finding of lost constituents more difficult. Once lost, they are harder to find. These laws have also added complications to our opt-in and opt-out management.
We are competing more directly with other non-profits who sometimes have more resources than we do and whose fundraising models can be simpler. Consider online giving where we often have many designations as opposed to a few or even just one on a political site’s profit’s online giving page.
Fundraising is a core business. We need to operate at the highest level of efficiency in the use of every resource we have.

Staffing is always the most difficult budget resource to acquire. Reorganization and streamlining of work and improvements in technology is also critical.

How much more can we assume? Only time will tell.

Finding Out About BI in Higher Education

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:00:00 GMT

One of the first steps is to do a Google search which will bring up most of the vendors:

higher education business intelligence

business intelligence

etc.

Considerations for most products should include:

1. Are the presentation layers for both the development environment and end user access 100% web based?

2. Can users self subscribe to a variety of outputs, that allow them to receive information when they want in the format they want?

3. Integration of the BI tool with the ETL tool is critical.

4. Dashboarding and critical performance indicators capabilities.

The selection of these for a campus wide solution is something that typically takes a few months, as these are usually large scale projects.

Most of the major database and software vendors have these tools or are acquiring companies that have developed the tools.

Most are similar in terms of their capabilities.

Cognos

Business Objects

Microsoft

Oracle

etc.

Some initial steps you need to think about in Advancement before even looking at a tool are:

1. What are the key performance metrics you want to develop and measure?

2. Who will these be delivered to?

3. Have a very good understanding of data cubes/pivot tables and drill down within these.

4. How a reporting and data deployment environment built on these technologies will be significantly different than your current reporting environment and how to leverage these new technologies.

5. How you will integrate data enhancements such as screening data, Prizm clusters etc. into your BI environment.

6. Integration of data mining and statistics into your BI environment.

Encouragement: Putting People Over the Top

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Indian summers are the dream of rock climbers. The days aren’t summer-hot, but just warm enough as the Autumn breeze cools off an active climber. Reaching the top of the climb, you can see a vast expanse of crimson, gold, and pumpkin-orange hues that shine with the brilliance that only a northern deciduous forest can hold—a seemingly infinite banner of treetops.

Imagine yourself at this place. You stand at the bottom of a rock face, tying your harness into the rope that will catch you if you happen to fall. Your belayer gives you the go-ahead signal: “Climb on.” As you scale the side of the cliff, you find all the right handholds and footholds, and before you know it, you’re halfway up the cliff, but then... you stop. Freeze.

A ledge looms above your head and you could get halfway up it but can’t find any holds to climb over it. There are no cracks in the rock, no edges to grip onto, nothing—just a smooth slab of rock above and the ground far below. You hesitate and hang there, trying to decide what to do. You glance back at the ground again. Maybe it’d be easier to just go back down. Your arms start to feel heavy with the effort of gripping the rock.

From below you hear small voices. Your ears prick to tune to the voices of your friends. You hear them saying, “You can get this!” and “Just put your toe in that crack to the left and push yourself up—there’s a hand hold at the top of the ledge! We’re not letting you come down until you’ve finished” and “You’re so close, you’ve almost got it!” With a burst of energy that explodes though your limbs like a spontaneous combustion you spring from your legs and grab the next handhold. With a quick succession over the ledge you reach he top of the climb and sit back in your harness, feeling triumphant as you gaze at surrounding hills.

Alright, you can stop the imagination train now. Think back to the story you just read. As a climber, you were about to give in and give up. What stopped you? Encouragement.

You could have very well been laughed at and your friends could have called you weak or could have said some other destructive sort of comment that would not have helped you overcome your difficulty, but surrender to it instead.

Encouragement is incredibly important in all sorts of settings—at home, at school, and in the workplace. If we’re not encouraging one another in our struggles, then what are we doing? We are either throwing out unwanted negativity or standing by in silence. That’s foolish. Building each other up is a sign of love and a key to healthy relationships. We are all more productive and happier when we’re encouraged.

Many people have written about encouragement. Author and speaker, Jim Stovall said the following: “You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.”

Some Miscellaneous Data Mining Resource Page Links

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:25:26 GMT

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/

http://donorcast.com/newswatch/

http://www.kdnuggets.com/data_mining_course/

http://www.albionresearch.com/data_mining/how.php

http://www.datadesk.com/products/data_analysis/sample_analysis.shtml

http://adage.com/americandemographics/

http://www.philbrierley.com/

http://www.dataminingconsultant.com/resources.htm

http://www.case.org/CURRENTS/ViewIssue.cfm?contentItemID=6756&

http://www.resample.com/xlminer/

http://www.surveymonkey.com/

http://www.spss.com/devcentral/

http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stchaid.html

http://academic.udayton.edu/gregelvers/psy216/spss/descript1.htm

http://www.csupomona.edu/~jlkorey/POWERMUTT/Topics/contingency_tables.ht

ml#sig

http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/pa765/statnote.htm

http://home.okstate.edu/homepages.nsf/toc/onlinetutorialsstatistics

http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html

http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/glosfra.html

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm

http://www.nabble.com/SPSSX-Discussion-f15527.html

http://www.kdkeys.net/forums/70/ShowForum.aspx

http://cammlist1.spss.com/pipermail/clug-l/

http://abbottanalytics.blogspot.com/

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/STAT/spss/

http://www.spsstools.net/LearningSyntax.htm#DateTutorial

What are you doing with Web 2.0?

services@supportingadvancement.com — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:29:48 GMT

What are you doing with Web 2.0 and other “new” technologies such as Facebook, MySpace and others. The survey should only take a few minutes of your time. Online version. Print version.
More surveys.

Leadership When You're Lost in the Woods

services@supportingadvancement.com — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:52:11 GMT

Everyone is a leader. Maybe you weren’t ever class president, captain of the football team, or editor-in-chief of your school newspaper. Maybe you’re not a CEO or a manager, but to be a leader is to have influence and we all have influence over someone. You have the ability to influence others for good or bad when leading people towards a decision or common goal, and there are four different ways to do it. A leadership course taught me about the four styles: Tells, Sells, Consults, and Joins.

Its funny how after completing any course, you begin to notice all of the practical applications that apply to what you’ve learned.

It was a crisp and clear autumn night, the changing leaves were dimply illuminated by the full moon as they rained to the forest floor whenever a fierce wind would spin through the trees. In a small town on a Friday night there’s not much to do, so a group of us students decided to drive out to an old memorial and walk along the paths that surrounded it. While it was well after sundown, our paths were flooded with moonlight and so, we set off into the forest in search of adventure. At a fork in the pathway majority rule decided that we would hang a right, even though it didn’t seem like the smartest decision. After all, the path that would bring us in a circle around the memorial would be to the left. However, being in a mood of merriment, we decided to throw good judgment into the increasingly bitter autumn wind and plow forward down an arbitrary path.

After walking along the right (wrong) path for an hour we came out of the forest at a logging road. A sign nailed to a tree read Deerhurst and pointed towards the right. Great. Deerhurst? Where the heck were we? “Let’s go to the left!” Someone purposed without giving any reason— someone who had the Tells leadership style. They were taking charge, going left was the only way to go, and not only was it the only way… it was the superior way. There was no debate to be had. A few small voices murmured, “Let’s go back the way we came, at least we know where it leads. We don’t know where this road will take us,” but the voice of the Sells leaders was not heard as the Tells walked briskly up the road in a leftward direction. In the eyes of the Tells, the rest of us were incompetent and lacked the maturity to make such a decision.

As we walked up the road, the Sells began to do what they did best: they used whatever it took to appeal to what they thought group wanted, “Guys, we could be walking on this road forever—we have no idea where it goes. If we turn back now, at least we can be back at the van within the hour.”

Alas, the Sells’ cool logic and persuasion tactics did not work on the tired group. No one would heard of the benefits of turning back and going on the path we knew—the cry for adventure and walking through the woods full of hungry male bears was greater than the cry of reason.

Soon we reached a path that would take us through the forest. We had no idea where it went, but no matter! The Tells lead the rest of us ahead into the dark, confident that their choice was the best one. One of the Consults people in the group walked alongside two others and began to discuss his ideas with them as we drew closer to the heart of the forest and further away from the little logging road. “We can’t go back now—we’re too far into the forest to find our way back to the logging road, but look at the moon. We’ve been on the left side of it. I think if we take a right, we will end up looping back around to the memorial. What do you think?” A Consults would never step up and make a decision before checking with others around him or her; to try and win the support and cooperation of the group was more important than imposing their decision on everyone else.

While the Consults were still talking things over, the group was plowing forward through the forest and getting more lost as the night went on. After several times of stopping in the middle of knee-high brush and arguing about where to go, we were getting sick of listening to the Tells—their style of leadership often leads to frustration, antagonism, or rebellion and rebellion is what broke out as frustrated people began to split from the group and go in opposite directions.

One girl pleaded with the rest of us, “Ok guys, come back! We need to use the Joins style of leadership.” Our dark moods lightened as we laughed about what we had learned in class and saw it appear in our real lives. People took different turns voicing their opinions on what we should have done, and then we voted. Majority ruled. We would continue in the right direction. While those in the minority still weren’t happy about the groups’ decision we were now unified and moving in the same direction.

Our chosen path caused us to blaze a trail through ditches and fallen trees and eventually onto a man’s property where his dog barked at us, waking him up from his sleep. After we explained how long we had been lost for and where we had come from he offered us a ride back to our van.

We learned more about leadership styles from a night of being lost in the woods than we had in two days of classroom time and realized that we can influence each other and have to be mindful of the impacts that our influence can have on those around us. With great power comes great responsibility, right?

And the Green Grass Grew, All Around, All Around

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:55:58 GMT

Summer is almost over. In-between working to pay for tuition, taking summer school courses for elective credits, and trying to keep up a social life, I have found my ever-spinning mind clamoring for a quiet retreat.

This is why I love camping. Try to tell me a better way to relax than having a nap on the beach, seeking solace beneath a shady tree, dipping your canoe paddle into a sapphire lake, participating in an impromptu Ultimate Frisbee game, or catching air during a cliff-jumping excursion. After I return from a camping trip, I am so incredibly relaxed and ready to get back to work. It's good for my mind. It's great for my soul.

As I sat next to the campfire in a sweatshirt to shut out the chilling breeze last weekend, thoughts of September drifted into my mind. With those thoughts, I realized that school loomed near. Yes, loomed. Why did the thought of going back to school in the fall make me twitch with stress?

Researchers at Cornell conducted a study on children in grades three through five to see if the amount of nature or green spaces they encountered in their daily life contributed to a reduction in stress.

They discovered that everyday life-stresses did not have as much of a negative impact on children who lived in higher nature-infused conditions, and that those children's attention spans were also lengthened when they were surrounded by greenery, whether it was fields, indoor plants, trees, or gardens. (http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/April03/nature.kid.stress.ssl.html)

If children are affected by the amount of green spaces in their lives, why should university students be any different? And because we spend the majority of our time on campus, wouldn't more green spaces alleviate the high levels of stress we have to deal with throughout the school year?

We need on-campus-retreats for students. Many people seek vacations in quieter places, and there are points in a student's day where he or she would appreciate reading a textbook in the shade of a tree instead of under a flickering fluorescent lamp. On my first day of University last year, I clearly remember avoiding the indoor eating area in favor of having my lunch at an outside courtyard under the shade of trees overhead.

For students who attend schools that experience all four seasons, it would be wonderful to be able to walk into a large greenhouse on campus with benches along a path and have a snack in-between classes during the winter months, instead of fighting for a table in the packed student centre or attempting to sneak illicit food items into a crowded library.

Imagine: students who are stressed with the advent of mid-terms could seek the comfort of a grassy space or the serenity of a picnic table under an oak tree instead of resorting to drugs or alcohol. Psychology Today's article, "The Campus Crisis" noted that, "The severity of mental health problems on college campuses has been rising dramatically since 1988-one year into the Prozac era." (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20040519-000002.html) Surely, the introduction of more green spaces that are useable for students would help to decrease these rising numbers.

And why stop at campuses? Offices could implement green spaces, such as courtyards at the centers of buildings with picnic tables and trees for employees to eat their lunches on. There could be indoor plants amongst the grey cubicles to brighten working spaces and life moods. Hospital windows could show a view of trees and grassy areas instead of cement parking lots and busy avenues. Paving these green paradises into parking lots might raise revenues, but it's making us all depressed.

Give green a chance. Your psyche will thank you.

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