The Business of Changing Lives

This is a great read if you’re trying to create nonprofit programming that will appeal to businesses or employ business concepts for sustainability. Author Allan Weis, Internet Pioneer, shares the story of how profits from Advanced Network and Services (ANS), were used to create ThinkQuest, a learning platform that helps students across the globe. Weiss calls it the “Olympics of Web Programming,” see www.thinkquest.org. The text also provides insight into the intent of other ANS grant making and replicable, sustainable program ideas.

This book was a gift from Laura Breeze from the Sarasota Education Foundation. The Foundation supports the TeXellence Program, a recipient of ANS funding. TeXellence provides computers to over 1,000 fourth graders and their low-income families each year. Imagine my surprise when I discovered in the book, that Ron Zimmerman was its founder. At the time, I was taking one of his MAC classes. It is “a small world after all” and we’re all in the business of changing lives.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a More Perfect Union”

Is it peculiar to begin a blog entry for advancing the nonprofit sector by quoting a piece of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution? Perhaps at first glance. Rebecca Rimel, President and Chief Executive Officer, refers to the preamble in the Pew Charitable Trust 2009 Prospectus. She refers to the genius of the founding fathers, “in their humble embrace of imperfection in pursuit of the greatest possible good that circumstances would allow...Their simple yet audacious hope was to create a ‘more perfect’- not perfect, but more perfect--union than the world had previously seen. “

Does this sound like the work you do at your nonprofit? You embrace the imperfections around you while seeking the greatest possible good. You work to make your service and programs more perfect.

This summarizes our approach to nonprofit program development and program excellence. The goal is to make your programs more perfect, in good times and bad…and never stop. You can read about the reasons why you need to build even more perfect programs and how to do it at www.kedconsult.com/articles_pr.php. Scroll down to Building World Class programs, Nine Reasons A World-Class Program, or Two, Are MUSTS for Every Nonprofit and Ten Steps To Create A World-Class Program.