Heartland Center Hosting Summer Webinar Series on Developing Community Leadership and Board Effectiveness

The Heartland Center for Leadership Development is now taking registrations for our new Leadership Development and Board Effectiveness webinar series. These five webinars on developing community leadership and building board member capacity will begin in June and conclude in October, 2010. Each webinar will be designed to provide interaction, discussion and feedback. Webinar participants will receive a packet of downloadable training materials that include session powerpoints and readings. Registrants will also be able to view the webinar via recording, so you can refresh your learning experience at any time. Webinars will last 60 minutes and will be hosted by an experienced team of Heartland Center trainers. This summer's topics include:

• June 22, 2010, Leadership Styles and Practices: Learn what it means to be an effective leader. Assess your own leadership strengths and aspirations and create an action plan for building new skills and practices.
• July 13, 2010, Working with Groups: Managing effective meetings may seem simple, yet it's often a challenging job for community development practitioners, whose role includes leading diverse groups to consensus and beyond.
• August 24, 2010, Engaging the Community: Outlines practical strategies for strengthening your organization through community participation and volunteerism. Once a project is off the ground and you have enough people engaged, this session will also help you maintain momentum.
• September 14, 2010, Stewardship Essentials: Explains the essential concepts of board stewardship and how stewardship applies to the board's role in interpreting and updating an organization's mission, strategy development, evaluation, resource development and being an effective emissary.
• October 19, 2010, Governance Effectiveness: Provides an introduction to tools, techniques and processes that effective boards use to plan and manage their meetings, document their decision-making, successfully navigate conflict, recruit and orient new members to board service. The webinar will also help clarify the dual governance roles of staff and board for developing organizational strategies and documenting progress.

Each webinar will start at 12:00 p.m. (Central) and end at 1:00 p.m. The training team includes Milan Wall, Vicki Luther and Kurt Mantonya from the Heartland Center staff and Gordon Goodwin, a former Heartland Center board member with expertise in building board capacity. The cost of each webinar is $59.99, or purchase the entire webinar series at one time for is $250.00, a savings of $49.99. Each registration entitles a single user to have more than one person attend at their computer in one site. Additional registrations from the same organization will be treated as another single registration.

For more details and registration information about this exciting webinar series, please visit the Heartland Center's webinar page. You can also contact Kurt Mantonya for additional information.

Grassroots & Groundwork - 20 free webinars help bring the conference to you.

The people and organizations of Portland, Oregon welcomed 2010 Grassroots & Groundwork conference to the Pacific Northwest and helped make this an event we’ll remember for years to come.

Over 350 attendees brought high energy and great ideas from 38 states. The networking buzz was electric.

20 breakout sessions described programs and tools being used right now to reduce poverty and build sustainable prosperity in urban, rural and American Indian reservation communities. The Q&A sessions were lively and informative.

The keynote speakers knocked the ball out of the park. Paul Saginaw of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, Ann Arbor, Michigan, described how a network of food businesses can be a powerful economic engine. Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, eloquently advocated for nonprofit focus on the welfare and wellbeing children if our nation is to continue to prosper.

Half-day, hands-on workshops were, once again, very well attended.

Site tours offered face-to-face conversations with people participating in innovative, local workforce development programs.

If you attended, thanks again for bringing your energies and ideas to the event.

If you weren’t able to make it, we hope you’ll find value in the webinars created from the 20 breakout sessions. They are free and easily accessible by visiting the "Break-Out Session" page at www.grassrootsandgroundwork.org.

Please feel free to share this invitation and link with others in your network. These webinars are another way we can continue to learn from and connect with one another. We appreciate the many organizations who presented their exciting work at the conference.

And thanks for the work you do every day to reduce poverty and build sustainable prosperity in your community.

Feedback request: We’d love to get your reactions to the webinars, and learn how you think you’ll apply them to the work you’re already doing or are brewing. Thanks.

SmallBizU.org - ONLINE eLEARNING CLASSROOM

• Designed specifically for small businesses.
• Seeks to instill a formal business intelligence - the capacity to solve problems, meet challenges, and create valued products.
• No-frills, utilitarian curriculum that provides real-world tools and information.
• Each course delivered via Internet - animated slides with voice-over narration, PowerPoint presentations, worksheets, toolsets, and access to a comprehensive knowledge base.
• Focus on "3Ms" - Money, Marketing, and Management
• Visit smallbizu.org/nreca/ for course information

Stimulus Links:
Here are some links to information that is State specific:

• Recovery.gov: Track the Money
• Clips and Comment: White House Releases State by State Job Creation Numbers from Economic Stimulus
• OpEdNews: State By State Funding Details for the Economic Stimulus Bill