New Year's Resolutions for Non-Profit Board Members by Gail Perry

January 2010 It’s that time again—for turning over a new leaf, for reexamining our work and lives, for refocusing on what we really want, and for refreshing our commitment to good works.

Here are some great New Year's resolutions for nonprofit board members. If you do these, you'll set an example and be a "spark plug" for your organization—and you'll also help make the world a better place through your favorite nonprofit.

1. Get more engaged. Your nonprofit needs you to pay attention to your job as a nonprofit board member. Nonprofits don't need disengaged bosses. (And yes, you are the boss—you're the legal fiduciary guardian of your nonprofit. The staff—through the CEO—reports to you.) Your favorite nonprofit needs YOU to lead, to question, and to act!
   
2. Have a bias toward action. DO something. Your nonprofit needs more than talk out of you. Don't be one of those board members who thinks his or her only job is to come to meetings and pontificate a bit. Look for real actions you can take to help the cause. Ask the staff what they need you TO DO this month, this quarter, this year.
   
3. Think big. You're not going to change the world, save the environment, feed the hungry, change your community, by thinking small. And there is great power in a big, wildly exciting vision! You attract people—and resources—to your cause. Energy is everything when you are trying to create change.
   
4. Be optimistic, no matter what. Ban the handwringing and naysaying. Negativity is self-defeating and deadening. It wipes out energy and passion. It deadens momentum. Be the board member who has the point of view of abundance rather than scarcity. You'll influence the rest!
   
5. Go back to your vision over and over and over. It will keep you excited, focused, passionate, and results oriented. If you feel jaded or bored, ask yourself why you really care about this cause and this organization. You'll fan the flames of your passion and your energy. You'll feel deep personal satisfaction when you see the results your organization is creating in people's lives.
   
6. Be the catalyst; be the provocateur. Challenge, challenge, challenge the status quo. Remember Jack Welch's quote: "If the change is happening on the outside faster than it is on the inside, the end is near."
   
   Well, guess what—that goes for nonprofits too. Too many nonprofits plan for the future based firmly on the past. Be willing to ask, "Why are we doing this?" If needed, point out the elephant in the room that everyone is too polite to mention. Be willing to examine your nonprofit's business model if needed.
   
7. Make your own proud, personal gift to support your organization. AND encourage the other board members to give. If you don't put your money where your mouth is, you have absolutely no credibility. Set an example. Don't be afraid to bring up the subject of board gifts in board meetings. Be willing to talk to other board members about their annual commitments.
   
8. Support the staff. Ask them what they need from you. Ask them how you can support them. The staff is carrying the weight of enormous responsibility on their shoulders. Pay them competitive salaries. Don't let them overwork in the name of the cause. Return their phone calls. Respond to their e-mails. Tell them what a great job they are doing. A self-confident staff will perform at a high level.
   
9. Introduce 10 of your friends to your cause. See if you can get them on your organization's bandwagon. You're not asking them for money. Instead you're trying to get them to join the cause. Have a porch party and invite your friends to meet your CEO, or take a group on a tour out in the field to show them the good work your organization is doing.
   
10. Be a sneezer and spread your organization's viral news wherever you go. Ideas are like viruses—they are contagious, spreading from person to person. You want to create an epidemic of good buzz about your organization all around.
    
    All your friends, family and business associates need to know about your passionate involvement in your cause. Say, "Did you know that ... ?" or "Can you imagine that xxxx is happening in our community?" Before you know it, they'll be engaged and on your bandwagon!
    

• How useful did you find this article? Give us your feedback >
  

Gail Perry, January 2010
© 2010, Gail Perry

7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media

By Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from Google, Facebook, and Twitter with others to explore living wisely in our modern age 

Social media allows us to discover, connect, and engage with new people of interest. While most people are open to new connections and receiving messages from people they don’t know, there is a fine line between reaching out and “spamming.” The challenge is to make a connection clearly and effectively without wasting people’s time.

Many of us are on both sides of this relationship — sometimes making the connection, sometimes receiving the invitation. To help navigate these waters a little better, I’ve outlined seven key lessons for improving your social networking skills.

---

1. Find a Person’s Preferred Communication Channel

---

If you want to contact someone you have never communicated with before, do some research. Find the person’s preferred communication channel. If they have a website, check out their contact page and see if they encourage people to contact them in a particular way, and follow their suggestion.

It also helps to discover what level of participation they have on various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) to see which places may be best to engage them. When is the last time they posted on Twitter or Facebook? Do they respond to the @replies they receive on Twitter or comments on a Facebook page? Get a sense of their preferred means of communication, and make contact where they are.

Lesson: Go where they are.

---

2. Say Just Enough

---

This cannot be emphasized enough, and it is probably my toughest challenge. In the age of social media, we may be able to get the attention of more people, but we get it for a much shorter amount of time. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make, is that they send long e-mails or social media messages explaining all the reasons they want to connect. You are likely have not earned not earned the five minutes of the recipient’s time that it will take to read that message.

Brevity is built right into Twitter, making it a great platform for making a first connection. However, if you use other channels, keep it simple. If there are 700 words you eventually want to get across, include only 50 in the first contact. Let the person choose if he or she would like more. You can fill in the rest later. I prefer a less complete 50 words than 700 words that tell me more than I need to know.

Lesson: Less is more.

---

3. Don’t Expect a Response

---

I often see e-mails with phrases like “Please respond,” or “please get back to me.” Unless it is an old friend or a colleague, if you are contacting someone new, you are not entitled to a response. If the person wants to get back to you, he or she will. It is much better to say “If this is not of interest, feel no need to get back to me.”

At times I hear people complain because they reached out to someone and never heard back. The fact is most people do not have the time to get back to everyone who contacts them to say, “not interested.” Open a door without adding pressure. There may be times to follow-up, of course, but don’t do so with resentment or frustration.

Lesson: Say what you need to and then let it go.

---

4. Clarify Early

---

This may seem like common sense, but don’t wait for the last line of your message to say that you want to meet for lunch, or ask your contact if he’d like to speak at an event. Put it right up front. If he cannot provide what you’re looking for, he’ll know sooner rather than later, and will appreciate you for it.

Lesson: Say it up front.

---

5. What You Want is Not the Point

---

You may think that what you want is a phone call or lunch meeting to discuss your big idea. But communication is more than any one project or meeting. What you really want is an authentic connection.

In a very real way, it doesn’t necessarily matter if the person is interested in discussing your project idea. What matters is whether you are making a connection.

If you focus on the relationship more than the specific request, and the person has a pleasant experience reading your opening communication, it is likely the door will remain open for possible collaboration in the future, and the next e-mail you send will more likely be fruitful.

Lesson: No one knows what the future may hold, so make the moment count. Ensure the door stays open, even if no one is walking through it right now.

---

6. Be Open Without Needing

---

Needy never goes over well. Statements like “I really need to talk to you,” or “it is essential that we speak,” show your general insecurity. There is a huge difference between being open to collaboration and “needing” it.

Do not make contact until you find that place in yourself that is totally comfortable with any outcome, including a strong “no” or no response at all. Only then can you make authentic contact. When you do, openness rather than need will come through in your words.

Lesson: Speak from openness rather than need.

---

7. Give Space

---

The key questions people have when someone new reaches out to them, particularly those who are quite busy, are “Do I have time to bring this person into my network? How much time will they take?”

Therefore, it is generally not helpful to send too many e-mails. Doing this may send the signal that you are going to take a lot of the recipient’s time and send numerous e-mails every day, and communicating with you will take great effort.

Instead, give communication some space. Unless something is very timely, let a bit of time pass before sending a response. Let communication have some breathing room. Once there is some level of trust, you can experiment with more immediate information exchange.

Lesson: Focus on thoughtful instead of continual contact.

Do you have any other tips for better networking using social media? Do you agree or disagree with any of these tips? Let us know in the comments.

---

More social media resources from Mashable:

---

- How Social Media Has Changed Us
- 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology
- 5 Tips for Building Lasting Online Friendships
- 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, iqoncept, PaulPaladin, chromatika, stuartbur

Tags: business, facebook, List, Lists, networking, small business, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter

Students report more serious stress in life

Study: Young people struggling with greater anxiety than past generations The Associated Press updated Mon., Jan. 11, 2010

CHICAGO - A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.

The findings, culled from responses to a popular psychological questionnaire used as far back as 1938, confirm what counselors on campuses nationwide have long suspected as more students struggle with the stresses of school and life in general.

"It's another piece of the puzzle — that yes, this does seem to be a problem, that there are more young people who report anxiety and depression," says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor and the study's lead author. "The next question is: What do we do about it?"

Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external — from wealth to looks and status — has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.

Pulling together the data for the study was no small task. Led by Twenge, researchers at five universities analyzed the responses of 77,576 high school or college students who, from 1938 through 2007, took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI. The results will be published in a future issue of the Clinical Psychology Review.

Overall, an average of five times as many students in 2007 surpassed thresholds in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who did so in 1938. A few individual categories increased at an even greater rate — with six times as many scoring high in two areas:

"hypomania," a measure of anxiety and unrealistic optimism (from 5 percent of students in 1938 to 31 percent in 2007)

and depression (from 1 percent to 6 percent).

Twenge said the most current numbers may even be low given all the students taking antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, which help alleviate symptoms the survey asks about.

Rules don't apply to me
The study also showed increases in "psychopathic deviation," which is loosely related to psychopathic behavior in a much milder form and is defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you. The percentage of young people who scored high in that category increased from 5 percent in 1938 to 24 percent in 2007.

Twenge previously documented the influence of pop culture pressures on young people's mental health in her 2006 book "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before." Several studies also have captured the growing interest in being rich, with 77 percent of those questioned for UCLA's 2008 national survey of college freshmen saying it was "essential" or "very important" to be financially well off.

Experts say such high expectations are a recipe for disappointment. Meanwhile, they also note some well-meaning but overprotective parents have left their children with few real-world coping skills, whether that means doing their own budget or confronting professors on their own.

"If you don't have these skills, then it's very normal to become anxious," says Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City who hopes the new study will be a wake-up call to those parents.

Students themselves point to everything from pressure to succeed — self-imposed and otherwise — to a fast-paced world that's only sped up by the technology they love so much.

Sarah Ann Slater, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Miami, says she feels pressure to be financially successful, even when she doesn't want to.

"The unrealistic feelings that are ingrained in us from a young age — that we need to have massive amounts of money to be considered a success — not only lead us to a higher likelihood of feeling inadequate, anxious or depressed, but also make us think that the only value in getting an education is to make a lot of money, which is the wrong way to look at it," says Slater, an international studies major who plans to go to graduate school overseas.

A ‘you can do anything’ atmosphere
The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counseling center at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren't necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)

Shadick says his own experience leaves little doubt more students are seeking mental health services. But he and others think that may be due in part to heightened awareness of such services. Twenge notes the MMPI isn't given only to those who seek services.

Others, meanwhile, say the research helps advance the conversation with hard numbers.

"It actually provides some support to the observations," says Scott Hunter, director of pediatric neuropsychology at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital. Before his current post, Hunter was at the University of Virginia, where his work included counseling a growing number of students with mental health concerns.

While even Twenge concedes more research is needed to pinpoint a cause, Hunter says the study "also helps us understand what some of the reasons behind it might be." He notes Twenge's inclusion of data showing that factors such as materialism among young people have had a similar upswing. She also noted that divorce rates for their parents have gone up, which may lead to less stability.

Amid it all, Hunter says this latest generation has been raised in a "you can do anything atmosphere." And that, he says, "sets up a lot of false expectation" that inevitably leads to distress for some.

It's also meant heartache for parents.

"I don't remember it being this hard," says a mother from northern New Jersey, whose 15-year-old daughter is being treated for depression. She asked not to be identified to respect her daughter's privacy.

"We all wanted to be popular, but there wasn't this emphasis on being perfect and being super skinny," she says. "In addition, it's 'How much do your parents make?'

"I'd like to think that's not relevant, but I can't imagine that doesn't play a role."