Philanthrapalooza (Part 2)

Every day brings us a little bit closer to the Council on Foundation's national conference in DC on May 4-7, and I, for one, am very excited. I know that the words excitement and conference don't usually go together. Convention halls filled with people twice your age with less than half an interest in anything that you have to say is not usually how you might like to spend your out-of-town time but this conference promises to be different. So today I bring you the top 10 reasons why the Philanthropy Summit is going to be the best four professional development days of 2008:

1. Thanks to the hard work of EPIP, RG, and 21/64 there will be a whole conference track devoted to generational issues (a COF first)
2. There will be Emerging Leaders Salons which give you an opportunity to have engaging discussions with philanthropy's greatest thinkers like Luz Vega-Marquis (Marguerite Casey Foundation) and Susan V. Berresford (recently retired from Ford Foundation).
3. There will be an Emerging Leader Reception and I don't want to raise any hopes here, but last year this fabulous event included a macaroni and cheese bar, where you picked your own toppings. This has to be the most innovative thing that has happened to food since the creation of macaroni and cheese.
4. Right in the exhibition hall there will be a Next Gen lounge where you can get great resources and meet new colleagues from across the country.
5. EPIP will have a hosted suite in the conference hotel where you can relax with new friends and have some refreshments, instead of the normal evening conference activity of watching Discovery Channel alone in your hotel room.
6. A Generational Leadership Program Facebook Group has been created. I will admit that I have already hooked my proverbial online social networking wagon to LinkedIn but if you are already Facebook proficient or can even handle more than one social networking site, I commend your multitasking skills and this Facebook group is meant for you.
7. There are opportunities for you to blog about the programs at the COF conference for New Voices of Philanthropy and EPIPhanies. You can write about one session or ten to provide valuable information to our colleagues nationally and internationally who aren't able to attend the conference. Just contact me at tristaharris (at) gmail (dot) com to get set up.
8. There will be Next Gen scholarships available to cover registration costs, which will bring many new philanthropy professionals to the conference that might not otherwise be able to attend.
9. We will be one of the first groups to use the Gaylord Conference center, which is a beautiful new facility that many groups will be using for their conferences, so the next time you have something scheduled there you will already be an old pro.
10. The biggest reason why I am so excited to go to the conference is because I will be able to meet many of this blog's readers for the first time in person. I think online communities are fabulous and I truly appreciate the great conversations that happen on this blog but there is nothing like meeting people face to face. So if you see me in the Next Gen lounge or if you come to the session where I am presenting, come say hi. I can't wait to meet you.

Philanthrapalooza

The Council on Foundations is hosting a mega philanthropy conference this spring that brings together three of its regular conferences (Community Foundation conference, family foundation conference, and its regular conference). The conference is May 4-7 in the Washington, DC area and a large focus of this conference will be next generation leadership. Emerging Practitioner in Philanthropy has been coordinating many of the planned programs including special salons with Foundation CEO's for emerging leaders, a whole track of programs, a reception, and a hosted Next Gen suite for more relaxed networking. Registration is now open, so bring the form to your boss and explain to them that an investment in your professional development is an investment in the future viability of the philanthropic field. But no pressure.

Visionary Leadership with Bill Strickland

" The only problem with poor people is that they are poor."
-Bill Strickland

I was excited, but not surprised when I saw one of my favorite people in the world as a featured speaker on TED Talks. Bill Strickland is the kind of visionary leader that I think all of us strive to be but the amazing thing about him is that his vision is so basic that it makes it seem downright crazy. Bill believes that by treating people with respect and kindness anyone can achieve great things. This means that by filling your community center with fresh flowers and gourmet food you will be able to teach an illiterate single mother how to be a pharmacy technician. It sounds crazy but he has done this and so much more for many, many years. I had the great privilege of visiting the Manchester Craftsman Guild (his nonprofit) during a Council on Foundations conference in Pittsburgh. I believe that visiting his center has changed the way that I approach program officer work and has made me encourage my grantees to reach so much higher than I ever would have in the past. Please take a half an hour to view his TED Talk, I promise it will be the most useful half an hour that you spend all week.

Getting off the couch

Stretch assignments aren't just for the office. Penelope Trunk from the Brazen Careerist has an interesting post about how your overall satisfaction with life is tied to how willing you to challenge yourself at home. If your routine is the same every night (fast food, 2 hours in front of the tv, and 3 hours surfing the internet aimlessly), how can you expect to be a challenge-taking go-getter at work? Mix up your routine just a little bit and you will be surprised at the results.

Give it up to get it done

When I started working with an executive coach, my first painful realization was that I was terrible at delegation. I always thought I was great at delegating because I would fully think out an assignment, including all the steps that needed to be done to get the task accomplished, before I gave them to anyone and I would do it myself if I thought the person I was delegating to was too busy or would find the assignment too hard or too boring. My coach Antoine noticed that this was a pattern and asked me how I liked to receive delegated assignments and I told him I liked hard projects that challenged me and where I had the freedom to be creative with how the project was to be completed. Oh, *#@%&! That is the exact opposite of how I had been delegating. A word of warning if you ever decide to get a coach, they have a way a revealing your deepest imperfections and it really stinks. The upside is that you can learn to fix those flaws, so that's what I've been doing with the delegation issue. After a year of soul searching and practicing on EPIP committee members and our administrative staff has taught me a few lessons that I'll share with you:

Don't delegate what you can eliminate- Before you can effectively delegate, you need to be ruthless with your to do list. Don't give someone else busy work, make sure that you are delegating tasks that will help you complete projects that are important and make a difference to the success of your organization.

Delegate the objective, not how it is done- This one was a killer for me because I had an idea of how a project should move forward and I had the unconscious belief that my way was the only way. When I first started delegating projects without step by step instructions I was amazed at the final results that I got back. New perspectives solved problems that I didn't even know I had and people really shine when you don't hamstring them with a ton of directions.

Delegate authority, not just the work- When you give people the freedom to make decisions you eliminate the biggest bottleneck to getting work done, YOU. Be available for questions but help people get in the habit of coming to you with their recommendations. This moves things along faster because when someone has a question, they usually already have an answer in mind and it is usually better than what you would come up with on the fly, with incomplete information.

Delegate things that you are not good at, and don't want to be good at- Never delegate a task that could help you grow and a learn a new skill, unless it's a skill that you are not interested in having. I could learn to change my oil but it's not a skill that I want to develop, so I delegate it. If someone has a strength in Access or graph-making or statistics and you don't, by all means let them do it. These are things that take a lot of time to learn but can be done quickly by someone who has experience doing it. Save everyone some time and let it go.

Delegate things that you are good at- Sometimes when you are really good at doing something you have a hard time being satisfied with the final result. I am very good at researching program and demographic information on the web. The problem with this is that I am always after the "perfect" statistic that will help me make a case to my board. I'll keep searching until I find exactly what I am looking for, which could take forever. If I delegated that same task to someone else with a time frame, they will find a great quote that helps me build the case. Learn to let things be "good enough".

Delegation is good management practice- I have moved from a position where I was a manager to a foundation position where I don't manage people directly. Delegation is good practice to make sure that I don't lose important management skills. If you are at a small shop where you don't have anyone to delegate to, you can delegate in your volunteer activities or you can even delegate parts of your personal life. A great article about that is here. A few months ago I decided that I wanted to add more substantive content to New Voices but I also knew that with a demanding job and two young kids at home, I couldn't dedicate a lot more time to the blog. That's where Jasmine Hall Ratliff came in. Jasmine was an ABFE Fellow with me and when I sent out a blanket email to hire a researcher for New Voices she answered the call. Jasmine has been helping me do a ton of research that will soon add some great features to this blog, so stay tuned.

Do you have any delegation tips or resources that you use for delegation? One of my new favorites for very specific projects is Elance.