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Principles By Plan: Weaving the Co-op Principles into Your Strategic Plan

11am Eastern Time

Leveraging the cooperative principles to help members understand the cooperative difference and its value is one of the primary focal points of every co-op communicator. Being a cooperative can be a competitive edge when you have loyal members who get what it means to be part of a cooperative. In this session, TCEC presents a case study showing how their communications team incorporated the cooperative principles into their communication efforts.

Participants will learn:

  • How to craft a strategic plan with the cooperative principles in mind.
  • How to build an editorial calendar incorporating the cooperative principles.
  • Telling your story with the cooperative principles.

Presenter:

JuliAnn Graham, Communications Coordinator, Tri-County Electric Cooperative (TCEC)
JuliAnn Graham has been TCEC’s communicator for nearly eight years. Chris Purdy is the cooperative’s vice president of Member Solutions and Leslie Kraich is TCEC’s community and member relations coordinator. Together, they work to ensure TCEC’s members understand the cooperative difference by incorporating the seven cooperative principles into their strategic communications plan and weaving them into everyday communications. Graham is a Certified Cooperative Communicator through the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. In 2014, the TCEC communications team won the Top Rural Electric Co-op Communicator award in the Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperative’s annual newsletter contest. In 2013, the cooperative scored an 87 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which was an all-time high for the co-op. 

Who should attend:

This webinar is designed for any cooperative communicator or leader.

Registration:

The deadline to register is March 18. To ensure your spot in this webinar fill out the registration form and fax, mail or scan to email with payment to:

Cooperative Communicators Association
174 Crestview Drive, Bellefonte, PA 16823-8516
Fax: 814-355-2452 | Email: registration at communicators.coop

Download the Registration Form

Creative Rural-Urban Alliances

In many parts of the country real and perceived differences divide rural and urban communities. Divisions rooted in competing political priorities, divergent cultural norms, and disparate socio-economic conditions often prevent conversations about shared interests.

The emerging practice of rural-urban cooperation capitalizes on the unique assets of both places to bridge divides, build mutual understanding, and infuse creative energy into community and economic development.

Join the next CommunityMatters® and Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design™ event for inspiration on creative urban and rural connections that could happen in your area. FREE!

SPEAKERS

  • Savannah Barrett, program director, Art of the Rural
  • Kirsten Stoltz, programming director, M12 Collective
  • Chuck Fluharty, founder and vice president for policy programs, Rural Policy Research Institute

[ register here ]

What Makes Evaluating Complexity Different?

12:00pm to 1:00pm Eastern Time

More organizations are reorienting their strategies toward systems change in recognition of the complexity of the problems they are trying to address. As a result, the traditional ways that philanthropy, government, corporations, and nonprofits have approached evaluation are falling short. It begs the question:

How can the practice of evaluation evolve to better reflect the complexity of social problems and their solutions today?

In the recently published practice brief, Evaluating Complexity, FSG's Hallie Preskill and Srik Gopal describe how evaluating complex initiatives in complex environments is inherently different than how evaluation has traditionally been practiced and defined. They outline nine propositions for evaluating complexity building on the ideas and thinking of leading theorists and evaluation practitioners:

  1. Design and implement evaluations to be adaptive, flexible, and iterative
  2. Seek to understand and describe the whole system, including components and connections
  3. Support the learning capacity of the system by strengthening feedback loops and improving access to information
  4. Pay particular attention to context and be responsive to changes as they occur
  5. Look for effective principles of practice in action, rather than assessing adherence to a predetermined set of activities
  6. Identify points of energy and influence, as well as ways in which momentum and power flow within the system
  7. Focus on the nature of relationships and interdependencies within the system
  8. Explain the non-linear and multi-directional relationships between the initiative and its intended and unintended outcomes
  9. Watch for patterns, both one-off and repeating, at different levels of the system

Join FSG's Hallie Preskill, Srik Gopal, and Katelyn Mack in conversation with Cris Kutzli, program director at Grand Rapids Community Foundation, and Mona Jhawar, evaluation manager at The California Endowment, to discuss the nine propositions from the recent practice brief, Evaluating Complexity, and learn more about how these funders of social innovation have put these propositions into practice.

This interactive discussion will explore what has made the design and implementation of evaluation different because of the complex environment in which these funders are working. Each foundation will provide an example of how they have evaluated complex initiatives seeking to address complex problems on the issues of urban education and community health.

Register now

Panelists

Hallie Preskill, managing director at FSG, has provided evaluation, organizational learning, and training workshops and services for healthcare, nonprofit, education, foundation, government, and corporate organizations for more than 25 years. As the head of FSG's Strategic Evaluation approach area, Hallie guides clients on planning and conducting evaluations, developing strategic learning and evaluation systems, building shared measurement systems, building evaluation capacity, and facilitating organizational learning over a wide range of topic areas, including healthcare, economic development, youth and education, substance abuse prevention and treatment, community engagement, and human rights. Prior to joining FSG in 2009, Hallie held academic positions at three different universities, where she taught courses in program evaluation, organizational learning, appreciative inquiry, consulting, and training. She received the American Evaluation Association's Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Outstanding Professional Practice in 2002 and the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004. In 2007, she served as President of the American Evaluation Association.

Srik Gopal is a Director who co-leads FSG's Strategic Learning and Evaluation practice. In this role, Srik has worked with a variety of clients including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, National Academies - Institute of Medicine, and the Grand Rapids Community Foundation. He also led FSG's "next generation evaluation" initiative.  Srik came to FSG in 2012 with over twelve years of leadership experience in the social and business sectors. Most recently, in his role as Chief Impact and Learning Officer at New Teacher Center, Srik worked to set up frameworks for impact measurement as well as systems and processes for data-driven learning and improvement. Srik holds an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross Business School and has completed a Certification in Advanced Evaluation Study from Claremont Graduate University. He has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Katelyn Mack contributes to FSG's Strategic Learning and Evaluation practice through the design and implementation of innovative approaches to evaluation in the philanthropic sector. While Katelyn conducts evaluations across issue areas, she has deep expertise in US health, working with clients that include the Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and The California Endowment. She has been involved in evaluating a 5-year, $24 million initiative by the Knight Foundation to support the development of information and media projects in communities across the United States, and has helped numerous foundations develop comprehensive strategies for increasing the effectiveness of learning and evaluation within their organizations. Prior to FSG, Katelyn worked as an analyst on social and economic issues affecting women and families with the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and evaluated health promotion programs in Mexico and Central America. Katelyn holds a Master's degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Cris Kutzli is a Program Director at Grand Rapids Community Foundation, and serves as Co-Director of the Challenge Scholars initiative.  She participated in the design of Challenge Scholars, and now leads its program and evaluation components.  Her work with Challenge Scholars includes program planning, strategy development, and partnership building at both the systems and grass-roots level.  Cris also advises the Community Foundation's Youth Grant Committee. She is involved in a number of local initiatives related to education, youth development, and college access.  Prior to joining the Foundation in 1999, Cris served as a community organizer at a large neighborhood association in Grand Rapids. Cris earned her Bachelor of Arts in Social Science Education at Michigan State University.

Mona Jhawar, who has extensive experience as a health policy researcher and analyst, joined The Endowment in February 2008. As a learning and evaluation officer for the foundation, Mona is responsible for working with the foundation's program staff, grantees and external consultants on evaluation design and planning. In addition, she is responsible for overseeing and communicating learning and evaluation activities in support of organizational learning and the achievement of impact, among other duties.

Prior to her appointment with The Endowment, Jhawar served as a policy analyst for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health where she was involved with grant-making processes for local built environment projects.  Mona has led a number of workshops at the national and regional levels, and has been a published researcher for the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. She has also been published in the American Journal of Public Health. Mona earned her B.S. in Environmental Toxicology from the University of California, Davis, and her M.P.H. from UCLA.

Local Food Procurement in the Broader Public Sector

10am to 12pm Eastern Time

This webinar is the sixth in a series of conversations hosted by Sustain Ontario relating to municipal level food policy in Ontario.

Local food procurement generally refers to purchasing initiatives, tools, or policy that function to increase the amount of local food purchased by any number of public institutions.  Each year, millions of public dollars are spent on food for municipally funded and organized facilities including public cafeterias, childcare centres, convention centres, and long term care facilities.  By looking for ways to redirect some of this money back into local food economies, there is a huge potential to build a more vibrant local food system.

We know that local food procurement is a very complicated and multifaceted topic, and by no means do we intend to cover everything in one webinar.  Instead, we have decided to address three themes that continue to come up from across our network, namely:

  • The process of food purchasing for the public sector,
  • Establishing local food purchasing policy, and
  • Managing international trade regulations and existing purchasing policies.

We hope that by addressing these issues, we might encourage municipal leaders across the province to ask the right questions, think outside of the box, and develop more meaningful local procurement plans for the future.

Register now

Panelists

  • Dan Munshaw, Manager of Supply Management for the City of Thunder Bay
  • Hayley Lapalme, Program Designer and Facilitator for My Sustainable Canada
  • Wendy Smith, Contract Specialist for MEALsource
  • Sandra Hamilton, Business Consultant and Strategic Marketer
  • Brendan Wylie-Toal, Greenbelt Fund BPS Grant Program Specialist

Discussion Facilitator

Janice Janiec, Project Manager Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance and lead consultant on Sustain Ontario’s Broader Public Sector Local Procurement Project

Effective Crowdfunding for Community Economic Development

BACKGROUND

Crowdfunding can be used to finance a variety of purposes, from the small-scale support needed for specific projects or initiatives to larger start-up capital for small and medium-sized enterprise. It can tap into your organization’s existing fan base and it can help you to access investors who are interested in your idea.

WealthWorks is a 21st-century approach to community economic development. It brings together and connects a community’s assets to meet market demand in ways that build livelihoods that last. In this webinar Christi Electris shares what was learned through the WealthWorks Crowdfunding Action-Learning Program and how your organization can use crowdfunding to finance projects and initiatives.

Equity crowdfunding is a growing area of interest in Canada, with securities regulators across the country proposing rules to regulate the raising of limited amounts of capital, and the selling of shares, through crowdfunding websites. In this webinar Carlos Pinto Lobo talks about the two different regulation models in Canada and the implications these models have on Canada’s social economy.

SPEAKERS

Christi Electris, Croatan Institute

Christi is founding team member at Croatan Institute, a new center for advanced social and environmental research and engagement focusing on the nexus of sustainability and finance, and holds a dual appointment with the Tellus Institute, a sustainability think-tank in Boston. She consults on a variety of environmental and social issues, including energy, climate, agriculture, sustainability indicators, and corporate redesign. Christi has done extensive research and writing on sustainable and responsible investing, helping develop a new framework for social and environmental impact investing across asset classes, known as Total Portfolio Activation, and, as part of a multi-stakeholder initiative, is currently working to demonstrate the impact of public equity engagement through the development of a new reporting framework for investors.  A computer scientist and quantitative policy analyst by training, she has designed policy scenario analyses with environmental and social impacts, including the most recent update of Tellus Institute's global sustainability scenarios, and has consulted on a variety of website and database development projects. She developed and ran a social media and outreach strategy for author Marjorie Kelly's release of her most recent book, and is currently running the Tellus Institute’s campaign for the Great Transition Initiative online journal. As part of the Ford Foundation-funded WealthWorks rural development program, she studied enterprise finance models and place-based investing across the country, and out of that work developed and conducted several trainings on crowdfunding to support new investment into place-based rural value chains.

Carlos Pinto Lobo, MaRS Centre for Impact Investing

Carlos is an accomplished, compliance, governance and risk management professional with over 25 years of extensive experience in the financial services industry, including futures, options, retail compliance, LCM, SOX, credit, operational risk management, anti-money laundering, privacy regulations and successful business solutions. Carlos has had previous roles as a Director and VP at CIBC, Deutsche Bank AG, Alpha ATS, and BMO InvestorLine Inc., as well as been a guest speaker at a variety of industry related events. He has also been instrumental in the development of regulatory regimes and groundbreaking industry initiatives. He is currently the SVX Compliance Officer with the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing.

Additional Resources

WealthWorks Approach

Croatan Crowdfunding Resources

Equity Crowdfunding in Canada

  • Two Equity Crowdfunding Models for Canada
  • Other blog posts from Carlos Pinto Lobo

Other Resources

Québec's Approach to Regional Development: An Historical Perspective

Free Webinar
12pm-1:30pm ET

This webinar provides an overview of Québec’s approach to regional development from before confederation to the current period. We will focus on the establishment of the National Rural Policy in 2001 and its evolution since that period of time. Topics covered will include the institutional and cultural roots of the Rural Policy, its key features, its impacts and legacy, its transitions to current conditions, and its prospects for the future. The discussion will consider various explanations for the success of the policy and the implications it has for regional policy, development, and programs in general.

On February 23rd, 2015, the RPLC will present:

Bruno Jean, a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Rural Development at L'Université du Québec à Rimouski. He was the first Scientific Director of the inter-university research group at the Centre de Recherche sur le Développement Territorial. His areas of specialization and research include the New Rural Economy, rurality, rural development of marginalized regions, family farming, rural policy, and rural governance. He contributed to the OECD Quebec rural policy review and published a paper in a recent OECD book on rural innovation. See: OECD, Innovation and Modernising the Rural Economy, 2014: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264205390-en

Bill Reimer is a Professor Emeritus at Concordia University in Montréal and Adjunct Professor at Brandon University. He is the Director of the Rural Policy Learning Commons (http://rplc-capr.ca), a 7-year international partnership of more than 90 researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, and organizations interested in rural and northern issues.  From 1997 to 2008 he directed a Canadian national research project on the New Rural Economy which included 13 universities, 35 partners, and 32 rural communities from all parts of Canada (http://nre.concordia.ca). For details of his work go to: http://www.billreimer.net/workshop/
 
Audience: Provincial and Municipal Staff & Elected Officials, Academic Community, Economic Development Practitioners, Community Organizations, and Non-Profit Organisations.

For more information or to register:
woodss at brandonu.ca | 204-571-8521
Join the online Webinar - RSVP by February 20th, 2015

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