Wow things with our board are better than ever. I hear horror stories from some folks about their boards, but NPT has moved from a "formative" board to a mature one with amazing new members who are doing the work.
We have committees now for Marketing, Finance, Programming and Real Estate. Each committee has a mission statement and an action plan. And truly the lady who has been behind us making our way is our new Chairperson or President of the Board, Penny Wickey. She has so much experience with non profits and finance, plus she really gets the NPT mission.
Today we met with Russell Williams, also on our board, for Grant Writing. He's doing a wonderful job and has written grants before for a myriad of organizations. I really see it taking shape!
I am on the board as is Andy and each of us sits on a couple committees. One of mine is the Marketing Committee of course. Seth had some relevant things to say about what an organization needs to think about:
Before you spend a minute or a dollar on marketing, perhaps you could answer some questions:
- Who, precisely, are you trying to reach?
- What change are you trying to make?
- How will you know if it's working?
- How long before you will lose patience?
- How long before someone on your team gets to change the mission?
- How much time and money are you prepared to spend?
- Who gets to approve this work?
- Who are you trying to please or impress?
It's cheaper to answer these questions than it is to spend time and money on marketing, but, alas, it usually doesn't happen that way.
Below are some pix of the gig for AT HOME IN GREENWICH recently with Kelly Grant, Fred Rose, me and two of our college interns as well as our lovely Youth Board singing waiters. It was a fancy gig at the Hyatt.
