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January 2008
Greetings and Happy New Year! Welcome to the January 2008 edition of ChangeMaker. Our goal is to support you as an agent of change by connecting you to a variety of resources, tools, websites, and insights you can use.
We hope that 2008 brings with it exciting new opportunities for you, your team, and your organization.
Cheers!
Frank G Scarpaci
PS: There is still time to take advantage of our Boardtrax 90-day Free promotion. See details below.
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| News & Announcements
Our Upcoming Workshops
Basic Project Management: Bridging the Gap Between Vision and Results: This workshop will provide you with basic project management concepts, tools and techniques to help your projects achieve great results. Understand how to meet time, cost or performance objectives at this seminar.
Location: Center for Nonprofit Management, Los Angeles
Date: March 25, 2008
Time: 10:00 am - 2:30 pm
Registration: You can register by fax or by mail. Phone registrations are not accepted.
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Six-Month Carbon Diet for Business Reduce your carbon footprint, lower operating costs and prepare your company for peak oil.
We've partnered with Inspiring Green Leadership to support our clients to quickly and cost-effectively reduce their carbon emissions. Whether for climate change or to prepare for peak oil, businesses are lowering their energy use everywhere they can. This six-month coaching program combines up-to-the-minute education and ongoing support for your carbon reduction team. Many carbon reduction efforts fail or take too long to achieve meaningful results because the team members don't have access to expert advice, easy-to-access resources and community support. Within the Six-Month Carbon Diet for Business, your company will learn the most cost-effective ways to reduce energy usage quickly. Your coach, who is a sustainability expert, checks in with you regularly to help keep your initiative on track.
The course begins February 12, 2008, and takes place entirely over the web and via telephone. You can have as many people as you'd like per site attend the instruction allowing an entire team to learn at the same time. The course covers lighting, transportation, heating and ventilation modifications, behavior changes, supporting your employees to reduce their energy use and more. The course uses Sun Microsystems' OpenEco.org carbon-tracking and community website, instantly giving you access to other businesses who are addressing their carbon footprint and accelerating the learning.
In six months, you'll know what to do in your business to slow climate change, reduce your dependence on fossil fuels and reduce operating costs.
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Helping You Bridge The Gap
Tools, tips, and resources worth checking out
Project Management Tools
Managing Project Risks
Risk management is an important part of project management. Although often overlooked, it is important to identify as many risks to your project as possible and be prepared if something were to happen. We created this simple Risk Management Plan Guide to help you develop a basic risk management plan for your projects.
Recommended Reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,
by David Allen
 This book provides a step by step plan to manage your ideas or projects and have them executed with much less effort. For those who want to get organized, reduce the stress associated with many tasks and also increase increase productivity, this is the book for you.
Written by the founder of Share Our Strength, this book presents creative ways nonprofits have developed sustainable operations through licensing, cause-related marketing, and social-enterprise businesses that leverage assets, services or product production capabilities to generate new revenue streams.
Featured Blog
"What Do You Stand For?" Blog Sparks Provocative Dialogue; Arms Executives with Marketplace Insights, Tools and Best Practices
Cone LLC recently announced the launch of a forward-thinking blog, www.doyoustandforsomething.com to arm corporate and nonprofit executives with marketplace insights, proprietary research, tools and best practices addressing cause-related initiatives. A natural extension of Cone's pioneering work throughout the last 27 years in the cause and corporate responsibility arenas, the "What Do You Stand For?" blog offers actionable advice and sparks provocative dialogue around the implications of cutting-edge trends and current events. |
The B Corporation
Setting the new corporate standard for social and environmental performance
How do you tell the difference between a "good company" and just "good marketing"? Introducing the B Corporation™. B Corporations™ are a new type of corporation that are purpose-driven and create benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
B Corporations™ are unlike traditional responsible businesses because they:
- Meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards.
- Institutionalize stakeholder interests.
- Build collective voice though the power of a unifying brand.
To become a B Corporation, you first have to complete an extensive survey through an organization called B Lab. The B Survey will show how you stack up against the new standard for social and environmental performance. You will receive the B Report containing a composite score and if that score is above 80 (out of 200 points available), you can go to Step 2.
Next, B Corporations must amend their corporate governing documents to incorporate stakeholder interests. This institutionalizes your values into the DNA of your company so they can better survive new management, new investors or even new ownership.
Once your company is approved and certified, B Lab will send you the Intellectual Property License , the B Corporation Seal, Usage Guidelines, and some introductory marketing materials so you can begin telling the world you are a B Corporation.
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ACCION San Diego Makes Dreams Come True for Small Business Owners 
As the world spotlight recently highlighted Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank for their pioneering work in microfinanance, it is important to realize that this economic tool is also alive and well in the United States. The concept of microfinance, providing small loans to help lift people out of poverty, is at work in countless communities from coast to coast.
Locally in San Diego, there is a large need for microfinance considering that over 93% of all businesses in City of San Diego are considered small businesses, and they account for approximately half the city's job growth since 1991. With the struggle of trying to grow, but needing more capital to do so, many small business owners face the challenge of how to obtain financing. Often times, small business owners are not able to qualify for a loan within the mainstream lending programs due to lack of collateral or financial history, short operating histories or past credit challenges.
A solution to this problem is local non-profit microlending organization, ACCION San Diego. They provide loans ranging from $300 to $35,000 to assist small and home-based business owners start or expand their microenterprises. Their client base reflects San Diego's diverse community and consists of mainly business owners with low-to-moderate income levels. Traditionally these minority and women owned businesses have faced barriers in obtaining traditional financing and ACCION fills this gap. To date, ACCION San Diego has disbursed over 2,200 loans totaling more than $11 million dollars.
To get involved in helping ACCION San Diego serve the local business community, or to find further information on their programs, please visit www.accionsandiego.org
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Boardtrax 90 Day Free Promotion
Helping Nonprofit Organizations Achieve Their Board Development Goals
Schedule a BoardEffect web demo before January 31, 2008 and we'll give you a complimentary 90 day subscription to Boardtrax.
Contact us now to take advantage of this limited time offer. | |
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About Us
Project Designworks is a project management, event management and capacity-building consulting, resource and training firm headquartered in San Diego, CA. We were founded on the belief that it is possible to do well by doing good.
Dedicated exclusively to progressive businesses, nonprofit organizations, and social entrepreneurs, we share our clients' desire to make a difference.
Our diverse experience in the small business, corporate and nonprofit sectors enables us to provide the right blend of strong leadership, creative solutions and project management expertise to help our clients bridge the gap between vision and results.
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