Staff from the Grand Rapids Children's Museum talked about their philosophy of hiring and training floor staff, who they call "Play Facilitators." (I wish they'd come up with a less dull and corporate-sounding name for what is a fun, playful job--it's sort of like calling toys "manipulatives.")
Their museum is very open, and they encourage open-ended play. Their facilitators (generally young employees--many in high school and college), are trained to use the "kids lead, adults follow" approach. They liken their jobs to improv comedy, where the approach to building a scene is "Yes, and. . ." One actor (or child) starts the scene, and another actor (the facilitator) adds to what has already been created. They encourage children's ideas and making messes, and they mediate play among children, between children and parents, and disappointment due to "failure"--encouraging kids, for example, to try something else when what they were trying to do didn't work. Often, they use sneaky tricks to get parents involved in play. One speaker shared a tip to get dads involved--when kids are building, ask dad to help stack a piece that's up high. Before you know it, he'll be jumping in to join the play.
The design of the museum also contributes to this opnen-ended, creative approach. There is little or no signage, beyond safety and bathroom signs. The museum also has an open floor plan, with exhibit areas not walled off from one another. And they make sure to have no toys branded with known characters (like Dora or Maisy, for example) in the museum, because kids tend to reenact the stories they already know with known characters. They don't want to constrain children's creative thinking by directing how or where they should play and explore. Elements from one area often find their way into other areas and are combined in new and creative ways.
Their hiring practices are a bit unusual, since they're not looking for the same qualities as most employers. They seek "creative, artistic, quirky, goofy outside-the-box thinkers." They add strange questions to their applications and interviews (like "what's your favorite shape and why?" or "How do you feel about dogs?").
Facilitators also go through fairly intensive training, observation and review. In the 90-day review, they make sure to compliment and encourage the facilitator's strengths and play style. This approach tends to keep people around longer. In fact, all three presenters who are now in higher positions in the organization started as facilitators.
I'll end with one final thought: "Treat their play as a very serious thing, because to them, it is."
-Jason
Sunday, May 7, 2017
ACM MarketPlace!
ACM provided it's visitors an opportunity to browse through various vendors in the Children's Museum industry. They called this interaction, the ACM Marketplace! Their goal is to provide networking opportunities for visitors to connect with high-level decision-makers and influencers from children's museums around the world. There were several booths that offered a variety of different tools that would help with exhibit design, test out interactive stations, and provide future partnership opportunities. Keep reading to see what they had in store for us!
Yolanda, Christina, and I taking a picture with The Magic House's Dinosaur Mascot!
Imagination Playground had a whole area of big blue block sets! The intention is to expose children to interact, design, and build to utilize immersive play. Here is Christina playing with a set of blocks to get the balls to fall through the line!
Here is a sample of my RCPL Hippo. He's getting ready to get scanned into the screen!
Here is my hippo, propagated onto the screen, as it walks and dances across the floor.
A selfie with an interactive dinosaur. :)
TeamLab's booth brought an interactive drawing element that definitely caught my interest!
Their program was called Sketh Kusaji Odori. Their program allowed children to draw and sketch their own drawings and bring their sketches to life!
To learn more about how TeamLab works, click this link below:
Lastly, a booth that caught Christina and I's attention, Litezilla!
LiteZilla™ is a giant interactive canvas. People of all ages and capabilities can illuminate any design, pattern, or message they wish using our enormous colored LitePins™. They promote positive play with the exploration of light, art, and color.
Their link down below:
Overall, a great opportunity for us to explore and engage with different companies that bring various interactive elements into the museum business.
-Megan
Teaching Coding in Museums
This was a GREAT presentation! Three presenters from various museums shared their coding programs, and what worked for them. They all expressed importance in introducing coding programs in their museums and how their goal is to inspire, model, spark interest, engage, and uncover ways to include coding play in the museum moving forward.
So, what is coding?
Coding is simply a set of instructions. Instructions on telling you what to do, how to do it, when to do it.
Coding is simply just a set of instructions.
For example, Chewing Gum:
1) Take gum out of pack
2) Unwrap gum with fingers
3) Take gum into fingers
4) Dispose of wrapper
5) Lift gum to mouth
6) Chew
7) Repeat until flavor is gone or until satisfied
Coding is simply putting a set of instructions in order or in a sequence.Presenters expressed that it's a lot more easier than you think! The goal is to NOT teach computer science to children, but to inspire, introduce, and explore!
Here's a short video called "Code Stars", a short video that they presented in the program.
Isn't the video great?
Presenters expressed the difference between teaching coding programs in schools vs museums.
Since schools are more directed, focused time due to curriculum unit, and that they build on the day before, we should not mirror the same type of expectation for museums since visitors only come for a short period of time. While some curriculum may be great for some museum programs, others may not. So the goal again, is to provide a space for children to explore, inspire, and introduce coding!
The Hour of Code:
- Started by code.org, a non-profit organization and website whose goal is to encourage people to learn computer science
- Bringing computer science classes to every k-12 school in USA, especially urban and rural neighborhoods
-Increasing the representation of women and students of color
Focus for Museums to put on Coding:
- Shorter programs
- 5-15 minutes on the floor, eye catching, any age
Benefits of introducing Coding to children under 5
- Introducing new concepts
- Fine motor skills develop while utilizing different coding programs
- Visual discrimination: what are these buttons doing? what are these lights doing?
- Critical Thinking
- Pre-writing/ Reading
- Grasping skills
- Kinesthetic thinking "I have to track with my eyes"
- Expanding attention and concentration (Very new to them)
Play concepts coding brings for children
- Pattern
- Measurement
- Sorting
- Step by step instructions
- Parts of a whole
- Scientific method
- Critical thinking
- Curiosity
Marbles museum introduced some hands-on coding activities:
Build your own Bee Bot Mazes
Hardware Hack
Robot Mouse Programming
Plus Plus Pixel Play
Binary Code Bracelets
Lego Coding
More hands on coding programs can be found here:
Once you start coding in your programs, it's okay to start slow- but then you start getting into a groove, and pick up speed along the way! It builds confidence and skill building.
Next, a presenter from Children's Creativity Museum from San Francisco, CA introduced coding workshops and exhibits that worked for them!
So, you are thinking about how to turn your workshop to an exhibit... Where do you start?
First, is to find an entry point your visitors will connect with. Is it robots? Pacman? Minecraft? Whatever it is, design how you want your workshop to work, and bring in the exhibit design element into the works.
An example of a robot exhibit:
- Raised tables to code the robot on a table maze.
- You're learning about navigating a maze. Turn other tables into a dry erase board, so that kids can attach a dry erase marker to their robot and create drawings with their very own robots! May it be a square, triangle, circle.... whatever the challenge is, it is a great entry point to bring in other aspects of STEAM into your exhibit.
They expressed how important play testing is and how it exposes other students to work together and run into solutions to problems together!
They also created summer camps:
They also created summer camps:
- Opportunity for deeper learning
- Provides educators the chance to teach more advanced topics that build off the previous day's lessons
- Gives students opportunity to make more complicated objects
- Summer camps (opportunity to focus on longer programs)
- Video Game Controller
- Spirograph Art
- Create and code a mars rover
- More advanced video games
One of the coding programs that stuck out to me was their Tynker Coding workshop. This workshop includes a Green screen Kareoke studio where students can be a character in their own video game! In this case, the presenter showed us one of his student's work. His student used pictures of herself as a base, to catch objects falling off the sky. The other objects were pictures of her friends! How clever is that? You can view the short video down below.
Lastly, the presenter expressed how important it is to find a partner who will be mutually beneficial for your exhibit, as well as their business. One of the partners that they collaborated with was with Microsoft. Microsoft came to their exhibit to teach minecraft coding to their students! They also provided the tablets, and showed them step by step instructions on how to build their own minecraft! It was also beneficial for Microsoft because they also needed users to try out their new products.
Lastly, the FUN part! I got to test out one of their robots! This one was called Dash Robot! I was able to launch a ping pong ball into the air. The goal was to launch these balls into the cups, which took different test and trials with different launch power modes. It was surprisingly super easy to grasp and understand! You can launch, drive, light up, and make the robot sing! I got it to drive, launch, and say "Meow"!
This one was called Lego Wedo Robotics. Each kit comes with all the parts to build their robot using Lego pieces, and then they power up their robot with the free app that comes with the program.
Overall, a great presentation! I enjoyed the different coding programs and tools that they all had to offer!
-Megan
Daring Experiences - Museums and Visitors Taking Risks - Thursday 10:30-11:45
In this session, I learned that people mean many different things when they say "risky." It was a bit of a grab bag. I thought it was going to be primarily about "risky" play, but only one of the speakers addressed that topic. Two of the speakers talked about the risks associated with building new museums. Allen Boerger of ROTO (a museum design company) spoke about a big, beautiful new museum his company had designed, and how they had pushback from the community because they had replaced some of the old, outdated but still beloved exhibits that parents remembered from their childhoods and wanted their kids to experience. Hopefully that won't be a problem for us since we're brand-new, but it does remind me of some of the battles over card catalogs that happened around the country some years ago, and the dangers of saying to the public, "we know what's best for you" rather than asking them if we're really giving them what they want.
Nichole Myles of Children's Museum of the Low Country in Davenport, Iowa spoke about how she and her staff undertook a crazy, ambitious effort to build a science center to replace their 150-year-old museum in two years starting with no funding. A couple of tips she mentioned to impress donors and government funders: Show your potential for inspiring interest in science. The dropout rate in the area where the museum is located is high, and the area has a strong manufacturing tradition that is slowly dying off. There's a need for workers trained in high-tech fields. Her pitch to donors focused on the ability of a children's museum to make science accessible and attainable. Too many students when they are very young get the idea ingrained into them that science is hard and that they can't understand it. A science museum, by teaching scientific concepts in a fun and understandable way, can help dispel this notion and possibly inspire more children to accept their potential as scientists.
Ellen Bari of the Manhattan Children's Museum covered their exhibit on Muslim art and culture, and the intensive preparation process they went through. Because they wanted to get the content right, and because they knew the subject might be controversial among certain elements of the public, they consulted with anyone and everyone they could think of, from local community members to scholars in and out of the US to the NYPD and other security experts. The exhibit looked neat, but it had to be the most overproduced exhibit in the history of children's museums. It took six (!!) years to plan and must have cost a fortune. I can't imagine what people in smaller, scrappier children's museums must have thought about the lavish outlay of resources. Nichole Myles and her staff were able to build an entire museum in less time (and possibly for less money).
Katie Slivosky of the Chicago Children's Museum talked about two exhibits at her museum and how they tied into the concept of unsupervised, open play. One was called Forts. It was a large room filled with furniture, sheets and other assorted objects, large and small. Knobs and loops are attached to the pieces so that they can be easily attached to one another. Kids are turned loose to build "forts" and create their own environments and narratives. Katie told us that research shows that kids love to create their own spaces, and that it is what's known in the children's research community as a "universal pursuit of childhood," meaning it cuts across race, gender, age, class and culture.
Katie also talked about here museum's tinkering lab, and the idea of real vs. perceived risk. In their tinkering lab, they allow kids freedom to use real tools and materials in an open ended way, with just as much adult supervision as necessary. They don't want to make the space too safe, because it will ruin the creativity and testing of limits that children experience. They don't expect their exhibit to be injury-free, but they do aim for only "ice pack injuries," small bumps, bruises and cuts that require an ice pack or band-aid. They try to avoid catastrophic injuries, which is why they require eye protection for all children. How do they answer the objection that "This is unsafe"? They say that they think it's a greater risk to now allow kids to take controlled risks and test their own limits.
She said something that I thought was really profound. "Children think like scientist when they explore their own ideas. Children think like engineers when they use real materials and tools."
One other fun thing she mentioned. They once had an exhibit called "Human Wrecking Ball." Kids could stack up a bunch of bean bag chairs, climb onto a platform, swing on a rope suspended from the ceiling, destroy the "tower" of bean bags and land on gym mats. Sounds like a blast. I can see some kids wanting to do that over and over and over.
-Jason
Nichole Myles of Children's Museum of the Low Country in Davenport, Iowa spoke about how she and her staff undertook a crazy, ambitious effort to build a science center to replace their 150-year-old museum in two years starting with no funding. A couple of tips she mentioned to impress donors and government funders: Show your potential for inspiring interest in science. The dropout rate in the area where the museum is located is high, and the area has a strong manufacturing tradition that is slowly dying off. There's a need for workers trained in high-tech fields. Her pitch to donors focused on the ability of a children's museum to make science accessible and attainable. Too many students when they are very young get the idea ingrained into them that science is hard and that they can't understand it. A science museum, by teaching scientific concepts in a fun and understandable way, can help dispel this notion and possibly inspire more children to accept their potential as scientists.
Ellen Bari of the Manhattan Children's Museum covered their exhibit on Muslim art and culture, and the intensive preparation process they went through. Because they wanted to get the content right, and because they knew the subject might be controversial among certain elements of the public, they consulted with anyone and everyone they could think of, from local community members to scholars in and out of the US to the NYPD and other security experts. The exhibit looked neat, but it had to be the most overproduced exhibit in the history of children's museums. It took six (!!) years to plan and must have cost a fortune. I can't imagine what people in smaller, scrappier children's museums must have thought about the lavish outlay of resources. Nichole Myles and her staff were able to build an entire museum in less time (and possibly for less money).
Katie Slivosky of the Chicago Children's Museum talked about two exhibits at her museum and how they tied into the concept of unsupervised, open play. One was called Forts. It was a large room filled with furniture, sheets and other assorted objects, large and small. Knobs and loops are attached to the pieces so that they can be easily attached to one another. Kids are turned loose to build "forts" and create their own environments and narratives. Katie told us that research shows that kids love to create their own spaces, and that it is what's known in the children's research community as a "universal pursuit of childhood," meaning it cuts across race, gender, age, class and culture.
Katie also talked about here museum's tinkering lab, and the idea of real vs. perceived risk. In their tinkering lab, they allow kids freedom to use real tools and materials in an open ended way, with just as much adult supervision as necessary. They don't want to make the space too safe, because it will ruin the creativity and testing of limits that children experience. They don't expect their exhibit to be injury-free, but they do aim for only "ice pack injuries," small bumps, bruises and cuts that require an ice pack or band-aid. They try to avoid catastrophic injuries, which is why they require eye protection for all children. How do they answer the objection that "This is unsafe"? They say that they think it's a greater risk to now allow kids to take controlled risks and test their own limits.
She said something that I thought was really profound. "Children think like scientist when they explore their own ideas. Children think like engineers when they use real materials and tools."
One other fun thing she mentioned. They once had an exhibit called "Human Wrecking Ball." Kids could stack up a bunch of bean bag chairs, climb onto a platform, swing on a rope suspended from the ceiling, destroy the "tower" of bean bags and land on gym mats. Sounds like a blast. I can see some kids wanting to do that over and over and over.
-Jason
Saturday, May 6, 2017
RCPL was in the House!!
Posted by Cara
Library staff made a definite impact at ACM this week! All 11 of us talked to folks during the conference who knew all about us and said "oh, you're from the library." It was a great feeling and we received a warm welcome and amazing support and positive feedback from the 600 or so children's museum (CM) folks who were there. It seems to be a tight-knit community and I can say without hesitation that our friendly, service- and team-oriented staff fit right in!
There are some terrific posts outlining many, many details of the conference, so I'm going to change it up a bit and create my ACM 2017 Top 10 List to create a compilation of what I learn, saw, experienced, absorbed, and wasn't sure about, at the conference. Thanks for reading!! (Btw, this is in no special order.)
Library staff made a definite impact at ACM this week! All 11 of us talked to folks during the conference who knew all about us and said "oh, you're from the library." It was a great feeling and we received a warm welcome and amazing support and positive feedback from the 600 or so children's museum (CM) folks who were there. It seems to be a tight-knit community and I can say without hesitation that our friendly, service- and team-oriented staff fit right in!
- Non-profits 101. Most CMs are non-profits which are different structurally than our City org. They appear have a very influential Board of Directors to which the organization reports. In a lot of cases the Board seems to have a lot of say in the funding, educational goals, exhibits, events, etc., of the museum. A lot is expected of the Board, such as regular and sizeable donations, connections to the community especially to people of "wealth," hard work advocating and sustaining the museum. A CEO or ED (Executive Director) leads the team and their main function is to (constantly) raise money for the museum. That's what they and their executive team do, again constantly! The Directors of Education, Marketing, Exhibits, Customer Experience, etc., handle the day-to-day and museum functions.
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| Sample of Non-profit fundraising & project schedule. Notice how much they raised! |
- Marketing magic. CM marketing is similar to library marketing in that depending on size of the org, sometimes the job falls on one person, sometimes there's a whole department. In any case, a marketing plan is crucial and the approach should be multi-faceted. Social media, print, media, billboards, radio, etc. all come into play. Forging relationships with the media can be a gold mine as they often turn to you for stories, providing free marketing. Use a communications/marketing style guide with standardized logos, branding, color palettes, talking points, etc. so everyone is ON THE SAME MESSAGING PAGE. Change up your marketing materials every 3-5 years. Of course there are innumerable examples of good branding...
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- Being small makes you nimble. Several smaller museums presented and hearing their story was important because we're small too. The main point is that being small gives you flexibility to act, change, try new things, and take risks. Staff roles are also flexible and the right person can step in when needed, regardless of title. Community engagement takes on a different flavor with potentially more grass roots and hands on involvement from the community.
- Organizational culture can make or break you. Time and money should be spent on developing your culture and organization values! Some definitions of culture are "what is it like to work here," your DNA, work vibe, how do we behave, everything not in the employee handbook, how we act with each other and patrons. Organizational culture is like gravity; you can't see it but it's there. There is no single way to unify your culture, but unifying is important. Use strategies that bring people together across the boundaries of the org chart. Culture should run deep and transcend staffing, budget, and leadership changes. Org leaders should lead by example and set the tone, but let others define the culture, especially front line staff. Use engagement strategies to engage and create an inclusive culture.
- Danger done right. Orgs should take on risk as it offers the promise of providing awesome and unique experiences. Risk is scary;it's okay to be afraid. Be honest with stakeholders when taking on risk - have a clear reason for the need to do so and why. Some of risk is about being lucky. There are different kinds of risk in museums - big picture risk (the whole project is risky; you don't have the money, right or enough staff), content risk (offering a controversial exhibit), safety risks (using hammers and nails). Best advice for answering questions about risk: If we don't do [XYZ] there is a greater risk of kids not being able to push their limits and learn about themselves.
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| Children's Museum of Manhattan's Muslim culture exhibit was a big risk in a post 9/11 city. In the end it was carefully planned, award-winning and hugely successful!
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- Recognizing donors is big business. With extensive fundraising going on, we must recognize donors. A recognition policy is a MUST HAVE and allows you to keep it simple and standard with donors, and say no. Most agree don't allow donor logos on exhibits. Can opt to make just a few sizes of donor signs so there's no negotiating on look and size. Find fun ways to thank and recognize donors - mascots, gift baskets, interesting and colorful quarterly reports, free tickets. Naming in perpetuity has to be A LOT of money.
- A fishbowl is a great place to have a conversation. In the spirit of fun and innovation, ACM offered several presentation formats - very different. A fishbowl is a discussion with 4 seats in the middle and a circle of people outside it. It starts with 4 presenters and then anyone who wants to talk (there were a few) take a seat inside the fishbowl and stays there, and someone else leaves. This was used for Org Culture topic. Needless to say, I did not enter the fishbowl. A firestarter consists of rapid fire presentations on thought-provoking topics - then the same rapid fire Q&A follows.(This was used for Donor recognition topic).
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| Donor key for individual donors. |
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| Oh yes, we have stairs too! |
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| There's even a flow chart for recognition! |
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| The fishbowl |
- You can buy a children's museum. The exhibit hall was small at the conference. Exhibitors fell into a few categories - architect and building design companies; exhibit and concept design companies (like Gyroscope); lots of companies selling stuff to buy for your museum (Imagination Playground); and a sprinkling of service companies offering things like tickets kiosks.
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| Gyroscope were conference rock stars - definitely have a good reputation and were mentioned in several workshops. |
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| Kidspace has this - we want this! |
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| Draw and upload your drawing to screen. Expensive but cool! |
- Vu Le is a non-profit hero! Check out the other blog posts about this program. This guy way so good! He described (in very funny way!) how the non-profit culture is characterized by a lot of things, especially guilt about making money and martyrdom (the ED who wouldn't replace their duct taped chair because it would be too expensive). He was an inspirational genius and, while I don't think we have quite that same culture here at the Library, his message was that we are awesome and can be even more awesome by recognizing our worth, stopping the guilt, and standing up to those who might knock us down - including donors who may make unreasonable/unrealistic demands. Good stuff!
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| http://nonprofitaf.com/about/ |
- We got this! There is no doubt that the best part of this conference was spending time with our wonderful, fun, caring, and crazy-excited staff. As Library representatives and ambassadors, they displayed an amazing professionalism and work ethic that is second to none. I am so proud to be part of the library team and want to thank every single library staff member for everything you have done and will do to make our 2nd floor dream a reality!
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| 14 hours into the day, we wrangled everyone for one last photo. And why not throw in some yoga?! :] |
Creating Positive Organization Culture Through Employee Engagement
This was a very engaging and informative session. As the session went on, those things we at RCPL have in place to promote a positive organizational culture- Staff Development Day or this conference, for example, came to mind. For those of us who were able to attend, the time we spent together off site getting to know each other, exchanging ideas, and bonding is invaluable.
With the current period of change and adjustment we're experiencing across all levels, there is the opportunity to do more, change things up a bit, or try something new. Feel free to add ideas, comments, suggestions below.
-Carmen
Summary from the Conference Program:
Creating Positive Organizational Culture through Employee Engagement"What is it like to work here?" Employee engagement is about morale, productivity, workplace happiness, and a sense of inclusion and belonging. Connections between departments (horizontally) and interactions from entry level through upper management (vertically) can form an organizational culture that creates a high performing team and has a positive impact on the visitor experience. Join four CEOs as they kick off this inclusive discussion of staff engagement and how it promotes organizational and individual growth.
My notes:
Organizational Culture
...What do we mean by organizational culture?
- the defining characteristics of how we behave towards each other (staff) and the community
- the unwritten stories, the myths
- how we address mistakes
- what we choose to address and how we deal with difficult situations
- what the community sees when the boss isn't looking
...why are committing resources towards a positive culture beneficial?
- employee turnover is expensive
- happy people have good ideas
- it builds relationships which lead to increased, beneficial, risk taking= Innovation!
...How does the organizational leader influence culture?
- leaders set the tone- good or bad
- but at the same time, leaders should not be the ones to define what the Fun staff events are
- remember that the culture is embedded within the floor team!
Engagement Strategies
- Staff retreats- "Don't try to change the tires while the car's still running"
- opportunities for staff to talk/share and identify challenges, needs, and or issues
- purposely mix people from different departments
- compliment cards
- after hours staff nights- movie night, clay nights (pottery)
- Culture surveys
- anonymous
- open ended questions
- questions to measure employee satisfaction
- important: these then lead to committees of non-management staff that come together to
- discuss issues/ needs/ problems identified through these surveys
- brainstorm solutions and action plans
**also important to always consider Introverts as well!
Measuring Success
- Staff Surveys- this was mentioned multiple times
- the amount of staff turnover
- through observation
- Exit Interviews- measure what is NOT working as well!
- by the attitude of service from management towards lower ranking staff
- do managers ask for feedback from all staff, all ranks?
- Corporate culture can take 4-6 years to develop
- aim towards unity and inclusiveness- differences should be invited and accepted!
- leaders set the tone
Friday, May 5, 2017
Plenary session with Vu Le, Thursday, May 4th 9-10:15 a.m.
Just a few comments on Vu Le's speech, since others have commented:
- He coined the term "Bizsplaining," based on "Mansplaining." It describes businesses telling nonprofits how they should run their organizations, because they're successful, make a lot of money, and thus know better. He argued that nonprofits have a much harder job than businesses. His example was a customer purchasing an iPhone from Apple and stipulating that they don't want any more than $25 of their $700 to go to the CEO, no more than $100 for design, etc. Businesses don't have to deal with this. Nonprofits do every day. Another example: For Apple, their outcome is that they sold 100,000 iPhones and made a huge profit. If they were a nonprofit, investors would say "Well, selling iPhones is great, but it's not really an outcome. We need to know how many people used those iPhones to post online resumes and get jobs." He spoke about overbearing board members who think they can tell nonprofit CEOs how to run their organizations. He tells them "your hobby is my profession." Overall, one of his major messages was that you have to stand up to donors, and not let them change your mission or dictate how you run your organization.
He also mentioned that fundraising in not always a zero-sum game, and that he has worked with donors who not only donated to an allied organization but increased their donation to his because they appreciated the collaboration.
He's currently working on a website called grantadvisor.com, which is like Yelp for donors and foundations. Nonprofits can review and add comments and tips about seeking grants and funding from donors.
- He coined the term "Bizsplaining," based on "Mansplaining." It describes businesses telling nonprofits how they should run their organizations, because they're successful, make a lot of money, and thus know better. He argued that nonprofits have a much harder job than businesses. His example was a customer purchasing an iPhone from Apple and stipulating that they don't want any more than $25 of their $700 to go to the CEO, no more than $100 for design, etc. Businesses don't have to deal with this. Nonprofits do every day. Another example: For Apple, their outcome is that they sold 100,000 iPhones and made a huge profit. If they were a nonprofit, investors would say "Well, selling iPhones is great, but it's not really an outcome. We need to know how many people used those iPhones to post online resumes and get jobs." He spoke about overbearing board members who think they can tell nonprofit CEOs how to run their organizations. He tells them "your hobby is my profession." Overall, one of his major messages was that you have to stand up to donors, and not let them change your mission or dictate how you run your organization.
He also mentioned that fundraising in not always a zero-sum game, and that he has worked with donors who not only donated to an allied organization but increased their donation to his because they appreciated the collaboration.
He's currently working on a website called grantadvisor.com, which is like Yelp for donors and foundations. Nonprofits can review and add comments and tips about seeking grants and funding from donors.
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