If you’re on my email list, you know I’ve been hinting at a cool new project I’ve been working on. It’s finally here! 501 Mission Place launches today!
Here’s the story as it is on the site:
501 Mission Place – Who & Why We Are
Like so many of the organizations that we lead, 501 Mission Place started as a conversation between friends. Chris Brogan, president of Human Business Works, and childhood friend Rob Hatch, then Executive Director of Child Health Center, were talking about the challenges of being someone who lives, eats and breathes mission. It’s easy to become isolated because there’s always so much work to do. Because there’s always so much work to do it’s hard to take time to learn about new things, or to network and find the connections that can really push your mission forward.
Rob knew this because he was living it. Chris knew it because non-profit leaders were telling him every time they asked him for advice or help. That conversation ended with the idea of creating an online community to support these leaders…
When someone on Chris Brogan’s blog asked if there was any content yet, a 501 Mission Place member said:
It’s already getting populated to the point where I’m struggling to keep track of all of the new information. What makes this such a steal, however, is that you generate the content you want by asking questions. I’ve already received *immense* amounts of feedback from experts like Estrella that I would not probably have been able to get otherwise. In fact, I can say that with some certainty because I was trying to get the type of information I needed and couldn’t find it till she responded to me in the forums.
It’s well worth it, at least from where I sit.
How does this fit in with what I do?
I’ll still be blogging here at FundraisingCoach.com and sending out my free bi-weekly email. I’ll still be doing fundraising training and keynote & conference speaking.
501 Mission Place is a way to offer some ideas, insights, and interaction with people who wanted to get deep in nonprofit management, fundraising, and marketing. I will be sharing information that I simply can’t get into in a blog post. And, more importantly, all of us will be helping each other with real life questions as they come up. That’s what makes it so exciting!
501 Mission Place is a safe place for nonprofit leaders, executive directors, and charity founders. A place they can let their hair down and ask the questions they might not feel comfortable asking their board or boss. And a place where we all can grow the amazing potential of ourselves and our organizations.
As Chris Brogan said in his announcement today:
Our goal is to grow 501 Mission Place into a community of practitioners and helpful specialists. There are many great nonprofit projects and communities out there, and we hope you belong to more than one. Ours, we hope, is a way to practice and learn throughout the year. The cost is about the same as buying one new hardcover book a month, or viewed annually, the same as the ticket cost of a conference. So, skip the airfare, hotel, and time out of work, and get 365 days of conference content and hallway conversations. It works for you all year long. Oh, and we answer your questions, instead of just giving you notes to write down.
As Chris said, at a cost of $27/month, twelve months of membership is about the cost of registering for an annual conference. Like a conference, we have interviews and seminars from incredible speakers and terrific hallway conversations. But rather than taking down notes and leaving them in a binder on a shelf in your office, we’ll all be helping you strategize everything from HR to fundraising, from board management to using social media in marketing.
There are even categories for at least ten cause related affinities: health, arts, environmental, poverty, crisis relief, faith-based, among them. You can connect by geography and meet up if you’re near each other.
So come on over to 501 Mission Place. I hope to see you inside!
