The Cook Family Foundation has relocated to the second floor of the Exchange Building in downtown Owosso. The address of the new office is 120 W Exchange, Suite #202. However, our mailing address remains PO Box 278, Owosso, MI 48867. Our other contact information has not changed. You can find all our information, as well as parking suggestions, on our “Contact Us” page.
We are still settling in to our new space, but we would love to have you stop in and say hello.
Our addition to the NonProfit Capacity Building Program, “Tech Talk” networking has been a great success. We’re now approaching our fifth meeting–but it’s not too late to join in! If you’d like to be a part of it and haven’t yet signed up, reply to this post or Tweet us @ShiaNPCB or @awolber
The tech group will meet again on July 23rd at 10:30 a.m. at the DeVries Nature Conservancy (2635 N M 52, Owosso, MI 48867) where we’ll focus on Solving Problems Together.
Solve Problems Together by Andy Wolber (@awolber)
Collaborative tools hold much promise.
They let us work differently. A shared document simplifies collaboration. For example, consider how a shared agenda can change a meeting. Create the agenda, and share it with colleagues. One person inserts a comment. Another replies. I’ve seen a comment conversation resolve an issue days before a meeting occurs.
They let us work together. Collaborative apps let people work together. Multiple people can write words at the same time. Or tweak budget numbers. Or sort slides.
And they let us work almost anywhere. People can edit from any device, anytime, anywhere. Lots of apps offer collaborative capabilities (e.g., see the list at the end of this post.)
Yet a collaborative tool won’t improve the quality or quantity of your ideas. The tools help, but much hard work remains. We tend to forget the following steps when we’re dazzled by new tools.
1. Think
Before you engage with other people, think for yourself. Can you concisely express in words or an illustration the problem you seek to solve?
The question often frames the answer. “How do we reduce our expenses?” prompts different thinking than “How we we increase revenue?” even though both attempt to solve a budget imbalance. “How do we eliminate hunger?” points to different solutions than “How do we make sure every child in Shiawassee County receives enough healthy food?”
If you’re stuck, explore the provocations of creativity authors such as Roger Von Oech, Edward DeBono, or Michael Michalko.
2. Create
Consider the most effective way to express your idea. Funders expect us to use words and numbers: we “write a grant application” (words) with a “detailed budget” (numbers).
Sometimes, we also use images, sounds, or video. We turn numbers into pictures: we portray the problem, such as a graph that indicates an increase in poverty. Or a chart that conveys our organization’s impact, such as the percentage of people in the community we serve. We show pictures, such as “before” and “after” images of a site that volunteers cleaned up. We produce a video to convey the emotional impact our organization had on someone we helped.
3. Share
Tools help the most here: we can make our work visible to others with a quick tap (or click) of a “Share” or “Publish” button. Share to small groups of people to obtain comments. Share to the world when you want everyone to know.
Tools mean that meetings may occur differently. A meeting doesn’t have to be a sequence of extroverted individuals who talk. Even something as simple as a shared spreadsheet might allow anyone in the meeting to add an idea anytime without the need to interrupt or write on a flip chart.
We choose the terms by which others may use our publicly shared work. Choose a Creative Commons license to allow other people to reuse, modify, or adapt your work. Or not. It’s up to you. (As an organization, you might choose to license your work with specific terms. Watch a video to learn more.)
4. Comment
The heart of collaboration lives inside an effective comment. An English translation of a Buddhist document captures the essence of an effective comment: “It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoke with a mind of goodwill.”
Think back to the most recent workrelated meeting you attended. How does your speech measure up to each of the five characteristics above?
Collaborative tools let us share items easily. But the real, hard work of collaboration requires us to think, to create, and to comment to the best of our ability. We all have the opportunity to improve.
*A few collaborative apps…
Google Apps leads the collaborative office suite field. In tech terms: Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides all allow multiperson, simultaneous, realtime, crossplatform edits. Microsoft’s added some of these collaborative capabilities to Office 365, and will add more with the launch of Office 2016. Quip integrates mobile messaging with documents and spreadsheets.
Many tools offer multiperson and multidevice collaboration. These tools help you:
Explore GrantCraft’s Harnessing Collaborative Technologies site (http://collaboration.grantcraft.org/) for more tools and ideas.
Twenty-six of the academic leaders and best from the Shiawassee County region are headed to the University of Michigan next fall with scholarships from the Cook Family Foundation. Among those recognized on May 12 by UM President Mark Schlissel was Laingsburg senior Nicholas Miller, this year’s recipient of the Bruce and Jacqueline Cook Scholarship. He is the ninth winner of this full tuition scholarship provided by the two alumni of the University.
Nick Miller is a National Merit Scholarship commended student with a 3.96 grade point average. He is captain of the Laingsburg quiz bowl team and science olympiad team. An avid band member, Nick is a section leader as well as a trumpet soloist in the the jazz band. His career plan is to study epidemiology at Michigan leading to graduate study in public health.
In remarks as part of the scholarship recognition dinner, President Mark Schlissel stressed that the University of Michigan is a public university with a goal of serving academically talented students from throughout the state. He noted the strong scholarship and financial aid support the University gives to make UM the most affordable public university in the state. He also thanked alumni like Bruce and Jackie Cook for their support, and urged recent alumni to be advocates and recruit talented students to the University.
The Cook Family Foundation was formed in 1978 and provided one scholarship that year to the University of Michigan. The Foundation now offers a scholarship to all high school students from the Shiawassee region who are admitted to UM. More than 500 scholarships have been granted. The Bruce and Jacqueline Scholarship is funded separately from the Foundation.
This year’s recipients of scholarship to the University of Michigan include from Byron: Brianna Wells; from Chesaning: Trevor Andrews, Tori Turpin; from Corunna: Larissa Robinson-Cooper, Cassidy Schnepp, Scott Feldpausch; from Durand: Tristan Blackledge, Lucas Schaeffer; from Lainsgsburg: Kurt McEwan, Nicholas Miller, Antonia Vrana, Clayton Zimmerman; from New Lothrop: Spencer Wendling, Roen Wheeler; from Owosso: Brittney Crawford, Abigail Edwards, Thomas Horak, Joseph Jafri, Jordan Sowash; from Ovid-Elsie: Elizabeth Bisson, Gordon Johnson; and from Perry: Jordan Depew, Amelia Feuka, Marissa Frent, Brett Ivey, Miranda Lewis
You can learn more about the Foundation’s scholarships on the website’s scholarship tab
New University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel will be coming to Owosso on May 12 to congratulate new students from the Shiawassee area who are attending the University in the fall of 2015. The dinner and reception is hosted by the Cook Family Foundation, which provides a scholarship to every local high school graduate who attends the University of Michigan.
Dr. Mark Schlissel, was named the 14th President of the University of Michigan on July 1, 2014. He is the first physician-scientist to lead the University. He has stated a commitment to increase the opportunities for rural students from throughout the state to attend the University. The visit to Owosso is part of this effort.
The Cook Family Foundation, established by the late Donald Cook, a 1924 UM graduate, has provided more than 400 scholarships to the University of Michigan for graduates from Byron, Chesaning, Corunna, Durand, Laingsburg, Morrice, New Lothrop, Owosso, Ovid-Elsie, and Perry high schools. This year, students from all these local schools will be recognized, along with their parents.
One of the highlights of the evening will be the introduction of this year’s recipient of the four-year, full-tuition Bruce and Jacqueline Cook Scholarship.
The dinner will be held at the Baker College Welcome Center in on Tuesday, May 12 2015 beginning at 5:30 p.m. All scholarship recipients and family members are honored guests. Current students at the University are also welcome to attend; please contact [email protected] Alumni of the University, educators, and others with an interest are invited to attend. Cost of the event is $20. For more information, please call 989-725-1621. RSVPs are requested by May 5.
The Cook Family Foundation’s spring newsletter just hit mailboxes (let us know if you want to be added to the mailing list) and is available on our website (click here). The cover story is about our support for the Respite Volunteers of Shiawassee which serves Shiawassee County adults with persistent health needs and their families–giving them the precious gift of their time to help those in need.
Inside the newsletter you will find information about our five main funding priorities for 2015, and our annual report where we recap the grants we made in 2014. In the last five years, the foundation has made grants totaling in excess of 2.5 million dollars in five primary areas as depicted in the chart below:
If you haven’t had the chance previously, you may want to look around our website as well. In our “About” section, you can find a video that gives the history of our founders, Don and Florence-etta Cook, as well as contact information. Check out the “Nonprofit Capacity Building Program” section for details on upcoming educational opportunities, how to get support for local organizations, and to read our thoughts on collaborative efforts to improve the community.
Our addition to the NonProfit Capacity Building Program, “Tech Talk” networking has been a great success. We’re now approaching our fourth meeting–but it’s not too late to join in! If you’d like to be a part of it and haven’t yet signed up, reply to this post, or Tweet us @ShiaNPCB or @awolber
The tech group will meet again on April 14, 2015 at The Arc Shiawassee (1905 West M-21, Owosso, MI) where we’ll focus on Enough Technology for your Nonprofit.
Enough Technology for your Nonprofit by Andy Wolber (@awolber)
The more time and money you spend on technology, the less you have available to help people. Spend too much, and you’ll waste time with trendy tools that serve no mission-related purpose. Spend too little, and you’ll lack the systems you need to serve people efficiently or effectively, much less improve or innovate.
You need enough technology to fulfill your organization’s purpose. But “enough technology” varies from organization to organization. For some organizations, like a hospital, technology must work. Lives depend on it. In other organizations, technology reduces the time dedicated to tedious tasks.
How much technology is enough? You need to arrive at an answer appropriate to your organization. Your team, your culture, your purpose, and the tools you already use will inform your decisions. (Competitors and laws might affect your choices, too.) A tech expert can identify tools, but you need to choose what works for you.
The following items may help you think about your organization’s technology a bit differently, so that you — and your team — may choose what constitutes “enough”.
Internet
You need a sufficiently reliable and fast internet connection for your team and guests. Check your connection speed at Speedtest.net, or with the Android or Apple mobile app. If the speed exceeds 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up, your connection qualifies as broadband, according to the FCC (as of early 2015).
You need enough bandwidth to support your organization’s use of the internet. Available bandwidth decreases as usage increases. Video conferencing, for example, requires a fast connection. Start a Google Hangout with 10 people, and you’ll need about 4 Mbps down and 2.6 Mbps up.
Three other factors affect your internet speed:
Think of these items as a series of pipes: the slowest pipe limits the bandwidth. Improve the slowest of the three to increase performance. If you adjust device settings you can often improve performance. But settings tweaks won’t overcome hardware limits: you might need new equipment.
Devices
You need enough sufficiently powerful devices to accomplish your tasks. Buy the fastest, most powerful new device to handle challenging tasks. Buy an older model to accomplish basic tasks and save a bit of money. Stop using a device when the manufacturer no longer updates or supports the device’s operating system (or firmware).
Replace devices on a regular schedule, so you’re not stuck with a lot of old equipment you need to replace all at once. Broadly speaking, replace desktops every 5 years, laptops every 3 to 4 years, tablets every 2 to 3 years, and phones every 2 years. For devices that people will use daily, buy new, not used, to minimize reliability and support worries.
Applications
Applications need to be available, collaborative, and connected enough.
Your applications should work on whatever systems you — and your team — use. Often, I suggest people choose applications that work on the web (in a browser), on Android devices, and on Apple mobile devices. In addition to staff, people outside the core team, such as board members and/or volunteers, may benefit from access to applications.
Multi-person, shared access should be possible, too. To create a grant request, for example, your team should be able to login and edit a single shared document or spreadsheet. (Note: don’t share logins; that presents a security risk and may violate a site’s terms of service.)
Applications should be connected enough that you don’t need to retype or reformat data. When a person donates are the gift details entered once or many times? When a person you serve changes their address, email, or phone number, how many places do you have to change it? Ideally, one would be enough.
Your team should be very clear which app should be used for each task. Alternatives abound. People who use Apple devices might prefer Pages. People who use Android devices might prefer Google Docs. People who use Microsoft devices might prefer Microsoft Word. Work with the team to establish acceptable practices.
Data
Your data needs to be accessible enough and safe enough. These goals may be in direct opposition to each other. To maximize security, your data would never be on any system connected to the internet. To maximize access to data, you store your data online. You’ll need to seek a middle-way that keeps your data both safe enough and accessible enough.
Finally, your data should be backed up. Your backup system should copy your data automatically, and store your data in a different place than the original, such as another office or a data center.
Your choices
Past choices produced the connectivity, devices, applications and data in your organization today. What changes might you make? Do you and your team have enough technology to serve your organization’s purpose?
You may have already heard about a recent addition to the NonProfit Capacity Building Program, “Tech Talk” networking. It began in December 2014–but it’s not too late to join in! If you’d like to be a part of it and haven’t yet signed up, reply to this post, or Tweet us @ShiaNPCB or @awolber
The tech group will meet again on March 3, 2015 at the Shiawassee Arts Center (206 Curwood Castle Drive, Owosso, MI) where we’ll focus on Building Your Org Online.
Build your org online: Site + Social + Stats by Andy Wolber (@awolber)
Step outside for a moment. Turn around. Look at your organization’s offices.
Is the location convenient for the people you serve? Do the people you serve find your organization’s presence appealing? Does it support the organization’s purpose? What can you change to make it better, easier, or more convenient? How many people do you help as a result?
Even better: ask the people you serve these questions. The answers should inform where — and how — you engage physically.
Pull out your phone (or laptop). Search for your organization. Explore the results. Ask the same questions as above. The answers should inform where — and how — you engage digitally.
Unlike the people you help at your physical office, you might not see the people you serve digitally. You need to seek stats — from the web and social media — to make these virtual people visible.
Online engagement often consists of three things: a site, plus social media, informed by stats. Here are a few ideas to consider as you build your organization to connect with people online.
Site: facts, stories & actions
Make it easy to find all the important facts about your organization on your site. Your event calendar, your programs, your address, your budget, your board, your donors, your staff, your mission, your history, your 990… you get the idea. (See a sample website content checklist here.) Use a content management system to share these facts without worrying about the form.
Showcase stories that demonstrate your organization’s work. Make sure that people can see, hear, or read every page of your site on a phone, tablet, or laptop. Build your team — and web tools — so that multiple people involved with the organization know how to create and share stories with video, pictures, sound, and/or text.
Support visitor actions. Make verbs easy: let people… plan a visit, sign up to volunteer, register for an event, donate money, request help, learn how to…, etc. You might want to add a database to your website to make information about these actions easier to manage (for examples, see tools such as NationBuilder, WildApricot, MemberFindMe, or Artful.ly). These systems make it as easier for people to act and for your team to support the action.
Social: community conversations
Find, join, and participate in conversations with people who share your organization’s concerns. In the U.S., these communities often are active on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. “The Art of Listening: Social Media Toolkit for Nonprofits” may help you connect with communities that share your cause.
Use social tools to listen, learn, and discuss… not to simply post press releases. Social media lets you work out loud and show your work, both of which allow more people to be aware of your efforts.
The best conversations on social media — or your blog — might merit a new post or page on your website. (Or even an article in your newsletter, if you still print one!) Ultimately, social media is all about engaging in a conversation with people, regardless of the platform.
Stats: measured change
Numbers measure different things. For example, popularity is not the same as support. A significant increase in traffic to your site following an announcement may indicate that people care about an issue — that it is popular. A poll on your site might measure each person’s opinion on the topic. Take care not to confuse the two.
Analyze your online stats as a total system. You might use Google Analytics to understand behavior of visitors to your website, Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics to explore social media engagement, and MailChimp reports to analyze email campaigns. The whole system matters: an email link click might take a person to a Facebook post.
For advanced users, A/B testing and outcome analysis is also possible. For example, Google Content Experiments allow you to test how people respond to two different messages on a web page. Does one message prompt more people to donate than another? MailChimp’s A/B testing tool offers similar capabilities for email. Combine the two, and you can conduct rather complicated multivariate experiments. Test. Measure how people behave. See what works. Do more of that.
Site + Social + Stats = Engagement
Put all of the above together, and you’ll have a fairly complete picture of your online engagement. Don’t worry if you don’t have all the components fully mastered. Keep in mind that — much like a building improvement — an enhancement to digital engagement require people’s time, skills, and resources. Take things one step at a time: Update your website today; learn more about Twitter tomorrow.
Now, pull out your phone. Do a search for your organization — and start to improve your organization’s online engagement today.
Shiawassee Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Jeff Deason, Owosso Mayor Ben Frederick, Cook Family Foundation Executive Director Tom Cook, and Owosso Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Andrea Tuttle
The Cook Family Foundation announces a one million dollar grant opportunity for the Owosso Public Schools, contingent on voter approval of the proposed bond issue on February 24. If the community votes to upgrade its school facilities, the Foundation will provide $500,000 for equipment to outfit vocational education classrooms and $500,000 to support development and use of a pool for community use.
“We have long partnered with the community on education,” said Foundation President Bruce Cook. “We are ready and excited to now make our largest grant ever, and to make it in support of Owosso and its schools.” Last year, the Cook Family Foundation made grants totaling $583,000, and the proposed $1,000,000 grant would be above and beyond the Foundation’s usual grant-making.
The Owosso Board of Education last fall made a decision to seek voter approval for a bond proposal to provide new and renovated educational facilities for grades 6-12 and significant improvement in all school buildings. More information on the bond proposal is available from the Owosso Public Schools (click here).
“The proposed building improvements offer many ways for the schools to partner with the community,” said Owosso Schools Superintendent Dr. Andrea Tuttle. “We are excited about the opportunities created by this generous offer from the Cook Family Foundation.” The Foundation and the schools will work with local employers and business organizations to determine what equipment to install in new CTE classrooms funded by the proposal.
Partnerships will also be sought with local government and community organizations to determine how best to design and operate the existing pool as a community asset. The bond proposal would build a new regulation-sized pool that meets competition standards. The existing pool, which would be kept at a warmer temperature than an athletic pool, would then be available for community use for swim classes for youth, water aerobics for adults, and family recreational swims.
The Foundation does not take a position on any ballot measures. Bruce Cook had this to say about the millage election, “We recognize that this is an important decision by voters in the Owosso School District, and we hope that citizens take the time to give their vote the consideration it deserves. We too have given our funding decision important consideration, and believe it to be a wise investment in our community”
The Cook Family has had a long involvement with the Owosso Schools. Donald Cook, the founder of the Foundation, graduated from Owosso High School in 1920, as have members of the next three generations of the family. Two members of the Cook Family, Jackie Cook and Laurie Caszatt Cook, have served on the Owosso School Board. One of the first grants the Foundation awarded was in 1978 to make landscaping improvements at the Owosso High School, and over the years the Foundation has supported mini-grants for teachers, scholarships for students, and the development of the International Baccalaureate Programme, among other grants.
“Strong schools are critical to the future of our community, the health of its economy, and the success of our young people,” said Bruce Cook. “If the community makes a decision to invest in the Owosso Public Schools, then we want to do our part too.”
As part of the NonProfit Capacity Building Program, Tech Talk networking began in December 2014–but it’s not too late to join in! If you’d like to be a part of it and haven’t yet responded, reply to this post, or Tweet us @ShiaNPCB or @awolber
The tech group will meet again on January 27, 2015 at Safe Center (1300 North Hickory Street, Owosso, MI) where we’ll focus on security. Read through the following to learn a few ways to improve the security of your accounts and devices. If you want to improve your security setup, bring your phone and laptop to the session for some “hands-on” help.
Improve Security with 3 Apps by Andy Wolber (@awolber)
Too often, headlines proclaim “Millions of passwords stolen”. The news may cause concern. But unless you’re hacking or hiring for the compromised company, there’s not much to do after a security breach except change your password and monitor your accounts.
Yet you can improve your security with three apps: two to protect your accounts, and one to protect your device. The apps? A password manager app, a two-step authentication app, and a device remote management app.
Protect your accounts
A password manager app solves two problems: length and re-use. A password manager generates a long, random string of characters for each of your online accounts. With a password manager, you never use the same password twice. Should a site be hacked, you only need to change the password for that single account.
I use LastPass, which works on most operating systems (Windows, Linux and Mac) and with most browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer). I pay $12 per year for LastPass Premium to access LastPass on mobile devices (Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Phone). You might also consider Dashlane. (See “The best password managers for PCs, Macs, and mobile devices” by Tim Ferrill at Infoworld.com for more reviews.)
Both LastPass and Dashlane encrypt your information, then sync your passwords to their servers. This encrypted data syncs to each of your devices. Because of this, use a strong password to secure access to your password manager app.
A site that supports two-step authentication requires you to login with your username and password, then enter a six-digit number for access. You obtain the six-digit number from your phone, either from an app or a text message. Even if someone hacks your username and password, they’d still need your phone to access your account.
You need two things for two-step authentication to work: you need a phone to obtain the code, and the site needs to support two-step authentication. Facebook supports two-step authentication, for example, as do Apple, Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft. Follow the links to instructions to enable two-step authentication at each of these sites. See https://twofactorauth.org/ for a long list of others sites that support two-step authentication.
Protect your device
Apple, Google, and Microsoft all allow you to lock, locate, or erase your phone remotely. Follow the links to configure these capabilities for your Android, iOS, or Windows Phone device.
If you lose your phone, lock your device first to protect your data. Then login to your account online to locate your phone — or force it to ring, which is helpful if you’ve misplaced it nearby. As a last resort, send a signal to erase your phone the next time it connects to the network.
Similar tools protect laptops or desktops. For example, Prey protects Windows, Mac OS, and Linux systems, as well as Android and iOS devices.
Additional security
For most people, the three steps above will improve security. A few other actions help, too, though.
To ensure complete computer security, build every part of your system from scratch — and never connect it to a network. Since that’s likely not practical, then at least install and configure the apps above to make your accounts and devices more secure today.
Applying for financial aid is perhaps the most important, and most complex, task many a high school senior will undertake. To help academically talented students sort through this process, the Cook Family Foundation is holding a workshop on Monday, January 19 from 7-9 p.m. at the Baker College Welcome Center.
Mike Davis from the University of Michigan Office of Financial Aid will provide important information about qualifying for financial aid, as well as some useful tips on making college more affordable. U-M is the only public university in Michigan to cover 100 percent of demonstrated financial need of in-state students (learn more here)
While Mike Davis gives particular insight to financial aid from the University of Michigan, his presentation will be applicable no matter what four-year university a student ends up attending. The first step for any prospective college student is to fill out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), the form used by all institutions of higher learning. To qualify for financial aid from UM, students and their families will also need to complete a CSS Profile.
Students and/or their parents are invited to attend the January 19 workshop. While it is not necessary to RSVP, please contact us if you have questions (989-725-1621 or [email protected]). To keep up-to-date on financial aid, scholarships, and other UM information follow us on Twitter @GoBlueGoBruce