When I do a free consultation with a group, I always try to make sure I am leaving them with something of value, some new tool or insight they can use whether we decide to move forward working together or not. I want you to have that experience on this website too. Below you’ll find links to some of the tools I’ve created working with groups. I hope you’ll find something that’s useful to you right now.
I will be adding more tools as I develop them, and if you are a subscriber to my quarterly newsletter, Different Angles, you’ll hear about them, and get a preview, as they go up.
Tools for Getting Unstuck
Are you feeling stuck? Try out these two free tools:
Tools and Resources for Organizational Development
I have developed many tools in my workshops and facilitation. This page gives you access to some of the most useful templates, processes and forms I have created. Feel free to use them, and to pass these on to others you think might find them useful. If you do so, I ask that you ensure that my contact information stays attached (it is in the footer of each document). Thanks.
Tools, sorted by topic:
You may find you want to modify the templates and tools to make them fit your specific needs. The files currently available here are pdfs, which cannot be edited. (You will need Adobe Reader to read these files. Download it free at www.get.adobe.com/reader/.) I am working on making these available in an editable format here, but in the meanwhile, if you would like a copy you can edit, please contact me.
Resources on Whiteness and Systemic Racism
This page is largely resources on Whiteness and Systemic Racism, with a few on gender and class (to be expanded).
Other Resources
Here are links to some other key resources for nonprofits, some of which are also useful for other community-focused organizations/agencies.
- www.seedsforchange.org.uk/free/resources: Excellent, practical how-to articles on consensus decision-making, meeting facilitation and many other useful topics.
- www.nonprofitsteward.org: The Center for Nonprofit Stewardship offers excellent conferences and training events, and is now expanding to include on-line training, 10 minute board exercises, and other web-based resources.
- www.nonprofitoregon.org/helpline_resources: The Nonprofit Association of Oregon (formerly TACS). Provides technical assistance and training and offers the Oregon Nonprofit Handbook, the best such handbook I have ever encountered and useful for organizations nationwide.
- www.blueavocado.org: Excellent e-newsletter and other resources to support nonprofit boards.
My favorite books for organizations are:
- The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner and some of his colleagues. This is book is insightful, straightforward, and full of excellent, practical tools and illustrations.
- Emergent Strategy and Holding Change, by adrienne marie brown. These books offer powerful frameworks and some excellent tools (especially the later) for facilitation, rooted in brown’s thinking about how we can move together toward a more inclusive and just world.
- Words That Work In Business: a practical guide to effective communication in the workplace by Ike Lassater. Nonviolent (Compassionate) Communication (NVC) is a model for communicating in ways that significantly increase the odds that your needs, and everybody else’s, will get met. Much of my approach to building mutual respect and trust is built on NVC’s way of looking at how people do, and could, interact. This is the best book I’ve found for applying NVC in the workplace.
