Calling All Leadership Volunteers!
Do you serve on a nonprofit Board of Directors, or would you like to?
Do you have questions about what is expected of you?
The City of Bloomington Volunteer Network is pleased to announce the launch of the Nonprofit Board Certificate Program. This certificate will be offered to individuals who complete a ½ day seminar consisting of four one-hour sessions. These sessions cover the regulations, legal responsibilities, financial and fundraising obligations, and ongoing activities involved in serving as a member of the Board of Directors of a nonprofit organization in Indiana. Each of the four sessions includes opportunities for discussion as well as hands-on workshop activities.
Nonprofit Board Certificate Program
Date: Thursday, Oct. 20 from 1-5 p.m.
Cost: $25 per person
Location: Council Chambers of City Hall (8th and Morton St. Bloomington)
To register: Go to www.bloomington.in.gov/volunteer
Mail payment to: City of Bloomington Volunteer Network PO Box 100 Bloomington IN 47402
If you have questions or need an invoice: Contact Bet Savich, Director, City of Bloomington Volunteer Network at 812-349-3472 or volunteer@bloomington.in.gov
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Benefits to businesses of their employees joining nonprofit boards:
- Nonprofit boards provide a learning environment to cultivate leaders, including the ability to think and act more strategically. These skills will transfer back to your work place.
- your business or corporation’s name will be extended out into the community through professional networking
- employee morale, retention and recruitment will be enhanced by the opportunity for board service
- your employees will contribute critical business expertise to a local nonprofit organization which also contributes to both the quality of life and the economy. These skills include finance, mergers, public relations, human resources, law, real estate, accounting, and other core areas.
- In addition to the practical skills which your employees contribute, they will also focus their time and attention on the organization’s mission and vision, and how to achieve it. This will carry over to their thinking about your business.
The Volunteer Network’s Purpose in bringing this training to the community:
- To provide individuals from businesses, from the professions, and from the general community who currently serve or are considering serving as volunteer members of a nonprofit board of directors with a strong grounding in the roles and responsibilities involved with such service.
- To provide interested nonprofit organizations with an excellent resource for potential new volunteer board members – individuals that have demonstrated interest in nonprofit board service as well as the knowledge needed to be an effective board member
- To strengthen and transform the Monroe County nonprofit landscape by elevating the performance of its governance teams.
The program will answer questions such as:
- How do I find out what will be expected of me?
- What should I expect from the organization?
- What are my financial and legal responsibilities?
- What authority do I have – and do others have?
- Will I have to raise money? If so, how do I go about it?
- What questions should I be asking if I’m asked to serve on a nonprofit’s board?
- How can I make a significant and positive impact on the organization – and on our community?
Requirements:
- Completion of the four hour Nonprofit Board Certificate Program
- Completion of an “Areas of Nonprofit Board Interest” questionnaire (given during final session)
Each individual who completes the program may opt to be included on a list available to organizations which are actively seeking board members. After 12 months, individuals who wish to continue to be listed must participate in a free one-hour workshop which provides updated information on nonprofit regulations, the opportunity to share board experiences and the opportunity to update your questionnaire.
This program is supported by the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Bloomington Monroe County Alumni Association, NonProfit Alliance of Monroe County, and United Way of Monroe County.
Elizabeth D. Savich, Director
City of Bloomington Volunteer Network
volunteer@bloomington.in.gov
What the Heck is the Durbin Amendment…and how does it affect my business?
Joe Willett, Bloomington Area representative with Chamber member Infintech, helps to answer some questions that local business owners may have surrounding the Durbin Amendment. Although this amendment is supposed to lower fees on debit/check card transactions – there’s still a question:
Will Your Business Get 100% of the Federally Mandated Debit Card Fee Reduction?
Let’s hear from Joe:
You may have recently heard about the passing of the Durbin Amendment through Congress. The Federal Reserve recently issued its final ruling on interchange, or swipe fees on debit card transactions. In a nutshell, this amendment will force the banks to lower interchange fees on Visa & MasterCard debit/check card transactions to near nothing, but not every merchant accepting Debit Card transactions will benefit from this historic interchange fee reduction.
What’s an Interchange Fee?
An interchange fee is the charge assessed on a merchant every time you swipe your debit or credit card. The fee varies widely, depending on the card and the merchant, and is levied to offset the cost of fraud prevention and processing the transaction. Fraudulent charges on a debit card are relatively small, so they command lower swipe fees; signature cards have the largest swipe fees, since they often have the highest credit limits.
What does this amendment mean for consumers?
Banks have already factored in the loss of interchange revenue, and many are levying new fees on checking accounts, raising minimum balance requirements, and ending debit rewards programs. Credit card swipe fees account for 65 percent of the total interchange costs, so the savings from debit swipe fees are unlikely to be noticeable for consumers.
Although this law, effective October 1, is going to reduce the cost to process debit/check cards, it does not necessarily mean that savings will be passed to you as a merchant. Many processors will be the only recipient of these margins, and whether the merchant pockets the savings or if the credit card processor pockets the savings will be determined largely on the type of pricing model the credit card processor has a particular merchant set up on.
The Chamber invites you to learn more:
To learn the facts about how the Durbin Amendment will impact your business’ bottom line, register online for a no charge webinars that Infintech is hosting that will help guide you through the complicated process of understanding the Durbin Amendment and its possible impact on your business.
Wed, Sep 21, 2011 9:00 AM – 9:30 AM EDT
To speak directly with the Bloomington Area Infintech Representative, Joe Willett, please call 812-568-6397 or email Joe at joe.willett@infintechllc.com
“Protecting a Community’s Brand” by Jim Walton
How would a secret shopper respond?
The other day, I was reading an article on a newspaper web site and, as is often the case, it offered an opportunity for readers to voice an opinion about the article. I have mixed feelings about such forums. Some of the responders offer positive or constructive comments while a few others are folks who just love to stir the pot with negativity. You know them, they’re Cavemen. Citizens Against Virtually Everything. They’re never happy and they want the world to know it.
I was having coffee recently with a site selection consultant friend and asked him if he ever looks at such forums while in the process of evaluating communities for prospective jobs projects. “I sure do,” he said, “and I sometimes find alarming information.”
He told me that once he has narrowed his list of communities to a handful, maybe three to five, he’ll visit media web sites, looking for stories or forums that might reveal issues that could present challenges to his client. He said he will also listen to streaming television or radio broadcasts to hear which issues are being discussed. “Election seasons can be very revealing,” he said, “all of the dirt is in plain sight.”
He also said that he’ll go to the city or county web site and read the minutes of council meetings. In addition to learning how elected officials handle incentives and other issues, he finds out how they interact with the business community and one another. Do they work together in a positive, community-building manner or do the minutes reveal a tone of incivility that he might choose to avoid? In these days of internet connectivity, your community’s brand reputation is out there for the world, including prospective employers, to see.
Secret shopper site visits
Have you heard of secret shoppers? That’s when a company hires someone to go into a retail establishment, posing as a customer, in order to report back about their experience. Were the employees friendly and helpful or were they rude? Did they offer assistance or were you ignored? How was the food?
Site selection consultants, under contract to find a new home for a prospective employer, sometimes do the same thing. Without the knowledge of the economic developer or elected officials, a person or team of people will show up, blend in, and observe. They’ll eat in your restaurants, stay in your hotels, visit your retail establishments, and interact with your citizens. Are they polite, friendly, and positive about the community or just the opposite?
A site selection consultant once told me about a secret shopper visit when he asked a young man, “What’s the one thing I should see while I’m here?” Without hesitation, the young man said, “The town in your rear view mirror.” Ouch!
While on a secret shopper mission, the team will report on any number of things, such as road conditions, your industrial park, schools, community entryways, the downtown area, and much, much more. Based on their findings, your community can advance to the next level of consideration or be cut from the list if they don’t like what they see and hear. And, here’s the shocker, you may never know they were there.
I’ve often thought there was an opportunity for a Chamber of Commerce to provide a program to inform retail members about how they impact such visitors.
So, who is responsible for a community’s brand? Everyone! It’s not just the job of the county council, the Mayor, or the economic developer. The hotel clerk, waitress, school teacher, store owner, and any citizen can make or break a major jobs deal. When your community is in the top three of five, a site selector has already crunched the numbers and done his or her homework about the financial or workforce aspects of the deal. Any of the communities on the “short list” would work. Now, they’re looking at the little nuances, any reason to take you off the list. It doesn’t take much.
Each person in a community is a keeper of the local brand. At Brand Acceleration, we are occasionally called upon to develop a community pride campaign. Working with local leaders, we develop ways to build enthusiasm and pride in the minds of citizens. We remind them that their town, city, or county is a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family. If such an effort results in one positive comment to just the right person, it could help result in the attraction of hundreds of jobs and a thriving local economy.
As with the newspaper mentioned above, you can share your stories and opinions by clicking here to go to my blog.
Jim Walton
CEO
Brand Acceleration is a full-service advertising, brand management and public relations firm operating from Indianapolis, Indiana and Charlotte, North Carolina. The agency’s focus is on economic development, architecture/engineering/construction and real estate.
Business Leaders Lose Six to Nine Hours to Disorganization
Express Employment Professionals’ recent hiring trends survey of more than 18,000 business leaders brought to light some interesting statistics about time management. The survey confirmed what many in business have struggled with for years; there isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything.
The survey found that 31 percent of leaders did not consider a lack of time in their day an issue in their roles. For the other leaders in business, the survey revealed some telling information about what causes the lost time and how it can cost companies money. More than half of those surveyed said they lose nine work hours a week due to a lack of organization and 57 percent said they lose six work hours a week because of a lack of time due to disorganization.
Disorganization not only hurts deadlines, projects, and leadership accountability, but can cost companies money in lost hours and missed business opportunities. According to the survey, disorganized employees who earn $50,000 a year can cost companies an estimated $11,000 a year in lost hours. Whether it’s office and desk clutter or a flood of unorganized emails every day, lack of time management can hurt the entire company.
But, the affects of this lost time are not only contained at the workplace. In a 2009 survey conducted by AOL, 62 percent of at-work email users check their work email over the weekend, and 50 percent check it while on vacation. This trend can lead to stress in workers’ lives which can cause more strain and distraction while they are at work. Taking work home leads to health problems as well. In a 2008 Health of Financial Advisors report, 63 percent of the respondents who said they lacked time management skills, also experienced health issues including sleep apnea and high blood pressure.
In the hiring trends survey, 55 percent of those surveyed said their company did not provide training on managing increased workloads. As a company leader, it’s important to take action by holding a class and providing resources for employees to learn from so they become more productive and happier in their careers. As new employees join the organization, provide materials on time management expectations of the job and check back with them to make sure they’re meeting those expectations.
Stress and worry do not have to be the status quo at your organization, and the cost of letting them become part of your culture is too great to let disorganization continue. At Express, we can help your company manage the work overload by meeting human resources needs through flexible staffing, evaluation hire, and a toll-free HR hotline. We can also provide knowledge-based training programs to help your employees stay engaged and learn valuable time management techniques.
For More Information:
Tim Tucker, franchise owner
Express Employment Professionals
1907 S. Walnut St.
Bloomington, IN 47403
(812) 333-6210
Tim.tucker@expresspros.com
Building Employee Morale Takes the Entire Team
Henry Ford, founder of the century old Ford Motor Company, once said “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” Ford was a great achiever because he realized the power of teamwork, where people working together can accomplish goals that would have been impossible to attain alone.
Teamwork is the key to building company morale. Working as a team not only helps employees work toward a common goal; it also fosters an environment where co-workers respect one another and function well together. Creating great working relationships will help streamline processes and boost productivity.
According to an Express Employment Professionals survey of 15,000 current and former clients, less than 30 percent of businesses are currently offering team building activities to boost morale.
In any business, making sure that employees work well together is essential as it makes for both a happier environment and a more profitable company. Employees who feel they are part of a team tend to provide quality work at a faster pace. What can you do to better build up your team?
Make Every Individual Feel Like an Important and Contributing Member of the Team:
- Appoint a team leader to oversee the progress and to keep everyone motivated to finish a project on time.
- Assign jobs according to each team member’s strengths for the highest level of success possible.
- Praise team members for a job well done. Acknowledge each person’s hard work and dedication and be sure to pass along any positive feedback from clients or upper level management. “Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal,” said Patrick Lencioni, author, leadership expert, and president of The Table Group.
Teambuilding Activities and Ideas:
Here are some easy tips to implement teambuilding ideas that numerous successful companies have put into practice.
- Recognize each team member’s birthday by either a card signed by everyone, a birthday cake, group gift, or simply singing Happy Birthday together.
- Volunteer for charity work as a team. Your team could raise money for a cause, run a 5K for a charity, or volunteer at the local homeless shelter serving lunch.
- Go out to lunch together at least once a month to help build camaraderie.
- Set up a team rewards system. If your team completes a project successfully, consider giving them a “jeans day,” bringing breakfast one morning, letting them leave an hour early one Friday, or giving out gift cards as a way to reward the team for working together.
- Bring in a teambuilding expert to conduct a day-long session/seminar with your team.
- Form a morale booster committee to plan yearly events such as company picnics and BBQs, company softball games, a potluck or Easter egg hunt — anything to get the company employees together to have fun and get to know each other.
Almost 40 percent of clients surveyed by Express felt that the lack of morale was from feeling unappreciated — something that can be an easy fix in most businesses. Remember, by doing team building activities, rewarding progress, and developing work relationships, businesses can make employees feel appreciated and in turn, build a more successful, productive, and happy workforce.
Overall, team building will boost office morale, and morale in the workplace is critical to the success of any organization.
For More Information:
Tim Tucker, franchisee
Express Employment Professionals
Tim.tucker@expresspros.com
Back to Basics: How Your Leadership Style Can Fit Any Team
The following is a guest blog from Tim Tucker, a Chamber member and franchise owner of Express Employment Professionals. All of the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely Tim Tucker’s and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. To submit a guest blog e-mail DeJohn Rose for more information.
Employees often have similar objectives: career growth, fulfillment, getting the job done. But achieving optimal results in a way that’s agreeable to everyone can be a major challenge. Goals may align, but their successful completion is partially determined by the day-to-day interactions that form individual leadership styles.
What makes a leader?
You’ve heard the saying that leaders are born, not made, but that’s only partially true. Integrity and intuition may be inherent, but people skills are sharpened through experience.
Establishing trust, resolving conflict, and being an effective listener are just a few of the many traits that can be developed through time and teambuilding. While some people’s skill sets are simply better suited for dealing with certain challenges, being able to handle diverse situations and personalities is part of most job descriptions.
Identifying your leadership style and understanding its strengths and weaknesses can help you decide what’s working and what needs improvement.
What’s your leadership style?
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) identifies three common styles: authoritarian, democratic, delegative. Beyond employee productivity, these varied approaches affect workplace ambience and morale.
Authoritarian
Strengths: Organization is the main skill of the authoritarian leader. His or her priorities are clear and employees are fully informed of expectations. These leaders work best with passive co-workers.
Weaknesses: Authoritarian leaders can be seen as micromanagers instead of team players. Neglecting to seek feedback and collaborate in a personable way can isolate peers and conflict tends to arise with differing opinions.
Democratic
Strengths: Communication and creativity are this leader’s strengths. The democratic leader wants to hear others’ perspectives and welcomes a variety of solutions. Their sense of priority allows them to focus on the details without losing sight of the main objective.
Weaknesses: Decision-making is sometimes problematic for the democratic leader. Too many viewpoints, heightened by a desire to please all parties, can complicate the process. Impartiality may also waiver as the employee becomes more emotionally connected to individual co-workers.
Delegative
Strengths: Delegative leaders instill confidence by allowing others to manage their respective tasks with minimal input. Their leniency allows for creativity and work best with those that are highly motivated.
Weaknesses: Priorities sometimes seem unclear to others, as the delegative leader is often more focused on the big picture than the details of how to accomplish it. The tendency to shirk from responsibility sometimes gives co-workers the impression that they are “on their own.” Delegative leaders can seem disengaged, which contributes to a sense of chaos.
Back to basics
Managing employees is a process unique to every organization and its corporate culture, but here are some guidelines to keep in mind:
- Be flexible: Capitalize on your strengths, but be aware of others’ needs. Although you should strive to be consistent, tailor your approach in response to each employee and his or her personality.
- Focus on the person, not the issue: Respect is the foundation of every great relationship. No matter what your management style, basic civility is always imperative. Remember that every employee is a human who deserves your respect; you are working with someone’s wife, father, daughter, or friend.
- Find out what motivates your co-workers: Show genuine interest. Find out what they’re seeking in their current position and do what you can to facilitate their goals, whether you’re a supervisor or a peer.
Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your leadership style will help your team achieve optimal results. True leaders recognize that communication is a two-way street. Seek dialogue with the people around you to find out what’s working and what you can improve. Ask for pointers from a mentor and accept that all change takes time. Work on issues gradually to become the leader your team trusts.
Getting Back in the Job Market
The following is a guest blog from Tim Tucker, a Chamber member and franchise owner of Express Employment Professionals. All of the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely Tim Tucker’s and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. To submit a guest blog e-mail DeJohn Rose for more information.
There’s no time like the present to lay the groundwork, start networking, and update your résumé to get back in the job market.
Research indicates that hiring trends are on the upswing. A national hiring trends survey of employers conducted by Express Employment Professionals shows commercial and clerical positions will likely see continued hiring increases for the third quarter. Express surveyed 10,181 current and former clients across the company’s more than 550 locations in the United States and Canada. Thirty-four percent of respondents plan to hire full-time light industrial positions in the third quarter, while 28% plan to hire for administrative positions. The survey also reveals that 13% of respondents plan to hire for engineering positions and 11% plan to hire for information technology positions.
According to CareerBuilder and USA Today’s latest nationwide survey of employers, 41% of hiring managers plan to hire between July and December. One in five managers plan to hire full-time employees in the third quarter. The survey showed that employers are primarily focused on recruiting for customer service, sales, and information technology positions. Read more
Social Media, Scotty Wise, and his Brewhouse
The following is a guest blog from Scott Wise, a Chamber member and owner of Scotty’s Brewhouse. All of the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely Scott Wise’s and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. To submit a guest blog e-mail DeJohn Rose for more information.
Since opening the first Scotty’s Brewhouse in Muncie in 1996, I have experienced the highs and lows of the restaurant business. After the initial success of Scotty’s, I opened a fine dining restaurant in 1998, where I lost nearly a million dollars in three years. Needless to say that was one of my low points, but I think I learned more from that failed venture than I’ve learned from any of my successes. When we closed that restaurant down, we opened our Bloomington Scotty’s Brewhouse location in 2001. West Lafayette opened in 2004 and the northside Indianapolis (96th Street) location opened in 2007. We opened our downtown Indianapolis location (at Virginia & Pennsylvania Streets) in 2009. Scotty’s Lakehouse just opened this summer and we’ll be opening our Brewpub, Three Wise Men Brewing Company in Broad Ripple in late 2010. We also have a project we are planning to launch in 2011 in Fort Wayne. We’re looking to locate in left field of Parkview Field, home of the Minor League Fort Wayne TinCaps.
A big part of our recent success and expansion, despite the down economy, can be attributed to our presence on social networking websites. A year and a half ago, when the economy crashed, we were looking for ways to cut costs without laying employees off. At the same time social media was really taking off, so we eliminated every single piece of outside advertising, no print, no radio, no other types of traditional media, and shifted our focus to e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. In the past, we would spend about $250,000 each year in football ads, newspaper, and radio during Christmas time to promote gift cards. We eliminated all of that.
I realized that without a marketing budget, my use of social media was the only way to get our message out. You can’t walk into a business and say, “If you spend $500 on this ad, I can promise you that you’ll generate X amount of dollars back”, that’s why marketers rely on impressions and views and all of those similar metrics. The reason that social media has been so successful and the reason I jumped on board was not just because I had to, but I felt that the world had already shifted over to social media. Recently I gave a talk to a young professionals group in Muncie about social media and I asked the attendees to raise their hand if they subscribed to the newspaper. Of the 50 people I was talking to, only 2 raised their hand. Then I asked them to raise their hands if they had a Facebook account. Every single person raised their hand. I said “You guys just made the point for me – I could leave right now and this would be a successful talk”. The world changes and you have to change along with it. Read more
Print: The Original Wireless Communication
The following is a guest blog from a Chamber member. In no way does it represent the views or opinions of The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. To submit a guest blog e-mail drose@chamberbloomington.org for more information.
For many years, the paper industry has been criticized with environmental claims of deforestation, excessive energy consumption, and crowding landfills. The exact opposite couldn’t be truer. Paper from today’s world comes from renewable resources. It not only is recyclable and biodegradable, but paper is even responsible.
Misleading claims of deforestation has generated a negative image for paper and aided the digital age into an up-roaring. Paper is composed of cellulose fibers, generally coming from trees, but that should not automatically mean they are destroying the forests of our world. It is in the paper manufacturers’ best interest to ensure sustainability for the longevity of their business. In fact, did you know according to the USDA Forest Service four million trees are planted daily in the United States? Of that, 1.7 million trees are planted by the paper and wood products industry. Once trees are harvested, the sustainable forestry practices ensure several more trees are planted, or regenerated naturally in their place. Read more