The Foraker Group

It is with great sadness that we offer our deepest condolences to Congresswoman Peltola and her family. We mourn the loss of Gene Peltola — an esteemed Alaska leader — and recognize his important contributions to his family, our state, and the nation. Both Mary and Buzzy served on the Foraker board and are part of the Foraker family. Our hearts go out to Mary, and we stand with her and support her through this tragic time…. Read more »

Decades into recommending a board matrix to focus on recruiting “the right people at the right time to serve mission” (as we say in the Foraker Nonprofit Sustainability Model), it dawned on me several years ago that when the data on board diversity still had not shifted, perhaps one of the problems is that the tool many groups are using to actually diversify the board is broken. Turns out, the tool itself may be fine, but if the users (you and me) are not implementing it with clear intentions, it will inevitably maintain the status quo in the boardroom. To be fair, that may be exactly what you are after, but again, many groups actually turn to the matrix to purposefully engage diverse individuals in the room based not just… Read more »

We’re hiring for an Operations & Education Coordinator. If you know a master multi-tasker with excellent communication skills and an upbeat attitude interested in expanding their career in the nonprofit sector, send them our way! Learn more here…. Read more »

            We are proud of all of our staff for their dedication to serving Alaska’s nonprofits. Foraker has a wonderful track record of longevity within our team. There are many reasons for this but one is our commitment to creating professional development opportunities including promoting from within when we can. We are thrilled to have that opportunity this year. Please help congratulate Tabitha Titus as our newest Executive Transition Guide, Kimberly Waller as the now Senior Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Kathryn Knowles for taking on the role as Accounting Manager, and Karen Harvey in her new role a Senior Accountant. Congratulations to each of these team members on their promotion – we wouldn’t want to do this work without you…. Read more »

Our collective workforce woes are real, and we are all searching for what we can do to attract and retain a great workforce. Some of the obvious tools for compensation are outside our reach at the moment, but we do have tools in house right now that we can use to engage and understand our workforce more fully. One of those is meaningful evaluation. There is an art and a science to getting helpful feedback, and if you are the executive director or CEO, you likely know better than most how difficult evaluations are to come by, and meaningful ones are a bit like unicorns. That said, it is not just appropriate to expect some form of helpful feedback, but if you are the executive, it is part of the… Read more »

Create Opportunity for your Team to Lead Up It’s time to grow your leadership bench. Are you an executive director ready to empower your team to take on leadership roles?  Lead Up is designed for “mid-level” nonprofit professionals interested in growing their leadership and management skills. Our goal is to prepare the next group of diverse nonprofit executives with the tools to stretch and grow, and in the process – create a stronger constellation of staff members at your organization. Is there someone on your team that may be a good fit? This eight week intensive begins in October. The deadline to apply is September 15. Learn more   Who is Lead Up for? Lead Up is designed for those who are in nonprofit management roles or wanted to lead in an organization but… Read more »

As many are aware, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on loan forgiveness will impact current and future employees of the nonprofit sector. Many years ago our colleagues at CalNonprofits identified student loan debt as one of the largest contributing factors in attracting and retaining a robust workforce.  They developed tools like The Nonprofit Student Debt Toolkit  and a number of other California specific loan tools.  Alaska’s workforce is no different–  we know that the need to pay loan debt is a deciding factor about one’s ability to participate and stay in the nonprofit workforce.  We encourage you to understand the impact of student loan debt as a contributing factor to attracting and retaining your workforce.  Our partners at the National Council of Nonprofits provided a recap of the Supreme Court’s… Read more »

When you imagine a healthy nonprofit workforce, what attributes are on your list? To me, there is no such thing as perfect, so I hope my top six attributes lean to the healthiest end of the continuum as possible. They apply to any nonprofit regardless of type, budget size, staff composition, location, or mission and include: Fully staffed. Not in the way that barely gets us by, but in a way that truly honors how the work best gets done. By the way, in my 30+ years in the sector, I have rarely seen this – especially when it comes to the administrative functions of our work, which are often the lowest paid and most understaffed even though they make the work – well, work. Livable wage, retirement option, and… Read more »

Do you have an opinion on the state’s proposed changes to Medicaid payment rates for select hospital and long-term care facilities? Then don’t miss this opportunity to speak up, and your voices heard! The State of Alaska Department of Health will be holding a public hearing on its proposed payment rates at 10:00 a.m. on June 23, 2023: http://notice.alaska.gov/211175 Need more information on proposed rates? Learn more here: https://health.alaska.gov/…/RateReview/Rate-Setting.aspx… Read more »

At Foraker, we often talk about nonprofit sector data as BAD or best available data. Unfortunately, most data aren’t even BAD, but instead are anecdotal based on a small survey or a narrow, unrepresentative sample. Even worse, it is data that grabs you with a “click bait” title and results in trying to sell our sector something. I crave representative data and find myself skipping to the end of every report to see how the data was collected and if Alaska was even included in “national research.” Sadly, it often is not. For these reasons, we are committed to working with Partners to gather the very best data we can from a variety of trusted sources to produce Alaska’s Nonprofit Sector: Generating Economic Impact. It is a big lift, so… Read more »