First Lady Donna Walker has announced that nominations are open for the Volunteer of the Year Awards. Started by First Lady Bella Hammond in 1975, the awards recognize Alaska volunteers who have displayed an extraordinary personal commitment to volunteer service, and have made a major impact on their community or state. “Over the years, we have recognized many exceptional individuals who have done amazing things for Alaskans,” said First Lady Walker. “I am so pleased to continue this tradition, and encourage Alaskans to nominate those in their communities whose selfless efforts make Alaska an even better place to live.” Nominations will be accepted through close of business on March 6, 2017. The First Lady’s Volunteer of the Year Executive Committee will review the nominations, and recipients will be announced in late May…. Read more »

The Foraker Group is honored to announce the Alice Galvin Catalyst Leadership Fund – our way of recognizing the contributions Alice made to us and to her community. The fund will offer financial support to participants in our Catalyst for Nonprofit Excellence program, which Alice helped to found. Alice Galvin was a catalyst herself. Her passion and commitment to supporting leaders in their chosen field was dynamic, genuine, and gracious. Foraker will be forever grateful to Alice for her belief that a leadership development program deeply rooted in the practice of emotional intelligence could elevate the level of success for nonprofit professionals. Alice, along with former BP Alaska President Steve Marshall, was the energy behind Foraker’s Catalyst program. Because of Alice, we are able to offer this innovative experience that… Read more »

The Rasmuson Foundation is bringing back Michael Balaoing to Alaska! Michael joined Foraker in 2013 at the Leadership Summit and inspired us all with his pointed tips and energetic techniques to craft better nonprofit storytellers. He is back for a half-day training in Fairbanks – don’t miss it! Your Story Matters: How to Inspire Donors & Supporters January 17, 2017 8:30 am – 12:30 pm Fairbanks Community Food Bank  … Read more »

Please join us for the fifth Foraker Leadership Summit on April 3-4 at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage. The theme is Stable, Resilient, Adaptable: The Tools to Take Us Forward.  Our guest speakers will bring some of the best thinking available on innovative solutions to the challenges of leading today’s nonprofit. Early bird registration is now open and will run through March 17. The early bird fee is $300, or $250 for Foraker Partners. After March 17, the fee will be $350, or $300 for Foraker Partners. You’ll find more here, including a link to registration and information on travel assistance for people coming from outside Anchorage and Mat-Su…. Read more »

Stable, Resilient, Adaptive: Tools to Take Us Forward This is the time for Alaskans, and especially nonprofit board and staff, to think big. The challenges facing us are significant. The needs in our communities are great. How do we begin? That’s our exploration at the 2017 Foraker Leadership Summit. This summit will be marked not just by envisioning new possibilities, but also by laying out a course for turning our dreams into reality. We will explore ways of working that are anchored by skills and tools we already know and enhanced by new ones that will take us where we need to go. It will be a time to look again at what makes us resilient. This is our charge as nonprofit leaders – to balance the need for stability… Read more »

Thanksgiving often brings us an opportunity to share our time in our own or a friend’s home. Home can conjure up both good thoughts and also remind us of life’s challenges. I am thankful for many definitions of home. One of those definitions is the nonprofit sector itself. This home has a strong foundation that we build upon every day. Our sector is built on community. We are on the ground working with our neighbors and working to improve the places we live. We are woven together by our diverse people, neighborhoods, and country, and we are stronger as a result. Our sector is built on partnerships. We are relationship-based and we know that each connection with other organizations, businesses, and government strengthens our work and creates more lasting success…. Read more »

December 1, 2016 has been marked on the calendar of many nonprofit executives, human resources professionals, and payroll departments as the date that changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) were slated to go into effect. Those changes doubled the federal, annual minimum threshold for exempt positions to $47,476 ($913 per week) with automatic updates every three years. The rule was announced by the U.S. Labor Department in May. Today, however, a federal judge hit the pause button on the new changes. The judge agreed with arguments made in an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction filed by several states. The motion maintained that the Department of Labor overstepped its bounds with the significant increase made to the minimum threshold for exempt employees and the automatic updates. So, now… Read more »

Foraker CEO Laurie Wolf has joined the steering committee for Welcoming Anchorage, which is a special project of Anchorage’s First Lady Mara Kimmel and part of a national movement. Ms. Kimmel released the following statement yesterday and as we continue to be anchored to our core values, we fully support these important hallmarks of a healthy community. We welcome the opportunity to stand beside many other nonprofits and efforts across our state that share our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion for all Alaskans. You can find more information here about Welcoming Anchorage. Dear Welcoming Anchorage friend, Home is a place that we should all feel safe and secure.  Anchorage is our home.  Whether we are from a village upstream from where our city now sits, or a war torn community half-way around… Read more »

We are pleased to let you know that we have restructured the Alaska Funding Guide, which lists funders who support Alaska nonprofits and projects. It also includes a few helpful grant writing tips. The guide is a great complement to our grant writing book and the classes we offer at Foraker. Most important, you can continue to search for funders by areas of sector and project interests. You also still have the ability to save and print your searches for your own planning. In the past we included a large amount of information in the guide that is duplicated on the websites for funders. That research took a lot of staff time and we had to charge a subscription fee to cover our expenses. That’s changed. We have reduced the… Read more »

As part of its 2016 Salary & Benefits Survey, Foraker gathered data on pay equity in Alaska’s nonprofit sector, This is the first time such data has been compiled for our state. The report highlights the results for the top-level employees in the nonprofit workplace. We understand that this issue is much deeper and wider than simply the pay of those employees. To that end, we encourage everyone reading and using this report to consider the best and emerging practices we offer in the closing section and apply them to every job classification in your workplace. Our goal is to find pay equity across all job classifications throughout the sector. Fair and equitable pay is the law in our country, and yet we have more work to do, both in and out of the nonprofit sector, to achieve pay equity. Alaska is no different…. Read more »