Tagged: non-profit

It has been a challenging few years for nonprofit groups in Michigan. Whether they depended on private donations or corporate donations or both, the Great Recession hurt organizations all over the state.

But as our state gradually recovers, so are the nonprofits, especially in certain areas of Michigan.

Montgomery Consulting of Huntington Woods is out with a new survey of fundraising conditions in Michigan.

It gives us a quick look at who's on the rebound and who is still struggling.

Today Michael Montgomery joins us from Huntington Woods. He gives us a look at Michigan's regions and where nonprofits are doing the best in terms of meeting their fundraising goals.

He also gives us some tips for those who run nonprofits in Michigan and people who are prospective donors.

The following is a summary of a previously recorded interview. To hear the complete segment, click the audio above.

When it comes to data and knowing just what to do with it, it seems there are two camps in this world. 

Those who can plunge into mining, parsing, analyzing and figuring out how to really use data, and those who are fairly clueless when it comes to crunching data.
 
Luckily for some non-profit groups in the Ann Arbor/ Detroit area, those types aren’t just smart, they are nice, and willing to help.
 
Thanks to some hard-working grad students at the U-M School of Information. The A2 Data Dive is coming up this weekend on the Central Campus of the University of Michigan.
 
Co-founders, Claire Barco and  Nikki Roda tell us more about the A2 Data Dive.

West Bloomfield Township this week lost a police officer in the line of duty—a tragic "first" for the community.

39-year-old Officer Patrick O'Rourke was responding to a "shots fired" call at a home in West Bloomfield. His partner says they thought they were coming to help a family in distress with a possible suicide. Instead, a blast of bullets through a bedroom door killed Officer O'Rourke.

He leaves behind his wife Amy and four small children. His funeral will be held tomorrow morning.

Diane Philpot knows the agony of losing a first responder in the line of duty.

A 78-year-old woman says a 6-mile canoe trip down a river in northeast Ohio was a dream come true. That’s despite the fact that she’s afraid of water.

Kay Riffle took her first canoe ride thanks partly to the Second Wind Dreams group. The nonprofit organization works to help grant dreams for seniors.

In Chicago, literacy rates are pretty grim. More than one in three adults cannot read well enough to fill out a job application. Many are working toward improving literacy rates in Chicago, among them, the nonprofit Open Books. In the second story in our series on nonprofits, I took at look at Open Books, mostly because of the organization’s funding structure.

At Chicago International Charter School’s Bucktown campus, second grader Jayla Mercado is reading a book about dinosaurs. They’re her favorite topic, but she’s having a hard time sounding out some of the bigger words.

We continue our What’s Working series today with guest Sarna Salzman. She’s the Executive Director of SEEDS, or Seeking Ecology Education and Design Solutions.

SEEDS is a non-profit based in Traverse City that acts as an energy consultant for local businesses and municipalities. In addition, SEEDS hosts the northwestern Michigan branch of Youth Corps, which gets kids involved in projects such as cleaning up parks, organizing gardens, and spreading awareness about environmental issues. Last but not least, SEEDS works with local school districts to develop after-school programs aimed at ecological awareness.