Today I went to the Ready Board Leadership workshop training at the Athens Area Community Foundation with Molly and Amy. This was a non-profit training workshop led by a lady who has been in non-profit management for 20 years. This was 1 of 3 workshops, ready, set, and go. Today was mostly learning about the world of non-profit organizations. We talked about stats, funding, and leadership. We did an exercise where we were given different scenarios and had to decide the next steps for a non-profit to deal with that scenario, given the unique structure of the organizations. This was really interesting because I didn’t fully understand that non-profits cannot be owned and must be run by a board of directors. We talked a lot about how non-profits are very democratic, which is great, but can sometimes lead to wasting time. This is why it’s important to have a focused mission and focused conversations. She said “we have a responsibility to be decisive, confusion is expensive.”. We talked about the history of non-profits and how we have shifted to be very impact focused as a society, but are stuck in the era of data for funding. Making it personal is the best way to get the community on board. She also talked about how non-profits have the highest trust of any kind of organization, government, or public figure. One of my other favorite things we talked about was the Greek meaning of the word “philanthropy”. It means the love of humanity, but we talk about it solely in terms of fundraising. This shifted my perspective on the way I think about philanthropy because it is so easy to get caught up in the money of it all, but it’s important to go back to your mission and remember that we’re doing this because we love and support the people in our communities.