Online Program Overview
This online certificate program introduces learners to key management issues for nonprofit organizations. Fundraising, board and volunteer development, budgeting, reading financial statements, leadership, marketing, and setting strategic direction will all be addressed. Video commentary on these crucial topics will give you insight into how nonprofit professionals apply key concepts in their own organizations.
Courses
Budgeting in a Nonprofit Organization
This course covers budgets and how they are used in nonprofit organizational settings. You will gain an understanding of the uses and functions of budgets and the relationship between strategic budgeting and tactical budgeting. You will also learn about the organization-wide budget and different budget systems. The course will continue on to slightly more advanced budgeting topics such as capital budgets, cash flow budgets, and opportunity budgets. You will also learn how nonprofit organizations are using different budgeting techniques to handle operating challenges.
Capital Campaigns
This course covers the key terminology and practices surrounding running a successful capital campaign within a nonprofit organization. You will learn about the phases of conducting a capital campaign-evaluation, feasibility study, organization, solicitation, and post-campaign activities-as well as how to avoid common pitfalls in capital campaigns. Expert video commentary, a case study, and vocabulary game will ensure you have a solid grasp of the content for execution in your nonprofit organization.
Fundraising for Nonprofit Organizations
Fundraising is one of the central activities of a nonprofit organization. To help finance operating budgets, nonprofits must raise money every year. In addition, special projects and improvements to facilities may be needed. In these situations, fundraisers will often launch large capital campaigns or apply for foundation grants.
How to Read a Nonprofit Financial Statement
This course will develop your ability to appropriately interpret the major financial accounting statements that are used by nonprofit organizations. Ideally, you will gain an understanding of the types of financial statements that are used by nonprofit organizations, and how they differ from for-profit financial reporting. Also, you should gain an appreciation of both the power and limitations of accounting information in assessing financial performance and decision-making. You will also learn the uses of financial statement analysis, or ratio analysis for nonprofit organizations.
Leadership in a Nonprofit Organization
This course addresses the key issues surrounding leadership. What is leadership? Why is it important? What does it require to be a leader? How does leadership in a nonprofit environment differ from the private sector? What is visionary leadership? What role should ethics play? This course considers the foundations of leadership and examines how to be a successful and effective leader. The actual work of leadership requires specific qualities and skills. Some of these skills are unique to the nonprofit sector.
Nonprofit Board and Volunteer Development
Volunteers are the lifeblood of most nonprofit organizations. Board members are a special type of volunteer. They help to guide the direction of a nonprofit, to promote the organization in the community, and to ensure that the nonprofit's mission is fulfilled.
Principles of Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations
When we think of marketing, we typically think of the activities that a for-profit company engages in. However, marketing is an important function for nonprofit organizations as well. Marketing is the way that nonprofits determine the needs of their clients and their donors. As in the for-profit world, nonprofit marketing includes advertising, promotion, public relations, and customer relationship management. This course examines how nonprofits use marketing to publicize their mission and to gather contributions of time and money. The course also discusses marketing planning in the nonprofit organization.
Strategy for Nonprofit Organizations
A nonprofit's strategy constitutes its decisions about what it will do and how it will do it. Managers are critical to successfully implementing strategy since they are responsible for carrying out the actions that will support it. By understanding a nonprofit's strategy and how it helps the organization fulfill its mission, a manager can do a better job implementing the strategy.
Introduction to Nonprofit Management
This course covers management best practices for leading a nonprofit organization. You will gain an understanding of the nonprofit sector and the issues that leaders face in this exciting and growing field. You will also be exposed to the major areas of responsibility for nonprofit leaders, including strategy, managing employees, fundraising, grant writing, board governance, and marketing and social media.
Introduction to Grant Writing
Strategic grant writing helps align the identified needs of a nonprofit (and its clients) with funding sources, whether foundations, government agencies, corporations or individuals. This course offers a guide to the basics of grant writing, an increasingly crucial method for raising money to fund projects and programs for nonprofits and other organizations. The course explores the relationship of grant writing to an organization's strategy for fundraising. It also outlines the six stages of grant writing and highlights grant writing best practices.
Social Media for Nonprofits
This course introduces learners to the use of social media in communicating, marketing, public relations, and fundraising for nonprofits. It explores the major social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest) as vehicles for nonprofits to reach their members, volunteers, and donors.