A free alternative to MS Office

Although there are cheap licensing options for non-profits available through Microsoft and others, you may just want to get away from the MS chaos and go with something open source instead for your suite of office products.

One great alternative is OpenOffice.org. It can run on a variety of platforms such as Linux, Windows, Mac and more, it's available in a wide range of languages, and covers a majority of the office functions you would need such as word processing, presentations, spreadsheets and even a drawing program.

But you don't have to take our word for it - CNET loves it as well. Perhaps we'll find a reason to play with it later and can really give it a full review.

Nonprofit setup checklist

T.S. Wrobel & Associates, Attorneys at Law, have set up a couple of good PDF downloads for those just starting to set up a nonprofit organization.

The Checklist starts at the very beginning, including reserving your name and filing for incorporation. But it also includes steps like furnishing your office with equipment and providing health benefits to your employees.

They also have a report called "8 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Nonprofit" which might help some that are struggling to determine if they want to start a nonprofit and haven't thought through all the complications yet.

Their material is written with the impression that no one should start a nonprofit without legal assistance so much of it really isn't that wonderful...but they do make some valid points and give some good warnings for those in the early stages of the setup process. They also have a newsletter you can sign up for to receive more tips and advice.

How do we select fundraising software?

We might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves here but this is one of the many things that has to be considered during the start up process. After all, you don't want to start getting a bunch of cash donations in and then have no way to keep track of everything. The last thing anyone needs in life is an audit from the IRS...especially when they're not keeping good records. I found a really interesting article on Alliance Online which is a website specializing in nonprofit management. They describe themselves as "Alliance for Nonprofit Management is a professional community of nonprofit capacity builders – people and organizations that are dedicated to nonprofit organizational effectiveness."

And if you're wondering exactly what "capacity building" entails, their website describes it as "the process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt and thrive... using a wide array of measures that organizations take to strengthen their ability to operate effectively over the long term." (from "Capacity Building Work with Social Justice Organizations" by Ann Philbin). I guess that says it all.

You can find resources such as the following on their website:

• Find a Consultant/Service Provider: An online directory of Alliance members, featuring the services they provide to nonprofits.
• Event Calendar: Your source for workshops, conferences and seminars on a wide variety of nonprofit management topics.
• CareerBank: Job listings in the nonprofit management and capacity-building fields.
• Resource Center: A searchable database of resources for nonprofits, including books, websites, newsletters and other sources.
• Frequently Asked Questions: Information on board development, strategic planning, financial management and other nonprofit capacity-building topics.

I stumbled across their website because I found an article from their FAQ talking about how to select the right fundraising software for your organization. It's a rather informative article and gives you some food for thought. I especially found the last part interesting when they talk about not using a program like Access to build your own solution. Off to find the freeware & shareware solutions...

Free & discounted software for nonprofits

I've mentioned this site before but TechSoup has done it again. We were browsing their website a bit more and wandered across their page with software, hardware, networking and other offerings at discounted prices for nonprofits, as well as refurbished computers for nonprofits. How can you go wrong there? They call it TechSoup Stock.

Examples:
Office Professional Plus 2007 - $20 Open Licensing
Refurbished Windows Computers starting at about $200
Dreamweaver 8 License - $25

There's a lot more available from servers to networking tools to other web apps...so there may be something waiting for you there too :)

Housing Works Thrift Shops

Again, this is another really great example of what thrift shops CAN be. "Luxury thrift"...that says it all for us and is our goal for our own store. I do wish we got to see a bit more of the layout of the store itself in their commercial with Sarah Jessica Parker (VERY nice touch) but their idea about auctioning off the fabulous items they display in their front window is really interesting. We may just need to make a trip to Manhattan soon :)

The Housing Works Thrift Shops website

A great story of inspiration for the thrift store

The following article is a really great piece from the Washington Post about a thrift store called Yesterday's Rose. Since we're planning to start a thrift store as one of the primary means of income, we are looking for all the tips and information we can get.

Something I really like about this shop is the idea of re-donating items that have been on the rack for more than 6 weeks. This would be fairly easy to implement with color coded tags, where you just use a different color every week and start again as necessary once you've got at least 6 colors. I'm not sure if it would be prudent to send them directly to the rags pile since there could be other organizations that may find that they are useful but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

The Pile seems extremely daunting and I wonder if ours would ever reach 10-feet high. I rather hope not because that would likely indicate the store is understaffed or just doesn't have enough space...and neither of them is all that great. But it's a very inspirational story nonetheless.

By the way, the article title is actually spelled incorrectly online so I figure I'll just leave it that way lol.

Thift Shop Lesson No. 1: Tame the Pile

By John Kelly

Tuesday, February 6, 2007; Page B03

Last Thursday, Judy Stone took me to the back of Yesterday's Rose, the nonprofit thrift shop she manages on Main Street in Fairfax. Judy wanted to show me a part of the store that's off-limits to customers. I wasn't a customer that day, she kept reminding me; I was an employee.

I'd already helped at the checkout, bagging the purchases that cashier Claire Guilliams rang up. It was "Thrifty Thursday" -- 50 percent off clothes and shoes -- and customers were snapping up sweaters and winter coats.

Yesterday's Rose is far from a typical thrift shop. It may be the nicest thrift shop I've ever been in: 13,000 square feet of gently used stuff, all of it neatly arranged.

And idiosyncratically arranged. Judy, 60, long ago decided that, for various reasons, it's impossible to organize clothing by size. Instead, the garments at Yesterday's Rose are color coded: all the white T-shirts hang together. Ditto all the purple tops and blue tops and pink tops.

That sense of order at Yesterday's Rose may be why it's so popular both with shoppers and with various elements of the judicial system. Ever wonder what people do when they're sentenced to community service? Some of them go to Yesterday's Rose to spend their time doing whatever Judy tells them to do. It sure beats picking up trash by the side of the road.

"No two days are the same here," said Judy, who loves the human dramas that play out in her domain.

There are the customers who are unclear about the concept of a thrift store, such as the lady who came up holding a pair of shoes and asked, "Is there any chance you have these in another size?" Or the regulars who stop by every single day to check out what's new.

Because there's always something new. Yesterday's Rose is like a vast assembly line, and the raw material is the Pile -- what Judy had pushed open the swinging doors at the back of the store to show me. This is the donated merchandise: bags of clothes, housewares, furniture, toys, books . . .

The Pile is the fuel that makes the thrift shop run. But the only way you can have a thrift shop as nice as Yesterday's Rose is if you're ruthless with the Pile.

"If you start taking stuff that's all torn and ratty, then you get the reputation of being a dump," Judy said.

When people bring donations to the back door, they're greeted by a sign that lists everything Judy doesn't want, a list that includes: "Worn or mildewed upholstered items. Furniture that is broken or in ill repair. Toys & games with broken and/or missing parts. Ripped, torn, damaged or stained clothing. Yard, church & school sale leftovers."

The Pile workers are as efficient as the insects that strip the flesh from dead animals and recycle nutrients in the forest. I helped George Karr, 59, a lifelong Fairfax resident, make the first cut. When the doorbell rang, I'd open the door and take the donation. Clothes went into one 10-foot-high pile. Everything else went into another. Stuff that was obviously trash was thrown away, though clothing and shoes are sold for rags or donated to Africa.

George and I slowly filled shopping carts with items, barely making a dent in the Matterhorn-like mounds. Periodically someone would take a cart and roll it to a room where the objects would be inspected again, priced and moved to the sales floor.

Another merciless weeding takes place there. Any clothing that's been for sale longer than six weeks is pulled and sent to a rag buyer. ("If it hasn't sold in six weeks, it's taking up space," Judy said.)

Every now and then the Pile yields treasure. For years, assistant manager Dolly Shie kept a little metal sculpture on a shelf in the office, convinced it was valuable but uncertain what it was exactly. Then a man said, "How much you want for the hood ornament?"

The hood ornament -- for a Pierce-Arrow -- fetched $800.

The proceeds are split among four area charities: the National Capital area of the American Red Cross, the Northern Virginia section of the National Council of Jewish Women, the Arc of Northern Virginia, and Service Source Inc., a nonprofit that trains people with mental disabilities and provides many of the workers at Yesterday's Rose.

In the 25 years since it opened, Yesterday's Rose has raised $3.5 million.

As I surveyed the Pile -- wicker baskets, baby dolls, a Candy Land game, a skein of purple yarn, an unopened gift set of Coty Wild Musk cologne -- I asked Judy if she ever wished they could whittle it all down to nothing, process all the donations and just sit back and rest.

Judy thought for a moment. No, she said. "The Pile pays the rent."

Writer's e-mail: kellyj@washpost.com.

The ebook is here...

I received the ebook on Friday actually but just haven't really had the time to devote to it at this point. Hubby did look through it and say that he probably won't have enough tenacity to get through this whole thing himself and is very happy that I'll be taking care of it...always a good place to start off, right? :) But he did read through the ebook quite a bit and thinks it is going to be very helpful in filling everything out completely, correctly and efficiently so that they can approve the application right from the get-go and not need additional information from us.

My mom also recommended another ebook that she came across some time ago which is a bit more Texas specific. It is available for a $5+ donation and can be found here: Starting Your Own Charity

At the moment I'm still waiting for the ebook codes for that book to be released. Neither of these organizations has an automatic dispatch of the information after the payment has been confirmed...so I've sent an email to Southern Search & Rescue and hopefully will hear from them very soon.

Off to the form...