Thursday, September 1, 2011

Match Made in Heaven

For the past year gsSCENE has done everything they can to spread the word to local nonprofits on why they should have and NEED young professionals on their nonprofit boards. With the gsLEAD program, we are slowing making progress. A post from The Good Counsel Blog shows that this pairing of young professionals and nonprofit boards are a better match than one might think!

"Assuming a nonprofit organization has the right young individual for board service, it can be a mutually beneficial experience. The right candidate has to be a person who has a deep passion for the mission of the organization. I would never advocate putting a twenty-something on a board just because he/she fills a demographic hole. The individual MUST believe in the organization mission, or it doesn’t matter how old he/she is, it won’t be a good fit.

Those dedicated young professionals who really love an organization have oodles of value. It’s often up to the board’s leadership to know how to channel this talent productively. For example, many young professionals have large online networks and know how to build them, something many nonprofit organizations are trying to do.

Young professionals are often very savvy at online marketing and social media strategies. Even if they are not willing or able to run the online presence for an organization, they are usually willing to teach someone else how to do so.

Additionally, younger people tend to be more generous with both time and money than the boomer generation (based on disposable income). Many young people are more willing to give up time to an organization, which many groups will tell you can sometimes be more valuable than money."

Posted by The Good Counsel, by Dania Toscano Miwa on August 29, 2011. To read full blog post click here.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Reaching a New Group!

Today gsSCENE participated in the Coastal Carolina University Career Fair. When we signed up to have a booth, we looked at it as a way to get more exposure and maybe get a few graduating seniors interested in our program. This demographic is a great base for gsSCENE to draw members from because here are people that are "fresh" to the workplace and WANT to get involved! But after getting to the career fair and seeing the response, we were amazed!

Our booth was slammed! I was so happy to hear all the students talk about how they had heard about us and how they really did want to get to know more people when they graduated and got into the working world. Of course, many thought we were hiring or trying to get interns and while some immediately left us when we told them we weren't, the majority stayed and seemed very interested in what all we had to offer.

So hopefully at our April 7, birthday celebration we will have a lot of new faces! If you see someone at the event you don't know....go talk to them. Isn't that why everybody is there? To network and meet new people? And you think you know everyone, after meeting this whole new group of young adults...you don't!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Always Amazed at the Benefits

Since gsSCENE started it has always amazed me of the different opportunities and benefits the group has been given. It seems venues and restaurants all want to host gsSCENE for events and businesses want to know how to get young professionals at their location. Obviously, it goes against what everyone thought when gsSCENE started that it wouldn't last and there weren't any "young professionals" here.

Recently gsSCENE members have been given another one of these amazing opportunities to participate in a really cool event. Terri DeCenzo from Coastal Carolina University spoke with me about getting gsSCENE members to a speaking engagement and book signing for Elizabeth Gilbert. For those of you that don't know, Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love. A New York Times Bestseller and even a hit movie staring Julia Roberts! Litchfield Books has set up for her to come speak at Pawleys Island Community Church. Unfortunately sometimes news of events along the Grand Strand don't get the attention of everyone and people end up missing out on some great events and opportunities.

For gsSCENE we are lucky to have groups, venues and people in our community making us aware of these events. And it's even better when we get special invites. So don't just look at gsSCENE as networking at gsSCENE events, you can network at all events. And you when you network you can find out about more networking!

Details of the event are on our calendar and we hope to see you there!