Building Hope Leadership In The Nonprofit World by John Bateson

Building Hope Leadership In The Nonprofit World by John Bateson

Building Hope is a combination of a memoir and business management book. John Bateson is the director of the Contra Costa County Crisis Management Center in California. He is a well recognized leader in the nonprofit sector. The Contra Costa County Crisis Management Center focuses on preventing suicide.

Each chapter in the book covers a specific aspect of leadership in nonprofits and gives real life examples of how to manage different circumstances in the nonprofit world. Some of the topics covered are; selecting board members, soliciting donations, hiring staff, marketing plans, long range plans, and cultural competency.

John Bateson integrates many ideas and acronyms into his book. For example there is the Platinum Rule, "Treat Others As They Wish To Be Treated", and YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard).

His experiences in the agency are interesting and poignant. In one instance he tells the story of Minerva, a person who overcame her drug addiction and eventually got a job at the crisis center moving up into a management position.

The writing is very dense. Every page tells a story or tries to make a point. The style is informal, anecdotal, and very personal. The author comes across as someone who cares about other people. This book is both an excellent book about management and an interesting personal story. The book includes an index to a variety of different topics. It is published by Praeger publishers in 2008.

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Statue of Isidore of Seville (c.560–636) at the entrance staircase of the National Library of Spain in Madrid. Sculpted in Italian white marble by José Alcoverro y Amorós (1835–1910) in 1892.

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Today was another steady day. I put together a list of family oriented films which we might show on Sunday afternoons. A lot of them are cartoons, Shrek, The Incredibles, classic Popeye cartoons, or musicals The Wizard of OZ, High School The Musical, and Annie. Now that I have a short list, I am supposed to meet in committee to select what we are going to show. I have volunteers for the first three committee members.

I also spent some time filing looseleafs for the New York Code of Rules and Regulations and Bender's Forms for the Civil Practice.

This is the first day in a while where I have not done any specific weeding. I selected some books to be sent to the bindery, mostly older material that was in the storage area. Also, I reviewed a few older titles for discard. Some of them were classic works by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I decided these had literary merit and were worth keeping. I also kept some of Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels.

I finisehd reading Building Hope Leadership In The Nonprofit World by John Bateson. It was a very interesting book about running a busy crisis center for preventing suicide. The book was a combination of a memoir and a management guide for nonprofits. I will be writing a review of it soon.

Immediately after finishing Building Hope, I started reading How To Manage An Effective Nonprofit Organization by Michael A. Sand. I am trying to get a better understanding of the process of management in the nonprofit versus the for profit world. Hopefully this will give me a better sense of what is happening at my job.

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Ceiling of the British Museum Reading Room, London, England.

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Good evening, today was a long but interesting day. I broke down the collection into sections for people to order from and created a list of ordering assignments for the collection. I am still doing business management, law, social science, computers, the job information center, and graphic novels. At least, we will have coverage of the full collection. Things were a bit spotty for a while.

I also went through the books I ordered recently that came in and prioritized what should be processed to be put on the shelves first. I also made a few changes to the processing of the books. We still have a large backlog of books which needs to be processed.

This afternoon we had a demonstration of Hoovers and Firstsearch for business online. I am fairly familiar with Hoovers online. I think it is an excellent online business database for finding company information and creatings lists of companies. We are going to evaluate it this week. It is something which I think we should consider getting. I used it a lot while I was working at an internet company.

I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people that came for our Foreclosure Information Workshop. Although, I was not there, we had thirty people come for the presentation. It ended up closing a bit late. I find this kind of programming useful and satisfying.

Tomorrow, I will be working on creating a list of family oriented films to show on Sunday. I already have a few picked out. I am going to ask the other staff members what they would like to see. Films that both adults and children can watch together. We got our movie licensing for the year filled out.

I was a bit distracted, so I did not get a chance to read that much more of John Bateson, Building Hope Leadership in the Nonprofit World. I think I will finish reading it tomorrow.

I will be going to New York Comic Con on Friday. I am very much looking forward to doing it.

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David Emile Joseph de Noter (1818-1892)La Lecture Oil on canvas, 1858

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I did nothing today. I took a break from laundry, shopping, and everyday things to take a nice bit of rest. I read a little bit more of Building Hope by John Bateson but did not do much of anything else. I put one reserve on a book, Mike Resnick, Starship Mercenary.

Today has been quiet, slow, and peaceful.

I did my yoga exercises from Yoga RX. The exercises are fairly easy to do. It takes me about half an hour to do the exercises with the breathing exercises. This is easy enough so that I can do it consistently every night. I have also been listening to the hypnosis cd from I Can Make You Thin. Once again, this takes about half an hour. I was so tired I almost fell asleep. I think I have been eating a lot more slowly. This is enough to focus on.

I was playing a video game for a couple of days. I erased it today. It was taking too much and distracting me from my blog.

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Felix Henry Giacomotti Inappropriate Reading Time Oil on canvas, 1886

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I interviewed for a Librarian III Collection Development position this morning at my job. I was not expecting it. I got the call for my resume last night. I spent about three hours going over the pieces of my resume last night. I was not completely prepared for the interview. I think I flubbed a few things, but you don't know until later what really happened. The interview lasted a little over an hour. It was very interesting.

Something I realize coming out from the interview is that I should not ignore the questions posed to me in the interview. I am going to start weeding the law collection tomorrow. I have been putting it off for a while. I dread the idea in a way. But, unless I do it, I will probably not get where I want to go. I am also going to arrange a day to go to the county supreme court law library this month as well. I need to act on some of the things which I discussed.

Two more books came in for me to read today, Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams. This is the authors first book. The second book is Halo, The Cole Protocol by Tobias Buckell. Tobias Buckell is a very enjoyable author to read. He is a caribbean writer which adds some nice flavor and tone to the book. I liked his other books Ragamuffin, Crystal Rain, and Sly Mongoose.

I am still reading Building Hope by John Bateson. I like some of his ideas, the acronym SMART (Specific, Memorable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound) for setting goals appleals to me. It is the kind of thing that makes you think hard about what you are doing.

There is a new feed site for library feeds and podcasts , http://www.lisfeeds.com/

One the subway home, I read a bit more of Building Hope. This is a nice quote which I found while reading the book. It is a Chinese proverb. "If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else." I rather like the idea. Maybe, I feel it is because I have devoted my life to helping other people through literature.

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Hans Christian Andersen in his living room at his home in Nyhavn 18 in Copenhagen.

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The BookCalendar is reviewing Rabbit Angstrom in memory of John Updike. It is sad to see this writer. While, I was not particularly fond of his works. I was fond of what he represented. http://www.thebookcalendar.com/

I am still reading Building Hope by John Bateson. It is a very serious book and a very slow read because he is trying to add depth and say very meaningful things. This could take me a while to read. There is quite a bit on hiring people both for board positions as well as staff positions.

I have another book which I am plainning on reading. I found the book on Twitter. It is called I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna. I am still watching my diet and doing yoga every single night.

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L'Arlésienne (Porträt der Mme Ginoux) Vincent Van Gogh Oil on Canvas 1888

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The new director for the system came and visited our library. We sat in the staff room and introduced ourselves and said what each of our departments did. It was fairly pleasant. There were coffee, bagels, and muffins. He walked around and did a tour of the building. Then he went off and had lunch with the director of our library. I wonder what they were talking about.

I can see some changes coming fairly quickly to our library very soon. The city is proposing a survey of people want from their local government. We have not had an official survey of library patron's needs since I came here. I look forward to seeing what people want.

Tomorrow is the monthly board meeting. I usually take the reference desk during the board meetings so I can't really attend the meeting. I see the various board members leave as the meeting ends. I think this should be an interesting meeting. There are supposed to be several people from the community who will be there today. I often talk to one of them at the library about which computer books he likes. I think one of them may be asking for a board position.

I'll wait until after tomorrow to see what happens.

We are currently in union negotiations, something which can be very touchy. I am not going to say anything positive or negative. We have not had a contract for a number of years. I wish they could hash things out between union and management. It can be quite difficult at times in both directions. Because I am a line employee, I am a member of the union, CSEA which I support. Union membership is important.

A round of sexual harassment and violence in the workplace workshops were held in the library. I heard that they went over The Code of Conduct during the training for the library. The trainer said hello to me. She remembered me well.

On the way home from work, I read some more of Building Hope Leadership in the Nonprofit World by John Bateson. It is quite enlightening. I really don't understand that much about how boards work, this has given me a little bit more of an idea of how these things work. I am not sure that I get the idea of volunteering to be on a nonprofit board that much. This probably open doors to opportunities for many people.