I already told this story when I wrote about the Poetry Foundation, but when I was in tenth grade my English teacher had each of us memorize, recite, and analyze a poem. I ended up with “Out, Out–” by Robert Frost. I really liked the poem, but I don’t think that I’ve intentionally read any poetry since high school. However, for many poetry is the ultimate form of expression. These people are likely members of the Academy of American Poets, a New York, NY based non-profit membership organization that focuses on “fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.”
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A few years ago I was on the board of a startup non-profit. Our programming was going pretty well, but raising money was really hard. We had meetings with a few grant makers, but we didn’t impress them enough to get any money. A grant maker’s job is to give away money, but they need to offer more than that if they want that money to be put to the best use. Grantmakers for Effective Organizations is a Washington, DC based non-profit that is “committed to advancing smarter grantmaking practices that are most critical to bolstering nonprofit success.” They’ve been working towards a non-profit ecosystem with “more grantmakers providing general operating support, an increase in support for nonprofit leadership development as a capacity-building strategy, and more grantmakers seeking input from grantees and community members to shape effective solutions.”
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I always get confused by the terms modern and contemporary. To me they sound like they should mean the same thing, but they don’t–at least when you’re talking about art. Modern means that it was “produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s,” while contemporary means it was produced very recently. MOCA is the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and they are the only museum in L.A. that is entirely dedicated to contemporary art. Their definition includes works that date back to 1940, so I guess some of their contemporary art may also be modern art–though I definitely could be wrong about that.
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Textiles have played a huge part in human history. It may not be on the level of agriculture, but they have been truly significant on both a functional and cultural level. That should continue for the foreseeable future, which is why the Textile Society of America exists. They are a Berkeley, CA based non-profit that “provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles worldwide, from artistic, cultural, economic, historic, political, social, and technical perspectives.”
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I swear that every kid who grows up in Connecticut goes on a field trip to Old Sturbridge Village at some point. For me it wasn’t until 10th grade (and we were on our way back from a longer trip to Boston and Plimoth Plantation), but I think most kids go earlier in their lives. If you weren’t lucky enough to grow up within a couple hour bus ride of Old Sturbridge Village (which is based in Sturbridge, MA), you should know that it’s the “largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast” and it “depicts a rural New England town of the 1830s.” It’s the perfect place for immature children to try to get the staff to fall out of character.
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One of my cooler life experiences was being picked up by a friend after landing at the airport in El Salvador. Instead of driving to the airport, he flew there. We hopped in his plane and took a tour of the country at a few thousand feet. Then we landed at another airport and drove to his house (it was almost as long a drive as it would have been from the original airport). While most of think of people who “have a plane” as billionaires with private jets, the reality is that a lot of normal people have and fly plaines. That’s why the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has hundreds of thousands of members. It’s a Frederick, MD based non-profit that “is the largest, most influential general aviation association in the world.” The organization acts as a “beacon for those who cherish the freedom to fly.”
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Living in a city can be hard when you love nature and the outdoors, but there’s usually a way to get a fix. Here in Chicago we have Lake Michigan and Forest Preserves. The forest preserves are run by the county government and they exist “to acquire, restore and manage lands for the purpose of protecting and preserving public open space.” In Cook County that amounts to more than 68,000 acres (11% of the county’s land mass) that get about 40 million visits every year. Friends of the Forest Preserves is a Chicago, IL based non-profit that was started when a group of people saw the forest preserves being mismanaged and organized “to rescue these treasured lands, knowing that to maintain their vast rewards and ensure they’re here for all of us to enjoy, we’d have to work just as hard as the visionary citizens who protected them more than a century ago.”
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Last year I got married at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I’ve never been much of a plant person, but it was truly a perfect setting. I’m just amazed that they can grow such a diverse array of beautiful plants in this climate–especially with the winter we’re having this year. If I was opening such a garden, I’d want to do so in a more moderate climate like San Francisco’s. John McLaren was the landscape gardener who was Golden Gate Park’s superintendent for 56 years. He picked a place for a future botanical garden that had “a variety of soil and exposure, sloping, dry and sunny hillsides, sheltered spots and rich, low or marshy land.” The San Francisco Botanical Garden finally got the necessary funding in 1926, and in 1954 the Strybing Arboretum Society was founded to support the garden and its programs. Today the organization is known as the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society, and it supports “55 acres of both landscaped gardens and open spaces, showcasing over 8,000 different kinds of plants from around the world.”
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Yesterday we talked about how living in a big city after college can give you access to all kinds of organizations that will help you meet people in places that you want to be. Some, like yesterday’s CUP, are geared towards broader audiences of professionals, while others, like today’s The New York Academy of Sciences, have a more specific focus. The aforementioned organization is a New York, NY based “international, nonprofit membership organization working to advance scientific knowledge, mobilize science to address major global challenges, and increase the number of scientifically informed individuals in society.” It’s coming up on two centuries of existence, and today they boast more than 20,000 members worldwide.
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One cool thing about living in a major city after you graduate college is that it’s easy to get involved with groups of people with similar interests. This is obviously great for your social life, but it can also help your career. Meeting people who are in the places that you want to be is always good. The Council of Urban Professionals is not only a way to do that–it’s also a way to do good in your community. They are a New York, NY based non-profit that “molds diverse business and civic leaders, and empowers them to exert influence, achieve their individual goals and create collective impact through a range of programs and initiatives.” It started in a living room with 62 young urban professionals (that’s a big living room!), and now the organization has well over 5,000 members.
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What do hipsters love? Brooklyn and things with suggested prices/contributions (you can feel like a full paying customer without being a full paying customer). They also like artsy stuff. I have to imagine that the Brooklyn Museum is a hipster’s paradise, but then again it’s probably paradise for a lot of people considering that it’s “one of the oldest and largest art museums in the country.” They have more than half a million square feet of space and an amazing group of collections “that range from the ancient to the contemporary and encompass virtually all the world’s principal cultures.”
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While the USA may be the only country with America in its name, it’s not the only country in the Americas. Our region encompasses much of the Western Hemisphere and has an amazing diversity of geographies, cultures, people, and more. While most of us seem to get along pretty well compared to other parts of the world (at least recently we have), it’s still important to foster an even better inter-American relationship. That’s exactly what Americas Society/Council of the Americas does. They are two New York, NY based non-profits in one that aim to improve relations across the Americas. The Americas Society “is the premier forum dedicated to education, debate, and dialogue in the Americas,” while the Council of the Americas “is the premier international business organization whose members share a common commitment to economic and social development, open markets, the rule of law, and democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere.”
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One of the best parts about having a significant other is discovering embarrassing moments from his or her past. While my greatest find is the Cosmo cover with my wife’s 4 year old, lipstick smeared face and the headline “How to Attract Men Like Crazy,” a close runner up is the recruiting video that she sent to college volleyball coaches. Her mom shot it with the family camcorder, and it starts with a cheesy opening like “Hi, my name is Amy Gordon, and I want to play volleyball for your team (thumbs up).” It’s priceless, though I shouldn’t make fun considering that this video helped her get recruited to Cornell’s volleyball team–and that’s how we met. College sports recruiting has come a long way, and now most of it happens online. National Collegiate Scouting Association is a Chicago, IL based company that “was founded in 2000 to help student athletes and their families navigate the cutthroat, competitive, and often confusing world of college recruiting.” While they may sound like a non-profit, NCSA is a for-profit business that has seen tremendous growth over the last decade.
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I helped my grandparents move out of their house and into an assisted living center. They were in their 80s, and my grandmother was doing great, but my grandfather was suffering from Alzheimer’s/Dementia. She couldn’t take care of him on her own anymore, but she didn’t want to be separated. As a result, we found a place that gave her the freedom and homey feel that she wanted, but also gave her a ton of help caring for my grandfather. It was totally the right decision, but there’s always something sad about seeing people leave their homes for what will likely be the rest of their lives (it was for my grandparents). San Francisco Village is a San Francisco, CA based non-profit that aims to keep people who are aging in their homes. They believe that increasing “the physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual well-being of adults who choose to live in their own homes” will result in their members’ being able to “remain independent, active, and engaged in the San Francisco community.”
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I never pictured myself doing yoga, but one day my back started hurting. My mom told me to see her trainer and do a yoga session with her. It wasn’t some magical cure-all like some people might claim, but it definitely helped. I ended up really liking the physical part (stretching and bodyweight exercise), but the rest just isn’t for me; however, it is for a lot of people. Yoga has exploded in popularity, and now pretty much anyone who wants to can claim to be a yoga instructor. Yoga Alliance is an Arlington, VA non-profit that exists “to sustain and support the field of yoga.” They do this by “by providing the public with a registry of teachers and schools whose training meets our standards, and by supporting yoga teachers, schools and studios in their work as yoga professionals.”
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What do Laura Bush, Julia Child, Katharine Hepburn, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Eleanor Roosevelt all have in common? Besides the fact that they all are/were women, they were also all members of the Junior League. I’ve heard of the Junior League from friends Facebook posts, but I never really knew what it was today. It is “one of the oldest, largest and most effective women’s volunteer organizations in the world.” There are 155,000 women involved in 293 Leagues across four countries, and those Leagues make up The Association of Junior Leagues International. The organization was founded in 1901 and is based out of New York, NY. Their aim is “to develop exceptionally qualified civic leaders who collaborate with community partners to identify a community’s most urgent needs and address them with meaningful and relevant programs and initiatives that not only improve lives, but also change the way people think.”
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It’s funny how we all have different tolerances for looking at inanimate objects. I can spend hours looking at 150 million year old rock formations in a national park, but 500 year old paintings don’t do much for me. I guess that means that I wouldn’t have the best time visiting the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, but maybe you would. The organization runs two separate museums: the de Young in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. Combined they make FAMSF “the largest public arts institution in the City of San Francisco and one of the largest art museums in the United States.”
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My dad is an architect. I was dragged on all kinds of architectural tours as a kid, and that hasn’t changed now that I’m adult. Whenever my parents come to visit Chicago, we end up spending an afternoon on some sort of architectural expedition. About half the time my dad comes up with a random place that he wants to see, and we drive around looking for it. The rest of the time, we end up doing a more formal tour–usually through the Chicago Architecture Foundation. It’s a Chicago, IL based non-profit organization that is “devoted to celebrating and promoting Chicago as a center of architectural innovation.” It all started in 1966 when community members banded together to save the Glessner House (we already did that tour) from demolition. That eventually led to the founding of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, which was then a founding member of the Association of Architecture Organizations.
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While there are plenty of non-profits that want to save the world in one way or another, many are content with focusing on their communities. Some focus on a specific need, and others try to do their best to offer a complete range of programs and services. The Educational Alliance is a perfect example of the latter. They’re a New York, NY based organization that “currently serves 50,000 New Yorkers annually via 39 programs, including preschools, camps, after school programs, senior centers, health & wellness programs, arts & culture classes, and addiction recovery programs.” They may only reach a small slice of New York City’s population, but anywhere else that’s a huge number.
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My goal is to help you with career exploration–to introduce you to career opportunities that you didn’t know existed. We’re nearly 2,000 employers in, and we’ve already helped a lot of people land amazing jobs and internships. But in the grand scheme of exploration, finding cool companies to work for just isn’t that impressive. There’s no danger, and there’s almost no chance of finding something truly new. Real explorers are in The Explorers Club, a New York, NY based “international multidisciplinary professional society dedicated to the advancement of field research and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore.” It’s a non-profit that was founded in 1904 and exists to promote “the scientific exploration of land, sea, air, and space by supporting research and education in the physical, natural and biological sciences.”
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We often think of technology as a bunch of ones and zeros, but it’s really “the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function” (at least according to Wikipedia). Technology is really the story of human advancement, and that’s why The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA must be a fascinating place to visit. It’s a place that aims to create “experiences that invite people to learn through play, evoke emotions of wonder and joy, contain solid and accessible science, show how technology can improve lives, provoke thought and inspire action, and represent [their] local Silicon Valley community.”
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When I moved to Chicago I joined the board of a startup non-profit. We were a group of twenty somethings with little idea of how to run a non-profit or what being on a board actually meant. Not surprisingly, the non-profit no longer exists. Our board did its best, but we were never really prepared to succeed. We probably could have used the help of Boardsource, a Washington, DC based non-profit that “supports, trains, and educates more than 60,000 nonprofit board leaders from across the country each year.” You can’t just Google “how to be a non-profit board member” and pick it up. Boardsource provides a wide array of resources that help board members serve their organizations more effectively.
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I grew up about an hour outside of New York City. My parents would take me in a few times a year, and from those experiences I developed an idea of what big cities are like. It took a while for me to realize that New York is remarkable as cities go. It’s huge. It has a prime geographical location. Its people are diverse in a multitude of ways. It’s filled with wealth, yet more than 20% of its citizens live in poverty. There is no other city in the world like New York, and that’s why the Museum of the City of New York must be a fascinating place to visit. They are a non-profit that explores “the past of this fascinating and particular place for lessons about our future” while celebrating “New York’s heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation.”
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When I was a kid I was jealous of the kids who went to one of the other elementary schools in town because they had an awesome carnival. I was kind of a wimp about carnival rides, so the most intense ride that I would go on was called the Himalaya. All it did was spin you around kind of fast. While the painting on the ride was certainly accurate to the name, I’m not sure that it was a very good representation of Himalayan culture. The Rubin Museum of Art in New York, NY is. It’s “a dynamic environment that stimulates learning, promotes understanding, and inspires personal connections to the ideas, cultures, and art of Himalayan Asia.” It also won’t make you nauseous like the ride might.
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One of the best parts of growing up in Connecticut was the history. As a kid, I was always imagining myself back in the Revolutionary era. There were constant reminders of the past, and I found them fascinating. (One of my favorite hobbies was digging holes in my backyard looking for artifacts.) The tough thing is that New England is a thriving part of our economy, which means that there is constant pressure to erase the past so as to build something better. That’s ok to some extent, but history needs to be preserved. Historic New England is a non-profit that does just that. It’s a Boston, MA based “museum of cultural history that collects and preserves buildings, landscapes, and objects dating from the seventeenth century to the present and uses them to keep history alive and to help people develop a deeper understanding and enjoyment of new England life and appreciation for its preservation.”
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The job search is the perfect time to work towards forming good habits. Yesterday we talked about that in terms of investing, today we’re going to focus on physical fitness. If you can start a good gym routine now, when you face the stress and time constraints of a job, you’ll be much more likely to keep it up. You’ll be even more likely to stay fit if you end up with an employer that works with MediFit. MediFit is a Florham Park, NJ based company (they have locations all across the country) that collaborates “with clients in the design and management of their community and corporate fitness and wellness programs.” While many companies in the fitness industry have to worry about marketing, sales, and getting members, MediFit works with partners/clients who already have a captive audience. That means MediFit is all about design, management, and operations.
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Walking around a museum and looking at stuff is usually boring for me. It’s just too passive. I like museums that are hands-on and offer experiential learning opportunities. I’ve never been there, but The Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA looks like my kind of museum. It’s focused on art, science, and human perception and based on the premise that “following your curiosity and asking questions can lead to amazing moments of discovery, learning, and awareness, and can increase confidence in your ability to understand how the world works.” The Exploratorium looks like a truly amazing place to visit, and they even offer all kinds of in-depth web content for those who can’t visit.
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Last week a guy I knew in college e-mailed me looking for some career guidance. I’m happy to help just about anyone as long as they ask pretty specific questions, but I’m especially willing to do whatever I can to help him out. Why? While I thought I was taking a risk by doing a startup after graduation, he’s been flying helicopters in Afghanistan for the Army. It’s easy to forget that there are people like him who are risking their lives every day to protect us. Memorial Day weekend is all about thanking them and remembering those who have lost their lives in the call of duty. That’s why we’re going to take a look at an organization called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America today. They’re based in New York, NY and Washington, DC, and they are the “country’s first and largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
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Neuroscience is a word that is about as intimidating as astrophysics. Most people have no idea what it means, but they’re pretty sure that its definition is over their head. The truth is that neuroscience is simply the study of the brain and nervous system. That’s not to say it’s a simple science, but it’s a science that covers equipment that we all have. With that said, neuroscience gets a bit complex as it draws from “other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics, medicine and allied disciplines, philosophy, physics, and psychology.” (Here’s the Wikipedia article on Neuroscience.) The Society for Neuroscience is a Washington, DC based non-profit member organization for the scientists and physicians who study the brain and nervous system.
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I’m the last person that should be telling you anything about ballet. I can’t remember the last time I saw a ballet performance, but I guarantee you it was at something like a middle school talent show. Despite my knowing nothing about ballet, I can tell you that the New York City Ballet is a big deal. They train their own artists and produce their own works, and with 90 dancers, they are “the largest dance organization in America.” It all started with Lincoln Kirstein, who had a vision of “an American ballet where young native dancers could be trained and schooled under the guidance of the world’s greatest ballet masters to perform a new, modern repertory, rather than relying on touring groups of imported artists performing for American audiences.” He met a guy named George Balanchine in London in 1933 and invited him to help start the school. The rest is history.
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