USIU created this graphic for the chat. Isn’t it great?!

Leadership. Entrepreneurship. Social Enterprise. Educational Opportunities. Africa. This TweetChat had it all!

Yesterday, our client AAI hosted the #LeadAfrica TweetChat on transforming Africa through SME & social enterprise leadership. Participants created a lively discussion on what kind of leadership, training, and skills are needed to accelerate the growth of African small & medium-sized enterprise (SME) and social enterprise leaders. Joining in the conversation were some heavy-hitters in the Africa education and entrepreneurship space: African Leadership Academy; Pan-African University’s Enterprise Development Center; Chandaria School of Business at the U.S. International University; and the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (represented by @Wmguyster).

Considering the fact that the conversation went well beyond the 1 hour time frame, we’d say this is a very relevant, hot topic! Below are the questions that were asked during the chat and a link to the Storify summary if you want to see what you missed. Of course, the beauty of a hashtag is that’s always there, so if you’d like to add your thoughts to any of these questions, feel free to do so using #LeadAfrica. (And, while you’re at it, why not follow ConceptLink, too?

Q1.What kind of leadership is required to accelerate development and ensure that #Africa is globally competitive? #LeadAfrica

Q2. Do #Socent + #SME leaders in #Africa face unique challenges? What skills are needed to address those challenges? #LeadAfrica

Q3. @wmguyster What are MIT + other #highered institutions doing about development + entrepreneurship in #Africa? #LeadAfrica

Q4. @ALAcademy 70% of Africa’s population is under 30. Can youth entrepreneurship accelerate economic prosperity in Africa? #LeadAfrica

Q5. @EDC4SME @USIUAfrica What should be the top priority for academic institutions to better prepare future #African leaders? #LeadAfrica

Read the full transcript here.

Photo credit: blog.startupquest.com

Call it the Nonprofit Startup Catch 22. Mission-driven organizations need seed funding to build infrastructure and get their projects off the ground, yet most grantmaking bodies seem to have a battery of requirements before they’ll sign off on a grant: evidence of impact, low overhead percentages,  measurements of scaleability potential…the list goes on. And, as much as Dan Pallotta may rightly argue that nonprofits shouldn’t be demonized for marketing themselves heavily, startups lack the funds to spread their message far and wide. Wedged firmly between a rock and a hard place, many of these organizations have asked us for help. So, we’ve come up with 5 ways to find nonprofit startup funding:

1. Find Family Foundations: Research smaller family foundations whose requirements are frequently less stringent than the Ford or Rockefeller Foundations of the world. We especially love the Segal Family Foundation’s approach to grantmaking. This article by Joanne Fritz provides some tips on writing grant proposals to family foundations.
2. Compile Documentation: You know the saying: People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan. One reason grantmakers are hesitant to fund startups is that they are more risky than established nonprofits and frequently lack a clear business understanding of their financial health and realistic projections. To mitigate this concern, be prepared with your organization’s line-item budget (including your revenue sources and expenses), a strategic plan, and – ideally – a fundraising strategy, so funders know you have a clear sense of where you’re going and how you’ll get there.
3. Demonstrate Outcomes and Impact: Even if you can’t afford a formal evaluation or impact assessment, you will need to have data that demonstrates that what your nonprofit is doing is making a difference. The Council of Nonprofits provides some great resources on outcome measurement here. We especially want to highlight the value of getting feedback from beneficiaries, either through surveys, interviews, or other approaches. Not only will this help you assess whether you’re being effective (and how you can improve), but it will also provide testimonials that you can use to make your case for support even stronger.
4. Go to Social Media: According to this graphic by MDG Advertising, money raised via social media has doubled in the past 5 years. While the average donation size – $59 – is small, it’s an extremely cost effective way to get your fundraising off the ground. You can also try crowdfunding, an approach by which you receive funding from a large group of people through an online platform. Pitch your project on Kickstarter, Fundable, or another crowdfunding site to get started.
5. Start with Individuals: In the initial stages of your nonprofit, your single greatest asset will be your personal network and your passion for your cause. Individual support will be critical as you work on building your nonprofit’s name, reputation, and history of impact and success. You may want to try hosting a “friendraiser” – an intimate gathering where you talk about your venture with friends and colleagues without directly soliciting funds. Building a steady, reliable foundation of supporters will help you take your nonprofit to the next level.

Are you a nonprofit startup seeking funding? What are some of the greatest challenges you face? Leave a comment or drop us a line and let us know!

This stunning graphic is made up of 2,000 photographs from the African Diaspora around the world. It is featured at the Museum of the African Diaspora and on its website.

This week’s blog was written by our intern, Diana Demba.

Globalization became a buzz word in the early 2000s, and since then has revolutionized societies all around the world. With the invention of new technologies in transport and communication, physical and virtual boundaries have been removed as people, ideas, products, and technology  become increasingly mobile and transient. As a result, people no longer have to live in their homeland; they can migrate and settle on foreign ground. And yet, regardless of how far people travel, they often subscribe to the saying “birds of a feather flock together,” as they keep ties to their home country and unity among each other by forming a Diaspora.

The concept of “Diaspora” is defined as the dispersal of migrants from their homelands. The dispersal, however, does not imply that ties to the homeland are permanently severed. In fact, history demostrates that the Diaspora frequently defend their mother country interests and voice their opinions about issues happening at home, such as the South African Diaspora’s significant role in the fight against apartheid.

The role and perceptions of Diasporas have begun to shift as Diaspora groups form more structured, formal ways of communicating and sharing resources and news about issues that are important to them. Diaspora mobilization is on the rise, and their impact on development, business investment, and culture cannot be denied. Here are three ways their impact is growing:

• New Partnerships: Diaspora mobilization has brought about new partnerships between host countries and home countries. As a result, new business and economic opportunities have formed. The USAID-Western Union partnership for the Libya Diaspora Marketplace is a great example of this.
• Development. The World Bank released a report on global development in 2003 entitled Migrant Labor Remittances in Africa: Reducing Obstacles to Developmental Contributions that demonstrated the important role Diasporas are playing in the development of their countries of origin. Fast-forward seven years to 2010, and the African Diaspora is sending an estimated $40 billion in remittances. As a result of this massive cash transfer, Diaspora-initiated help is now referred to as the fourth development aid after international organizations, governments, and main stream development organizations.
• Non-monetary transactions. At the same time, Anne W. Kamau and Mwangi S. Kimenyi advise that the Diaspora should be recognized for more than just its monetary contribution to the continent. The transfer of ideas, technology, information, experience, and business investment also play a significant role in the Diaspora experience.

Diaspora communities are well positioned in their host countries to influence the development of their home countries by increasing their presence on many levels. For more on Diaspora networks in the US, see Africans in the Diaspora (AiD), the Diaspora African Women’s Network (DAWN) and the Constituency for Africa (CFA).

To continue the conversation about Diaspora mobilization, don’t miss the 2013 Global Diaspora Forum in Washington, DC from May 13^th -14^th.

In our work with the Segal Family Foundation over the last several months, we’ve been incredibly impressed with the response level, enthusiasm, and engagement of their grantees. So much so, in fact, that we sat down with Martin Segal, Managing Director, and Gabby Francesco, Program Assistant, to learn their secret.

First of all, tell us about the Segal Family Foundation. How did you get started?

Our Foundation’s focus on Africa and grassroots projects began in 2008. Our founder, Barry Segal, had attended the Clinton Global Initiative back in 2006 and noticed that large organizations had a much easier time getting funding than smaller, grassroots organizations. Even though the smaller organizations were doing great work and were very holistic in solving community problems, they lacked the networks or infrastructure necessary to grab funders’ attention. Barry wanted to take a different approach to philanthropy by investing more personally and strategically with each organization he supported, rather than just throwing around large amounts of money and “hoping for the best.”

How is your approach with grantees different from other Foundations?

First, we have an informal way of finding grantees; we rely heavily on word of mouth and recommendations from our trusted grantees, our Board, and our network. We also have two full-time people in Africa who hear about the kinds of smaller projects that we’re interested in funding. Even as we’ve expanded to 125 grantees, we still strive to maintain this more personal approach.

This personal approach – this “family-feel” – is a major aspect of who we are as a foundation. For example, every year we have an Annual Meeting for our grantees, but rather than it being a stiff, formal affair, we’ve tried to keep it more casual. We host a meeting followed by dinner where we get to know one another and have a very open, honest dialogue about how we can improve our process moving forward. Despite our growth, we’ve kept the integrity of the Annual Meeting because it allows our grantees to get to know each other (and us) and share information. We also make time for networking; in fact we’ve made the breaks longer to encourage the conversations.

This idea of building communities is really important. We want our grantees to solve problems together. At the same time, you can’t force collaboration; it has to happen organically. For example, throughout the year we bring together 10-20 of our grantees who are working in similar thematic areas such as Youth Jobs or Reproductive Health. We use these Africa-side gatherings to build relationships among our grantees, recharge their batteries and link them to technical expertise that they might not come across in their day-to-day work putting out fires. We’ve had success linking our grassroots partners with larger international NGOs, such as a recent partnership between several grassroots health organizations and Planned Parenthood Global. We love getting people together to solve problems and, wherever possible, we love funding those collaborations.

If I had to summarize our approach, I’d say we have a very open-door policy. We respect our grantees and what they bring to the table. We’re constantly asking them for the next big idea coming out of Africa, and they’re frequently calling and emailing us with ideas, thoughts, and questions. That’s exactly what we want to happen, and we want that to continue in the future.

You seem very invested in listening to grantees, rather than making assumptions about what they want.

Absolutely. We really try to understand what their needs are. We’ve made a great effort to stay in touch with them through surveys and the open-door communication policy I mentioned before.

The members of Segal Family Foundation at the Clinton Global Initiative.

One example of this is a recurring issue of grantees’ need to engage donors. Actually, this request matched up really well with what Barry Segal noticed at the Clinton Global Initiative: that funding wasn’t always going to the best causes, it was going to the best fundraisers. Many of our grantees wanted to learn more about fundraising because those are skills that aren’t necessarily intuitive. Based on this feedback, we’ve provided them with resources related to fundraising, such as a grant writing webinar, access to the Foundation Center’s funder database and the fundraising series we’re currently doing with ConceptLink.

I think another area where we strive to listen to grantees is in our reporting and goal-setting. We make an effort to come up with milestones collaboratively. Of course we want to push organizations to constantly improve, but we also want to balance this with goals that are realistic for the organization. Part of this goal-setting is looking past the 1-year grant cut-off that a lot of Foundations put on grantees. Yes, we start with a 1-year timeframe for our grants, but we leave the door open to continue beyond that if the project is progressing well. We also try to include unrestricted funding wherever possible.

What platforms do you use to communicate with grantees?

Social media has been a great tool for us. We’ve used Facebook and Twitter for building our community and keeping the conversation open. We do shout-outs to grantees who are doing something great, and grantees also use social media to ask us questions.

On a more formal basis, our MailChimp newsletter has been really useful. It’s a great way for us to share requests, information, and tools that we come across or that we’re providing. Many of our grantees are really proactive with it, asking us to share their job openings or requests with our network. We love it. I think it shows that we’re all working towards a common goal of helping everyone succeed.

We also value plain, old phone calls. We make an effort to provide really honest, (sometimes uncomfortable) constructive feedback to our grantees. Because we demonstrate that we are committed to long-term support, ideally there is trust built up that allows candid feedback in both directions. Too often, do-gooders and their work are treated with kid gloves, insulated from criticism that could help them improve.

Why don’t all foundations approach grantee-relationships like this?

I think some foundations don’t have the ability to place staff on the ground in the areas in which they work. Thus, it may be more difficult to keep an eye on trends in real time.  Also, some funders are more risk-adverse, preferring to take on larger projects because they’re more stable. But, given our size and interests, we think supporting up-and-coming grassroots organizations is our sweet spot – the best way to leverage our limited resources.

We owe a lot of our mission and identity to Barry. He was proactive about instilling this approach in our foundation and saw responsiveness and openness as one of his key goals. Thanks to him, we realized early on that taking the secretive, “impenetrable black box” approach to grant making won’t solve problems quickly.

Photo credit: estermaemarketing.com

This week’s blog was written by our Research Fellow, Maraki Shimelis Kebede

As with most fields, the nonprofit workforce is a highly dynamic one. With the incessant need to be more efficient, more effective, more transparent, and more accountable, nonprofits must stretch limited funds and minimize “overhead” – that dreaded number that, unfortunately, often determines the public’s perception of their validity as an organization. (Dan Pallotta had a lot to say about this in a recent TEDTalk.) And while not all trends are an indication of progress, they can be very telling of the priorities nonprofit organizations are setting.

New nonprofit trends are the hot topics in summits, the highlights in forums, the trending hastags on Twitter, and the new agenda items in inter-organizational collaboration meetings. We wanted to share with you these three nonprofit trends we’ve noticed in our work in the sector:

1. Volunteerism: The profile of a typical volunteer in a nonprofit organization is quickly changing as more professionals are giving their time to causes that are important to them. Why? As with any other volunteer, professionals are driven by good will. An additional motivation for this demographic, however, is a need or desire to diversify their experiences or to find a way to get their foot in the door of a different line of work. This trend is particularly apparent in nonprofits that do development work. As the volunteer landscape changes, nonprofits need to get more creative with how they utilize volunteers so they can maximize this increasingly skilled and professional resource.
2. Knowledge Sharing: While all nonprofits disseminate information to and from their communities, implementing this process strategically is new. As knowledge sharing proliferates, silence is no longer an option, and nonprofits are forced to evaluate how – and where – they want to make their presence known.  Michael Gilbert develops this idea further by saying that knowledge sharing is about “building self-sustaining dynamic systems, not pleasing accumulations of information”. Wikispaces is an excellent example of this trend materializing. Their blog on how nonprofits have been using their site highlights uses from sharing best practices, to volunteer coordination and project evaluation. Other more familiar examples are Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, and Digg.
3. Location: As this article in the NY Times reveals, nonprofit work very often transpires remotely. From staff leading internationally-based projects to an increase in entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers and volunteers juggling their duties with other responsibilities, nonprofit teams that work together are oftentimes not actually together. The need to be constantly in touch leaves nonprofits heavily dependent on the range of communication channels of the 21^st century. An increase in technology and tools – FreeConferenceCall.com, Google Hangout, and Skype are just a few that we’ve seen most frequently – that allow people to communicate without being in the same office.

Are these trends affecting your work, your organization, or how it conducts day-to-day business? What other trends are you noticing? Share with us!

What is your academic background?

Before I joined GWU, I completed my Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry at the University of Maryland – College Park, and my Associate of Science in Life Sciences from Montgomery College. I’ve also just been admitted to the College of Education at Pennsylvania State University to work on my PhD in Educational Leadership, so that will probably be where I’m headed next.

We know you’re a self-professed go-getter who wears a lot of hats. When you’re not working for ConceptLink, what are you doing?

Primarily, I’m working on my studies. I’m graduating this May so that is my main focus right now. Secondly, I am a Graduate Assistant at the Center for Undergraduate Fellowships and Research at GWU.

I also work with several organizations on Diaspora mobilization. Just this past November, I chaired the marketing committee for the Diaspora African Women’s Network’s (DAWN) 5th Anniversary Celebration. DAWN is a membership-based organization that seeks to develop and support African Diaspora women focused on African affairs. I’m also an Assistant to the President of People to People – a 501c3 that takes a very multifaceted approach at addressing health-related challenges in Ethiopia. We work on capacity building on the policy, institutional and grassroots level to contribute to Ethiopia’s development and beyond. Finally, I coordinate the Outreach Team of the Young Ethiopian Professionals Network (YEP). YEP seeks to foster synergies and information exchange within the Ethiopian community, particularly in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area, and the outreach team focuses primarily on building and streamlining partnerships with other organizations.

What are your professional goals?

My interest is in education for development in Sub Saharan Africa. Specifically, I’m interested in the contributions that the international nonprofit sector can make towards education for equity.

What do you like to do outside of school and work?

If I had to be honest, I find my peace between old couches and ceramic mugs of cappuccino; however, occasionally, I do crave a lively environment. I love poetry slams, live theatre, cultural festivals and the DC drum circle!

What attracted you to ConceptLink?

ConceptLink is about results. As someone who is determined to make a difference, I’m drawn to establishments that deliver. I first came across ConceptLink when they were working with DAWN on the 5^th Anniversary Celebration, and I was blown away by their culture of operation. They walk their talk! I felt that I could learn a lot under their mentorship, but I also knew that they would present an amazing opportunity for me to contribute extensively to the field. Finally, their focus on Africa, capacity building, and Diaspora mobilization is right up my ally. They even have a physical presence in South Africa! This explicit link to the continent is important in knowing how best to deliver for other Africa-interest organizations.

We highly recommend listening to the whole talk, but in case your Thursday is a bit packed, here are the five areas Dan has identified where our society discriminates against nonprofits:

1. Compensation

“You want to make $50 million selling violent video games to kids, go for it… you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria, and you’re considered a parasite.”

2. Advertising & Marketing

“If we tell the consumer brands, ‘you may advertise all the benefits of your product’, but we tell nonprofits ‘you cannot advertise all the good that you do,’ where do we think the consumer dollars are going to flow?”

3. Taking Risks on New Revenue Ideas

“When you prohibit failure, you kill innovation. If you kill innovation in fundraising, you can’t raise more revenue. If you can’t raise more revenue, you can’t grow, and if you can’t grow, you can’t possibly solve large social problems.”

4. Time

“If a nonprofit organization ever had a dream of building magnificent scale that required that for 6 years no money was going to go to the needy – it was all going to be invested towards building this scale – we would expect a crucifixion.”

5. Profit to Attract Risk Capital

“The for-profit sector has a lock on the multi-trillion dollar capital market, and the nonprofit sector is starved for growth, and risk, and idea capital.”

Watch the whole video here:

Should nonprofits be held to a different or higher standard, or are our belief systems hindering the social good sector as Dan suggests? Tell us what you think, or tell us how your nonprofit deals with sector discrimination.

1. Set clear goal(s): This may seem obvious, but many people go into the fundraising event planning process without clearly defining their goal(s). You must have consensus from the get-go about what you hope to accomplish through the event.  In this case, our goal was to raise a net profit of R1 million. That target informed every future decision we made – from the menu to the sponsorship tiers, from decor to live auction items. Because we were conservative with our estimates, we exceeded all projections on pre-sales and onsite fundraising!

2. Develop a strategy: For this event, we decided to divide our fundraising into pre-event and on-site activities. Our goal was to raise the majority of funds before the doors opened through pre-sales of corporate tables and individual tickets. Then, through a live auction and pledge cards, we would top up our revenue. Our choice of strategy meant that we (and the Board) had to be extremely proactive long before the night of the event.

3. Gather a Board or Host Committee who are willing to leverage their network to sell tickets and tables: Take advantage of the senior executives you have access to and inspire them to contribute. It helps to have one or two people in your corner who can influence the larger group. Be encouraging, but don’t be afraid to use a little peer pressure to get people motivated. We frequently highlighted the efforts of one of our amazing Board Members to encourage others to amp up their engagement. Most importantly, however, equip your Board or Host Committee members with the tools they need to do their job. That may mean that you temporarily play the role of their assistant – compiling prospect lists, writing template emails for them, and preparing tailored presentations for their contacts. Remember, the easier you make their job, the more likely they are to do it.

4. Recruit in-kind sponsors to minimize expenses: Think creatively about how you can encourage in-kind donations, especially from companies who may not have the capital to support you fiscally. Just as you would with paying sponsors, offer in-kind sponsors advertising space, free tickets, or other perks to encourage their participation. For this event, we were able to shave an impressive R200 000 from the budget by having the following items donated or heavily discounted:

• Venue rental
• Staging
• Printing
• Audiovisual equipment and labor
• Guest gifts
• Entertainment

5. Line up an impressive, crowd-drawing program: Our approach for this event was to present awards to some of South Africa’s top executives and recruit a well-known music group to perform. The benefit to these “big names” is that they caught people’s attention while selling tables and tickets. But, the program is about more than names; once you get people in the room you want to inspire them to fall in love with your organization (and donate).  Think about the experience and sentiments you want your guests to have in the room and craft your program to support that vision. For example, we coupled remarks from the organization’s beneficiaries with the special appeal and live auction to inspire guests to be more generous.

If you’d like to get more in-depth information and additional tips on how to manage a successful fundraiser, check out our free Quick Concept: Event Planning 101. Tell us what you think!

Also, check out these photos from the day of the gala. There are even more on our Facebook page!

We’d like to send a special thank you to all of the vendors who made the gala such a success:

• Catering and Venue: Sandton Sun
• Auction: Auction Inc.
• Audio/Visual: MusicMate
• Awards: Trophy Junction
• Decor and Florals: Gideon’s
• DJ: Mpho Mothapo
• Printing: Bowens
• Public Relations: OnPoint Public Relations
• Graphic Design: Lehlohonolo Legoabe (SSP Alumnus)

Photo credit: http://powerpointforpreachers.blogspot.com

We’ve all been in jobs where the weekly staff meeting felt more like a chore than a productive use of time. While executives and colleagues ramble on about projects completely unrelated to you, you’re sitting there thinking about all the other ways you could have used the hour more productively. Now, we feel very comfortable insisting our weekly staff meetings weren’t at that level of desperation, but we started to realize that our meetings were becoming habit, rather than goal-oriented. After a strategy session (yes, a meeting about a meeting), we decided to restructure our entire approach to staff meetings.

First, because of our small team and relatively flat organizational structure (i.e., frequent, informal communication was already happening) we decided to host meetings bi-weekly instead of weekly. Then, we set a hard cut-off at 1 hour and provided more structure to the agenda so that team members knew what to expect each week. In hopes that it inspires you to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your organization’s internal meetings, here’s how we’ve approached the Purpose-Driven Staff Meeting:

I.                  Business Development Pipeline (10 minutes)

ConceptLink’s executives share high-level updates on the company’s business development activities – including organizations who are now on our radar, new prospects, meetings conducted, and proposals we have drafted. Not only does it inspire confidence to know that the business is actively growing and sustainable, it also alerts the team to organizations they should keep an eye out for as they work on other projects.

II.               Major company news (10 minutes)

Where relevant, we share major updates, such as team member acknowledgements (rule of thumb – always be generous with your team kudos!), a proposal that was approved, team members’ upcoming travel schedules, or a recap of networking events team members have attended in the past two weeks. Even if there is a lot of news to share, keeping this part of the meeting brief helps our meeting remain timely. Meetings aren’t the time for long stories; when sharing information, we think of ourselves as news tickers, not novelists.

III.           Challenge(s) of the Week (20 minutes)

This part of the meeting encourages everyone’s engagement, because let’s face it – no one likes to listen to one person talk for an entire hour. Inevitably, as team members are working on their respective projects, challenges are bound to hit. Maybe there is certain information or statistics we can’t seem to find. Maybe we’re having a communication struggle with a client. Perhaps we are trying to develop a high-level strategy for a project but have a few nagging questions we haven’t been able to solve. This is an opportunity to address those challenges in a brainstorming and idea-sharing format. When we address these challenges together, not only does it build team morale, but oftentimes someone who isn’t working on a project will have a great fresh perspective or suggestion to solve a problem.

Throughout the week, we encourage team members to email us a challenge they would like to address with the team. We compile the challenges, choose one or two of the most difficult or pressing, and encourage team members to come to the meeting with thinking caps on.

IV.             Thought of the Week (10 minutes)

Along with the Challenge of the Week, we also include the “Thought of the Week.” This could come in many forms – an interesting article, a video, a client case study, etc. Though the format may change, it will always apply to what ConceptLink does (fundraising, events, or branding and communications), how we operate, or to one of the specific projects our team is working on.

During the staff meeting, we discuss the piece and its applicability to the team, how we approach our work, as well as any interesting lessons we’ve gleaned from the piece. This is my favorite part of the meeting; it is educational, fun, and fosters more dialogue between team members. In fact, it is frequently the most thought-provoking 10 minutes of the meeting.

The “Thought of the Week” is an essential component to ConceptLink’s “Purpose-Driven Staff Meeting” because it hones in on one of our company’s main goals for our employees and interns: that they be growing and developing personally and professionally throughout their time with us. The Thought of the Week enables us to put our project-based learning into larger perspective with ideas on how to become the best professional selves we can be.

V.                Miscellaneous/ Contingency (10 minutes)

The last 10 minutes of the meeting we keep open for miscellaneous items, questions, and logistics. On occasion we may need this period as buffer time for a conversation that goes longer than expected. Sometimes we use all 10 minutes, sometimes we use half of it, sometimes we use none of it. Regardless, it’s there to ensure we honor our 1-hour timeframe and end right on schedule.

So, there you have it- ConceptLink’s approach to the Purpose-Driven Staff Meeting. If your meetings have been dry and stagnant lately, give it a try, and tell us what you thought! Or, share your comments with us — how do you maximize meeting time at your organization?