What is the AFPWM Book club?
- A group of non-profit professionals will get together over multiple sessions and discuss the book around a variety subject including non-profits, fundraising, history philanthropy, donors, leadership, and more. Attendees can expect a unique and intimate opportunity where they can ask questions, share their experiences and dive deeper into discussions with their peers in the non-profit sector.
Who can take part?
- Anyone is welcome to join!
When & Where?
- The book club will be virtual on the second to the last Tuesday on each month. You can choose your time, 7AM, 12PM, or 6PM to join via ZOOM. Additionally, we are planning some in-person networking events and a workshop to go along with few of the books.
Questions? Contact Missy Summers afpwm.treasurer@gmail.com
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First Quarter Book
The Source by Mark Peters
This is a book about meaningful leadership-the kind of leadership that succeeds in running a profitable business, in improving the lives of frontline workers, and in helping the community in which you do business thrive. In other words, the kind of leadership we need now, and the kind of leadership that can only come from business leaders.
Too many of our workers walk a financial tightrope, with one small setback leading to a cascading number of other problems-the kind of blow that can jeopardize attendance, productivity, and employment. Businesses pay the price, too, through absenteeism and lost productivity, distracted or unmotivated workers, and turnover.
What if you could fix it? What if you could create structures for your employees-outside your own HR department-that could make the essential difference between keeping a job and losing it?
In this book, Mark Peters shows you how. He describes a clear, practical, successful, and repeatable path you can take to serve your company, workforce, and community, modeled on the hugely successful collaboration he founded with other business owners. This book is a blueprint any group of businesses in any community can use.
1st Quarter 2023 (February 21st, and March 21st)
Additional Networking Event-More Information to come!
Second Quarter Book
The Giving Garden by Sandi Frost Steensma
This book is directed toward nonprofit board members, fundraising volunteers, and fundraising executive staff. The Giving Garden illustrates a process for cultivating a first-time donor to a fully engaged major giver. At just about an hour-long read, this resource offers a real orientation to successful fundraising and cultivation practices that are relatively simple to implement and can have a measurable return on investment.
The title of the book was inspired by the work of master gardeners. Sandi admires the work they put into cultivating individual floral varietals, carefully providing each with what they need to thrive. It stuck her that not enough is done in the fundraising arena to treat donors as individuals—with individuals wants and needs—and she hopes this book will offer some insight into how to change that.
2nd Quarter 2023 (April 18th, May 23rd, & June 20th)
Additional Network Event-More Information to come!
Third Quarter Book
Madam C.J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black women’s Philanthropy during Jim Crow by: Tyrone McKinley Freeman
Founder of a beauty empire, Madam C. J. Walker was celebrated as America’s first self-made female millionaire in the early 1900s. Known as a leading African American entrepreneur, Walker was also devoted to an activist philanthropy aimed at empowering African Americans and challenging the injustices inflicted by Jim Crow.
Tyrone McKinley Freeman’s biography highlights how giving shaped Walker’s life before and after she became wealthy. Poor and widowed when she arrived in St. Louis in her twenties, Walker found mentorship among black churchgoers and working black women. Her adoption of faith, racial uplift, education, and self-help soon informed her dedication to assisting black women’s entrepreneurship, financial independence, and activism. Walker embedded her philanthropy in how she grew her business, forged alliances with groups like the National Association of Colored Women, funded schools and social service agencies led by African American women and enlisted her company’s sales agents in local charity and advocacy work.
Illuminating and dramatic, Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving broadens our understanding of black women’s charitable giving and establishes Walker as a foremother of African American philanthropy.
3rd Quarter 2023 (July 18th, August 22nd, & September 19th)
Additional Network Event-More Information to come!
Fourth Quarter Book
Unicorns Unite: How nonprofits and foundations can build EPIC Partnerships by Jessamyn Shams-Lau, Jane Leu, and Vu Le
Calling all changemakers! Open your mind and buckle up for a bumpy ride through a truth-telling journey about the dysfunctional relationship between foundations and nonprofits. We all know that it’s broken. So why haven’t we fixed it? Enter the Unicorns.
Join unicorns Jane Leu, Vu Le, and Jessamyn Shams-Lau for a nitty-gritty, inside look at how foundations and nonprofits relate today, and why we’re stuck in the status quo. Next, get ready for a rocket-ship ride to a future filled with EPIC Partnerships grounded in equality, trust, and creativity; partnerships to help us think bigger, bolder, and better about social change. Finally, make it happen! Roll up your sleeves and dive into a series of fun and thought-provoking exercises for you to do and discuss with your team, your partners, and your board.
Unicorns Unite is a whimsical journey through a challenging conversation that could hold the key to slaying the dragons of injustice and inequity once and for all.
4th Quarter 2023 (October 24th & November 21st)