The Nebraska Chapter of the American Association of Grant Professionals formed in October 2006.

Previous Events

May 2008: A presentation on "The Art of Collaboration" featured six distinguished panelists sharing examples of best practices among funders and grantees. Panelists included:
Kit Boesch, City/ County Human Services Administrator
Victoria Kovar and Art Thompson, Cooper Foundation
Debra Shoemaker, Lincoln Community Foundation
Jennifer Skala, Nebraska Children and Families Foundation
Robin Mahoney, United Way of Lincoln/Lancaster County
Tom Woods, Woods Charitable Fund 

January 2008: Susan Hazelwood, Assistant Director for the Grant Writer Network at the University of Missouri-Columbia, presented information on "Budget Building: Analyzing Project Tasks" and conducted a group activity to determine how hours equate to dollars. 

October 2007: Distinguished panelists discussed sustainability, specifically overhead and operations versus program development and advancement. Panelists included:
Patrick McNamara, Omaha Community Foundation
Christine Johnson, Mutual of Omaha Foundation
Reed Morgan, Iowa West Foundation
Kori Reed, ConAgra Foods Foundation
Kristin Williams, Sherwood Foundation

July 2007: David Drozd, Research Associate with the UNO Center for Public Affairs Research, presented an overview of the American Community Survey. Accurate and timely demographic, social and economic statistics are published on a yearly basis. This survey offers more detailed information than the decennial Census.

April 2007: Anne Hindery Camp from Building Bright Futures spoke about insights on how funders think. She described successful proposals as having goals clearly defined, including what good things will happen and what bad things will change. Also, questions to be considered: Who else is doing this? What is different at the end of the day because of this program? What evidence proves that a problem exists? Would alternative solutions work?

January 2007: Sara Woods, an assistant dean in the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), explained that the logic model creates a simple map for funders to follow, focusing on the entire grant statement, goal statement, rationale(s), and assumptions. Effective logic models make an explicit, visual statement about what activities will bring about change and what results are expected.