Campground Systems

Giving Tuesday is in a week. It's a time to show thanks and INVEST in organizations working on causes we care about. If you're looking for a cause to donate to, I can vouch for these organizations. They are a few of the amazing Campground Systems partners that I get to work with. They're all using Campground to power their programs, which means they care a lot about data and community -- and importantly, are some wonderful humans doing great work. ?? Parenting for Liberation supports Black parents to heal from historical and ongoing trauma, to build resilient and joyful Black families in community. I ~love~ the heart & soul of their team, with founder Trina Greene and the excellent program manager paradyse O. (whom I met years ago through a FutureMap internship and Lee Schube/Taos Glickman!) ?? RepresentEd is full of warm, talented leaders who create SUCH high-quality workforce programs. Cheers to Rashida Hanif and team (and thanks to board member Lyndsey Boucherle for inviting me to that one event to kick off this multi-year relationship!) ?? College Access Navigators - a small team doing BIG things in Colorado for first-gen, low-income college students. They don't have a LinkedIn page because they're busy doing the work ;) Something I love about their model is that it's deeply localized and invests in relationships (they're on a texting basis with their high schoolers, have partnerships with local community colleges, etc). Taylor Jordan keep it up! ?? Black Women in Venture Capital is founded by rockstar and fellow Kellogg alum Veronica Reaves. Veronica walks the talk and every Black woman in VC I've ever met knows about this organization. She has a vision and we just have to support it! Donation links are in the comments :)

We have just 3 remaining (free!) events before the year ends! Registration link in the comments. Career Paths for Program Managers Dec. 6th | 10-11am PT | Zoom Is "new job" or “higher salary” in your plans for 2025? Learn about the career possibilities open to program managers and hear from people who have used their program management skills to thrive in roles at nonprofits, as entrepreneurs, and in higher ed, corporate, and tech. Google Cloud x Campground: Building Community to Support Post-Accelerator Outcomes? Dec. 10th | 9:30-10:30am PT | Google Meet Calling all accelerator program leaders: join us to share best practices around community-building, network with peers, and bring your questions forward for a Mastermind discussion! Capped at 35 attendees. Andrea Perdomo Student-Serving Mixer: Learnings from 2024 and Regrouping for 2025? Dec. 13th | 10-11am PT | Zoom Between ongoing changes to the college financial aid process and post-election uncertainty, this event will create space for student-serving program managers to be in community, share learnings from 2024, and organize and strategize for the new year. Registration link in the comments!

Program Manager Fall Camp?is our biggest event of the season! It's a FREE, virtual conference and it's happening THIS WEEK. Join us on Friday, Nov. 1st from 10am-1:30pm PT to learn through case studies from experienced program managers across the US. Come be in community with other program managers, even if it's just for a little while! Register at www.bit.ly/pgmfallcamp

We always get questions on the best way to manage programs. We've put together an amazing FREE event, Program Manager Fall Camp, that highlights case studies from 6 organizations. The topics follow the program funnel: ?? Recruiting (How to be more creative + engaging!) ?? Facilitating high-value sessions to drive learning and engagement ?? Creating a sense of community to sustain the program ?? Legitimizing and systematizing the program outcome through badges, certificates, etc ?? Managing external partnerships along the way Sign up today -- it's totally free!

Program Manager Fall Camp: S’More Case Studies and Insights is on November 1st! This is a FREE, virtual, conference-style professional development opportunity for anyone who leads student-facing programs, internship programs, accelerators, ESOs, college access programs, workforce programs, climate programs, and more. Register at www.bit.ly/pgmfallcamp to join our community of 180+ program managers and hear from our amazing speakers on Nov. 1st! Ben Gilbarg, MS from STEAM the Streets Caroline W. from Fast Forward Astrid Arias from SEED SPOT Antoinette West and Nsofwa Jaronda Chanda, Ph.D. (Jaronda J. Miller-Bryant) from Elemental Impact Jahleesa Phelps from Black Venture Capital Consortium (BVCC) Chantell Padilla and Zena Amran, M.Ed from California Volunteers Fund

It’s September, and that means for many orgs, it’s annual report season. How long does it take you to compile your program data for an annual report? At my old nonprofit FutureMap, it took a lot longer than we wanted. We started with a simple, foundational question which would be the baseline for any other metrics:?? How many students did we serve with our programs this year? ?? The process of answering this question was anything but simple. - We downloaded Zoom and Eventbrite reports - Copied the responses from 25 different Google Forms into one spreadsheet with 25 tabs - Exported various Airtables - Connected records? and copied over 100’s of data fields from each survey, form, etc. from all these different sources through VLOOKUP’s? - Removed duplicates if possible This was JUST to answer the most basic question of how many people we served. The actual data analysis on top of that around results, outcomes, demographics, etc. would take weeks. Followed by design. And we were relatively small (~300-500 students per year). This level of effort (a 2-3 month project that takes up full-time staff time or requires hiring a temp) is very typical for all the nonprofits I’ve worked with. One nonprofit that used Salesforce told me their entire team of 10 took 2 weeks off per quarter to do this type of data cleanup. ?? Very conservative estimate - That's more than 1000 hours of staff time per year spent on manual data cleanup work that doesn't directly add to program impact. And yet we know we need those metrics to fundraise in the future! ?? DM or comment if you’re interested in making this huge data cleanup effort vanish with the snap of a finger. My team at Campground Systems is providing a service to automate a lot of it!

?? We love convening program leaders!

This is awesome ???? Campground was the platform behind this important event, helping students and employers gather in one spot before, during, AND after the event! Congrats Trenton Dunn and Manleen Rajput on your hard work.

We're thrilled to announce an in-person event in San Francisco on August 1. Accelerator Program Leaders' Forum, sponsored by us here at Campground, Mercury and hosted at the The Garage at Northwestern University in SF. ?? Who should come? MD's, Program Managers, and Program Directors who are responsible for running entrepreneur-focused programs / accelerators. ? The topic: Post-accelerator?outcomes and support systems. How do program managers and MD's track those outcomes, engage with alumni, and ensure their founders succeed BEYOND the program? ?? What's on the agenda? A short panel followed by discussion groups and mingling. Build valuable ecosystem relationships! ?? 5 lucky program managers will be randomly selected to get free membership to our Program Manager Collective, a learning and development + community-building opportunity year-round! Sign up here: https://lu.ma/gp2j6971

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