E-Update

January 2010

Greetings - as the new year begins, we are writing you as a key leader for your organization and our sector... a leader who ensures the attraction, development and retention of TALENT - the people force who deliver on our missions.

At the Assembly, 2009 was a major gear-up year for our new Talent Strategy work. We:

• Planned, rolled out an Integrated Talent Strategy for and with our members
• Recruited a team of Pro Bono HR executives
• Launched careersforgood.org - a jobs/volunteer opportunities/internships recruitment site exclusively for NHSA members
• Hosted a webinar
• Held a well-attended Roundtable in NYC

And now, your Workforce Development Executive Team at NHSA - made up of Pro Bono executives, along with myself and American Humanics' Steve Bauer (E.D. of the Nonprofit Workforce Coalition) - is working closely with your HR Council Chair Michael Watson and your Diversity and Inclusion Chair Debbie Foster to build on the work of 2009 to move forward on our goals in 2010. Of course we all know that the economic downturn has had a major impact on our work - challenging all of us with issues around reduced hiring, reductions in force, employee morale - and so our team has revisited our plan to ensure that what we undertake in 2010 makes sense in the current climate, and is most helpful to you - our member Talent professionals.

As a reminder, our Integrated Talent Strategy is built on a future state vision for our sector as a destination for talented and passionate people, dedicated to changing our world through service and action. The sector has the talent it needs to thrive - diverse, qualified, committed - at every level; paid, stipend and unpaid. Nonprofit human service and community development organizations are innovative, effective employers that attract, develop and retain talent.

Our strategies for moving toward that vision? We have three:

• Increase the size, quality and diversity of the candidate pool for positions in the nonprofit human service sector**
• Increase awareness of nonprofit human services careers and volunteer opportunities
• Improve state of the art in talent development and management within the nonprofit human services sector

You'll be hearing more about progress in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, we've created a new short-and-sweet Update specifically for Talent professionals at the national level - an e-Update where we can look at vital Talent issues we face in our work and offer points-of-view on these issue. Our first issue of NHSA Talent Update features three op-ed pieces - please let us know what you think, share them, and consider writing for the Update. This is your forum...we want to know what you think as we move forward in our work to become the sector-of-choice for a diverse, highly qualified people force - paid, unpaid and stipended - in 2010 and beyond.

**Note: please keep an eye out for an important email later this month about Diversity Recruiting -opportunities for us to pool our resources and buy appropriate exhibit/booth space together, under the Careers for Good banner, to recruit diverse talent at key recruitment events in 2010

Karen Heller Key
Vice President for Programs
National Human Services Assembly
1319 F Street, NW Suite 402
Washington, DC 20004
(202) 347-2080 ext. 22 (office)
(202) 393-4517 (fax)

Back to Your Control Panel