NASNA Conference - Day 1

I am a sponge. While I will drip away some of the information I'm saturated with over the next few days, most of what I have learned will be carefully wrung out of me onto this blog, into conversations with friends and connections, and back into the foreground of my memory as I continue to develop this paper.

Oh, this paper. There is so much to do. Thank God for the road map session tomorrow morning with Andy.

That's tomorrow. Today, the three sessions I attended covered Essential Strategies for Seeking Grant Dollars, Why Engaging Volunteers is Good Business Strategy and How to Do It, and Vendor Recruitment and Retention. The first one was OK - I picked up a few things - but the second two were a wealth of info - plenty of notes on the second, and a video from the third.

The more I soak up, however, the more inadequate I feel to lead the charge for this paper. I know I can "do" the paper - it's this foundational stuff, this strategic planning, budgeting, donation-seeking, people-managing, networking stuff, that has me gasping. Vision and mission? No problem - I've loads of ideas and goals. Producing the paper? No problem. It's all the stuff in between. My G-d, what have I gotten myself into?

But, my G-d, I have never felt so useful before.