Who are the customers? To what sectors of the public do they market products or services?
TACS markets services to the staff, board members, and other volunteers of nonprofit organizations, as well as individual consultants, foundations, and individual donors/supporters.
How are employees trained to improve their abilities or to prepare for promotion?
This varies, and is pretty informal. There’s not much in the budget for professional development these days. However TACS is a ‘go-to’ source for many questions/issues in the nonprofit sector, and hosts over 100 trainings (from financial management to technology solutions) each year, so there’s a lot of on-the-job training. In my own situation, TACS has been quite accommodating of my school schedule and allowed me to run my internship through my current position–which I find encouraging and supportive. In addition, we partner with a few technology training providers which provide sporadic training opportunities.
How is productivity measured?
At a team level, mostly by income generated through program-specific services. Our (organizational development & technology) consultants charge for their services at an hourly or flat fee, so their productivity is measured through their billables. Our training team’s productivity is measured by the income they generate through registrations. Our association’s productivity is measured by number of memberships, and therefore by value of benefits (better value=more memberships).
(Note to self: include business model here)
Describe what you observe as the overall morale of the employees.
It’s been a really hard year. The executive transition coupled with the economy has meant lots of uncertainty. Up until very recently, there’s been little clarity about the organizational direction, and with budget realities there have been several lay-offs. I think morale is up and down. Things are changing–there’s much more leadership at the board level and our direction is becoming more clear–my sense is that we are all trying to figure out where, if, and how we’ll all fit into the new model.
What suggestions could you offer for improvement?
Hmm. That’s really tough, as we’re in such transition it’s hard to say what to improve on. There are a lot of issues currently being addressed (e.g. at a macro level the clarification of direction so that we can define goals and work to meet them, and at a micro level our frustrating content management systems), and it feels kind of wait and see and contribute what you can to find a good solution. I think as a whole we could definitely use some team building. And maybe a quick blast of afternoon yoga in the conference room.
Hours worked/tasks performed:
4 hours, 1-20
To prep for the style guide, I am organizing our logo files. Wow, there were lots in several places. Many with different characteristics. Archived several and tried to get a handle on color management and which file formats performed in which situations.
4 hours, 1-21
Updates on membership forms. Address print quality of logo. Logo, when inserted into MS Word doc and printed on laser printer, was blurry and had a bit of a shadow. Tested .eps, .jpeg, .pdf, .tif, and .png files. PNG was the winner. Still not sure though if it has to do with preparation of logo file, the MS platform, or print settings.
4 hours, 1-22
More updates to membership forms. Troubleshoot more printing issues. Argh! Why is font from InDesign printing heavy? One page of form was created as MS Word doc and saved to .pdf; the other created in InDesign and exported to pdf. PDFs were merged; the Word doc side prints fine but the InDesign side prints heavy–like the ink bleeds. But it prints fine directly from InDesign. I spent time with the printer, pdf, and InDesign preference settings–cannot for the life of me figure out what the issue is. Is it color management? Is it the font? Is it an Adobe setting?