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Archive for November, 2015
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Wednesday, November 18th, 2015Blue Skies, Green Hell
Tuesday, November 17th, 2015
Blue Skies Green Hell
In the first edition of Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Small Businesses (then titled Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business Guide), I wrote of the power of emotion in recovering from disaster. And that includes reliving your experience of a major disaster when other events trigger those memories. So for those of us who were in the World Trade Center or elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, the media coverage of the terrorist attacks in Paris can be quite stressful. There are too many similarities between our experiences; for example, you see psychologists on the television news advising parents as to what they should say to their children who are struggling to understand what happened.
So I decided to follow my own advice and take a break. Not long after 9-11, I visited an arboretum in New Jersey and found the respite afforded by the beauty of nature to help deal with the stress of my experience. This evening, I joined the ladies of “Read Read Wine” at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island to welcome author Marilyn Lazzari-Wing, author of Blue Skies, Green Hell. We had an engaging conversation with the author over wine and dinner. “Read Read Wine” members describe the group as a “wine club with a reading problem”.
Blue Skies, Green Hell tells the story of a whirlwind romance that began when the author visited her sister in Venezuela where she received a marriage proposal from Frank Lazzari at their very first meeting. Lazzari was setting up a bush pilot service and so did not have time for a more conventional courtship. The author accepted the proposal; two weeks later, the couple was married. Together, they challenged the odds of flying single engine aircraft over Venezuela’s vast wilderness to deliver supplies to remote and otherwise inaccessible communities. The book is an account of their adventures in the air and on the ground.
But what I found even more engaging than the book was the author herself. Marilyn Lazzari-Wing is a force of nature. At 86 years young, she is eager to continue learning and even returned to flight school to refresh her pilot’s license. She has an infectious joy and zest for living. And I want to thank her and the ladies of “Read Read Wine” for a great evening of conversation and wine and a respite from what was an otherwise stressful week. I recommend this book wholeheartedly. And if you survived a disaster, you may find the news media reports of the events in Paris to be overwhelming at times, so take care of yourself. Everyone needs a break from time to time to recharge so we keep our stamina to help others.
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Monday, November 16th, 2015This is a test.
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Sunday, November 15th, 2015This is a test.
Book of the Week: SheVenture
Saturday, November 14th, 2015
My week-end business reading is She Venture: Success Strategies for Female Entrepreneurs, a book for women entrepreneurs authored by Michele Markey. Michele is Vice President of FastTrac, a global provider of educational programs that equip aspiring and established entrepreneurs with the business skills and insights, tools, resources, and networks to start and grow successful businesses. Kauffman FastTrac was created by the Kauffman Foundation, the largest foundation whose mission is to advance entrepreneurship as a key to growing economies and expanding human welfare. I completed two programs of FastTrac: FastTrac New Venture (for start-ups) and FastTrac Growth Venture (for more established businesses eager to scale). I participated in FastTrac when it was offered by New York City’s Department of Small Business Services. I cannot say enough good things about Fast Trac; I found it to be a very effective program to provide a blueprint for capacity building and business growth. I often refer to my Fast Trac workbooks and my FastTrac classmates have become a network of trusted peer advisors.
And I cannot say enough good things about Michele. She is passionate about increasing women’s participation in the global economy and serves as a speaker for the U.S. State Department’s program on women’s entrepreneurship. I really enjoyed this book. It is chock-full of helpful information and motivational messages. I should also add, in the interest of full disclosure, that my business, Prisere LLC, is part of the GEW 50, the 50 start-up businesses deemed to be the world’s most innovative by the Kauffman Foundation and celebrated during Global Entrepreneurship Week. I have also been a featured speaker on FastTrac’s webinar series for small business authors. So I share the enthusiasm for entrepreneurship that defines the Kauffman Foundation and the FastTrac program. I encourage you to read this book. It is always helpful to step back from the business and invest in continuing education and learning. I try to read one business book each week as part of that effort.
Assessing the Scale and Impact of Disaster Philanthropy
Friday, November 13th, 2015
Monitoring Disaster Philanthropy
The Center for Disaster Philanthropy has published the second edition of Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy 2015: Data to Drive Decisions along with online tools, including a dashboard and an interactive funding map. The online tools enable users to monitor contributions to support relief by disaster type, disaster assistance strategy and geographic areas impacted. The report and the online tools aim to help donors, government agencies, news media and other stakeholders understand the scale and scope of global disaster-related philanthropy. This information can inform more effective philanthropy by avoiding duplication of efforts and misuse of scarce resources.
According to Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy 2015, a total of $27.6 billion was given in response to disasters and humanitarian crises in 2013. Most of that sum was directed towards immediate response and relief efforts. While the largest share of the total was contributed by government donors and agencies, with the U.S. Federal Emergency Agency alone accounting for $11 billion, the report also found that the largest thousand U.S. foundations awarded $116.9 million, with an additional $60.1 million provided by smaller foundations, public charities, and international foundations. Outside the U.S., aid from the twenty-nine members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee totaled $13.6 billion, while another $2.4 billion was awarded by other donors and multilateral organizations.
The Center for Disaster Philanthropy is to be commended for collecting, analyzing and publishing this data, as it informs strategic decision making and may increase the effectiveness of disaster relief aid. However, and this bears repeating, it is a better use of funds to prevent and mitigate disasters than to respond to them. The challenge is that disaster mitigation efforts can be more difficult to assess and donors do not have the same visibility for such efforts as they do for the powerful (and generous) work of providing relief.
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Thursday, November 12th, 2015This is a test.
Honoring Our Veterans Today
Wednesday, November 11th, 2015
Meals and Deals
Today is Veteran’s Day and typically on this date, I blog about ways to support veteran-owned businesses. Veterans, according to both the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Small Business Administration, are the most entrepreneurial group, accounting for 11 per cent of all business owners. I recently came across a posting on the website Military Wallet titled “Veterans Day Meals and Deals”. The posting lists restaurants offering free meals to veterans today, with proof of their military service. The list is dominated by large chain restaurants, such as Chili’s and California Pizza Kitchen, who should be commended for their generosity.
Small businesses should show their support, too, and seek to be included on this list so veterans know they are welcome to receive a free meal at locally owned restaurants. I honored Veterans Day by offering a workshop on small business disaster resilience to local veterans – particularly important information to convey given the number of National Guardsmen who serve on the weekends while running their businesses during the workweek and must put plans in place to enable their businesses when they are called to active duty overseas.
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Tuesday, November 10th, 2015This is a test.
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Monday, November 9th, 2015This is a test.