- Professional Development
- Technical Assistance
- Resources
- Engagement
This workshop is eligible for 3 hours in the Financial Management OR Organizational Management Tracks of the Certificate in Nonprofit Management.
Approval Pending for 3.0 CFRE credits.
Workshop description:
This workshop will focus on the foundational components of Operational Excellence—effective teams, integrated technology systems, and efficient workflow—and will leave participants with a renewed vision of what it means to operate at the highest levels to achieve solid program outcomes. The session will explore how to identify if an organization is on the right track to achieve operational excellence across all functions and, if not, how to most effectively shift course.
Key concepts include:
Target Audience:
Staff in finance or other relevant leadership positions at nonprofit organizations.
Presenter's Bio:
Gretchen Upholt, an experienced staff and program manager, has expertise in training, capacity building, research, and program and volunteer management. Before joining the FMA team, Gretchen served as the head of the Volunteer Department at the Thabyay Education Network in Thailand. In that role Gretchen developed a strategic plan to improve monitoring and evaluation and program management in her department. She also served on the leadership team for the organization, where she reviewed and approved budgets for the organization’s 22 programs and worked on a plan to restructure the organization’s finance and operations staffing and systems.
Before her work in Thailand, Gretchen served as a Community Development Peace Corps in Ukraine, where she designed project frameworks, wrote grants, and led a committee tasked with making funding decisions for USAID funded grants. With a widely diverse background, Gretchen also has experience working on the corporate citizenship team at the TCC Group, designing and implementing a pilot research study on nonprofit talent costs for the Talent Philanthropy Project, as a project manager with the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, and as Chorus Manager for The Choral Arts Society of Washington.
Gretchen holds a Masters of Public Administration in Public and Nonprofit Management from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, where she was a Head Teaching Colleague for the core finance and management classes. Gretchen continues her relationship with Wagner as an Adjunct Teaching Colleague, teaching classes on a variety of topics, including budgeting, indirect costing, and financial statement creation and analysis.
She received her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Arts and Cultural Management from American University in Washington, DC. She maintains her love of music as a chorister with The New York Choral Society and speaks Ukrainian and some Spanish and Russian.
Event Logistics:
03/07/2018 | 
9:30 am - 12:30 pm