Sunday, March 20, 2005

Different Country, Same Issues

First post from London for this year. What a vibrant city, even on a grey day.

Got into a wonderful conversation with my driver in from Heathrow. He and his wife are Croation, both left during the war and were "saved" in his words by a local Croation NGO during the worst of the fighting. He thinks nonprofits (NGOs) are terrific.

Another conversation with three people (all Brits) next to me in a cafe here in Islington started about my crutches and injury and soon moved on to charities, as they are called here in the U.K. They were concerned about the U.K. looking bad compared to the US in relation to people's willingness to contribute time as well as money to charitable causes. I suggested to ways to help more and places to contact.

The Russell Commission here has studied the issue of getting more youth involved in charitable causes. Their report is found at the link above. The findings are SO similar to the issues in the States it makes my head hurt.

I give my master class in marketing tomorrow, and then I have a free day to cruise. Wednesday is the big NCVO Trustee conference where I'll be doing a workshop on generation change, sitting on an expert panel, and in general, hanging out with good people. I was the keynote at this conference in 2004, so expect to see many familiar faces.

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