Hi {{first_name}},

Nothing really prepares you for what it feels like to walk into the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and see your company's name on the Jumbotron.

Not at a Nets or Liberty game-- I'll let you know when that happens. The Barclays Center was the venue for Brooklyn Org's Spark Prize Breakfast this year, and I was proud to support the event as a Brooklyn-based business.

The Spark Prize honors five organizations annually that are performing outstanding work in Brooklyn, and comes with a $100,000 award. At the event, we heard from both visionary founders and leaders, and the people whose lives have been changed by their work. 

Brooklyn Org continues to demonstrate what a community foundation can look like when it invests boldly in local leaders and the organizations strengthening their neighborhoods. The work they are doing across the borough is tremendous, and the morning was a powerful reminder of what becomes possible when philanthropy truly shows up for community.

We have some great stuff lined up for you today, from inspiration to mentor wisdom to some super specific AI advice:

Shall we?

Mike

Collaborative posts and articles are honestly some of the pieces I enjoy writing most. Getting to work with some of my favorite people in the industry makes the process that much more fun.

I was thrilled to get contributions from field leaders like Jim Langley, Tasha Van Vlack, Tim Sarrantonio, Kenya Roberts, CFRE, Sonia Saleh, and Elizabeth Lucy.

I really enjoyed putting together this piece on stewardship and how simple acts can make a meaningful difference in your donor relationships and help strengthen donor retention within your organization.

Check out the full article on my website here.

Sarah Pita shares this: “When I was just a young grant writer, one of my first clients was Nancy Almond, founder and executive director of Estes Valley Investment in Childhood Success (EVICS) in Estes Park, Colorado. Nancy was a dream to work with— deeply knowledgeable about the needs facing families with young children in the community, and widely connected within the field of early childhood education.”

Are you a Claude user? 

Claude Cowork is a great new feature that recently became available in a research preview (early beta version) for all paid subscribers. It works specifically within your desktop files, and you control what it has access to.

For this project, identify the messiest, most inconsistently organized folder on your computer– basically the equivalent of your kitchen junk drawer (see above.) Your first step is to make a copy for Claude to work on, and take anything out that you don’t want AI to see. You’ll then give Cowork permission to access the folder and then tell it what you want it to do.

A very detailed walkthrough is in the article. To me, it felt genuinely revelatory. Let me know how it goes! 

Read the full article here.

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