As I waded through nearly a foot of water at the curb while exiting a cab at SFO, rain pouring down my collar, all I could think is “What possessed me to book a 4PM Sunday flight to Pittsburgh?” But I knew the answer. It was for a good cause, of course, the biennial meeting of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, where my colleague Heather Gowdy and I will be leading a session on our latest research initiative NonprofitNext.

GEO’s conference is my favorite gathering because it is a group of people who understand the importance of building strong, sound organizations, not just funding exciting new programs. Still, going out in this curiously wild April storm seemed a bit crazy. So I was all the more surprised when I was joined at the gate by roughly a dozen Bay Area foundation folks, all waiting for the same flight.

GEO is an important part of the nonprofit sector. I must be one of a very small number of people who have attended every one of its meetings, going back, if memory serves, to 1998. The first gathering of a few dozen people in Monterey has mushroomed into an international conference with several hundred foundation leaders and capacity builders.

Despite the dramatic loss of funding for organizational effectiveness issues over the past decade GEO has grown. It publishes important resources, including our Due Diligence Tool, and in addition to the biennial gathering, convenes smaller specialized meetings on many topics. GEO enriches the sector, even if getting to the conference requires traveling through rain, sleet, or snow, it’s always worth it.

Tags: conference, foundations, GEO, nonprofit, Nonprofit Sector

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Consulting for Nonprofits, Foundation effectiveness, Nonprofit Sector, Organizational Effectiveness, Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.