New Years Resolutions

I have many, both personal and professional, and high on my list is to blog on a regular basis, about interesting topics in and around Austin. Last year I became bogged down trying to keep my blogging narrowly focused on real estate, which resulted in sporadic blogging as best. This month, while I was working on my goals for 2011 I realized that although I sell homes for a living, what I really sell to my clients is the Austin lifestyle.

This morning I attended the Leadership Austin's Engage Speaker Series. This year's theme is "Innovate or Else" and topics have already included a Legislative Preview and Race Relations. This mornings topic was Innovative Relationships: Non-Profit/For Profit Collaborations and was one of the most interesting and inspiring panels of the past 2 years. Justin Evans with CapitalOne Bank and Matt Kouri with Greenlights for NonProfit Success were the panelists, with the always entertaining Jim Walker (director of Sustainability at UT Austin) as moderator.

Thinking outside the box and creating collaborative relationships between for-profit and non-profit corporations is such an obvious solution that it's amazing that we don't do this more often. For-profit employee engagement with non-profits help create long term relationships and can be a win-win for both the for-profit and non-profit organizations. So can collaborations between similar non-profits (pet adoption agencies for example) banding together and approaching a single donor for a long term relationship.

Upcoming Engage Speaker Series topics include mental health, artistic innovation and redistricting. Interested? Breakfasts are held at Chez Zee once a month.

Back to resolutions, I'm going to "Innovate" in 2011, both personally and professionally. What are you going to do?