The Assiniboine College Foundation is hosting a free professional networking afternoon to launch a new Rural Manitoba Philanthropy Network on Wednesday of this week.

This network of community like-minded people is comprised of paid employees, board members, volunteers or donors to charitable organizations in rural Manitoba. The half-day professional development event includes two sessions followed by a reception, this being ACC's first at hosting such an event.

Advancement Officer for Major Gifts for the ACC Foundation, Beth Proven, says the formation of the group was inspired by Proven's membership in professional fundraising organizations, such as the Canadian Association of Gift-Planners and the Association of Fundraising Professionals, but wishing to give it a local/rural perspective here in the southwest, similar but different.  A resource that is unique to rural areas outside the Winnipeg city limits. 

She shared her thoughts with fellow ACC leaders and the event was launched, and quickly filled up!

"The Network is a community of practice, so it's just a group of like-minded people who want to learn more about their sector, share best practices and basically just raise the capacity of what we're doing in the charitable sector in Brandon and rural areas," explains Proven.

Organizations in attendance will learn more ways on how they can tap into more resources, and how to better navigate through government requirements and tax procedures.

"Most charities do fundraise so some of professional development will be in the areas of fundraising," explains Proven. "Virtually all charities work with Boards of Directors or Governors, so some of our discussions would be about working with volunteers, compliance issues with Revenue Canada when you're in a charity, there's ethics when you're dealing with raising money.  So, it just depends on the speakers that we bring in at any given time."

Proven says this first event aimed to share significant information with participants, but also to test the waters so to speak, to see if there was interest.  Proven says the maximum they could facilitate for this first meeting was 35 due to room size at the college.  It was full within only a few days of when word got out such an event was coming to Brandon.

"So, there's definitely a demand for this kind of discussion," she adds, "and we hope that this is something that we can build on and grow."

Proven adds this will be the first for this specialized networking group and encourages interested parties in future seminar/workshop type events to contact her at the ACC office in Brandon.

ACC Beth Proven office:  204-725-8700 ext #6695

Please listen to more with Beth Proven below as she shares more details on the launch of the Rural Manitoba Philanthropy Network below!