photo by David F. Choy, UMD Project Management Center for Excellence

Nonprofits and Project Managers Come Together

The sixth annual Project Management Day of Service (PMDOS), which took place last month at the University of Maryland’s Project Management Center for Excellence, brought together 84 Project Managers, and representatives from 21 nonprofits, to work on 22 projects, ranging from social media planning and management, to funding and staffing, marketing, and even planning a funk dance party in Washington, DC. Nonprofits included Barry Farm, an affordable housing initiative; Loudon Cares, which works to connect citizens of Loudon County with local nonprofits; Pizzazz, which provides education and training for low-income residents of DC.

Rizwan Oskoui, MPS Consultant, and Volunteer Management Lead for PMDOS, was very pleased with this year’s event. “Working with our staff and event attendees really highlights to me the magic that structured project management, coupled with creative thinking can produce. The DC PMDOS event is an amazing opportunity to bring together project managers and non-PMs who are looking to leverage their skills to help nonprofits become more effective.   It’s heartening to see so many of the nonprofits come back year after year, because they value the assistance they get. “

MPS President, Kendall Lott, is the CEO of Project Management for Change, the organization that runs these events all over the world. He noted that this year in DC, “we had a lot more nonprofits asking how they could get more help throughout the year.  This is exciting as we knew we wanted to provide that kind of support but haven’t yet been able to build out a model for regular engagement.  This input from the 6th PMDOS means that this is a real service, and now something we need to turn to in our new strategies for outreach.  We need more volunteers in to help us with this at the management level to extend the effort that Riz and others have made over the years…calling all takers!”

If you are interested in volunteering, or for more information, go to https://www.pm4change.org/.