At the beginning of March, I received a message from a Japanese colleague of mine - Ayumi. She studied fundraising/philanthropy at Indiana University and had an internship at the United Way of Central Indiana while I was still working there. She spent nine months in the US, then returned with all of her new knowledge to Tokyo.
She works for a Japanese non profit that helps create non profit legislation. (If you want to know more about her organization, type http://www.npoweb.jp/ into Google Search. Then you can see the website link, but click on "Translate this page"!) She asked me to write an article about Prospect Research from my perspective. I did that, but when I asked if we might meet in Tokyo, she asked if I would give a presentation on Prospect Research.
Well, some things I just can't say no to. So, here's the flyer for my presentation! I'm not quite sure what it says, other than 'Lindsay Platt', the date and that it cost 2000 yen to hear me!
Her office was located in the ASK building in Shinjuku. Joe was nice enough to come with me this day, so he's the official photographer.
Their offices were on the 9th floor.
Here we are in the conference room. It was a small crowd, but a very interested one! Most of the attendees spoke or understand some level of English. Ayumi did translate everything however!
When we first got to the conference room and were setting up, as usual, I knocked something over! In the states, there is so much room and people (or rather, me) tend to use their hands to speak. Joe thought this was very funny and decided to take numerous pictures of my hand gestures.
There's Ayumi, translating for me.
It was a lot of fun to talk about fundraising and prospect research again. The Japanese were a very kind audience. I didn't realize that non profits are a fairly new addition to the Japanese -- they have only been around for about 25 years. They asked interesting and insightful questions and shared some funny stories. My favorite was a woman who approached me afterwards; she liked that I used to require a "research request" form from staff at UWCI. She said she is always asked for information and projects (as she was in charge of the database) and it was hard for her to actually do her job! I hope she is able to come up with some sort of request form!
It was a lot of fun to talk about fundraising and prospect research again. The Japanese were a very kind audience. I didn't realize that non profits are a fairly new addition to the Japanese -- they have only been around for about 25 years. They asked interesting and insightful questions and shared some funny stories. My favorite was a woman who approached me afterwards; she liked that I used to require a "research request" form from staff at UWCI. She said she is always asked for information and projects (as she was in charge of the database) and it was hard for her to actually do her job! I hope she is able to come up with some sort of request form!
I'm not sure when my article will be published on the website (they are still translating it into Japanese), but I'll let you know when it is!
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