By Hannah Gordon
Assistant News Editor
Today, the third annual Cattaraugus Region Community Foundation’s Nonprofit Networking Day will welcome keynote speaker Bill Collins, ’76. Collins, a member of the St. Bonaventure Board of Trustees, is a principal owner of Travers Collins, a marketing communications firm in Buffalo. He will address nonprofit organizations in the community.
The event will take place in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Collins’ address, titled “Telling Your Organization’s Story,” will be the first session for local organizations to attend.
Collins said he hopes to bring valuable information to them.
“Nonprofits are challenged to effectively communicate to their constituents and prospects the story of who they are, what they do, who they do it for and why it’s important,” Collins said. “Hopefully, I’ll have some advice they can use to do it better.”
Along with the Cattaraugus Region Community Foundation, St. Bonaventure and the Greater Olean Chamber of Commerce are also sponsoring the event. For the past two years, St. Bonaventure has co-hosted, giving all levels of administrators, their board officers and non-profits an opportunity to engage with their regional colleagues, according to Mary Driscoll, vice president for advancement.
“Executive Director Karen Buchheit and I have known each other for almost 30 years, so I’m delighted that we can work together to provide area non-profits a day of educational activities,” Driscoll said.
Members of the community can anticipate an educational experience as they gain knowledge from professional workers.
“The foundation sponsors this event to help bring nonprofits together to learn from these excellent speakers and also from networking with each other,” said Karen Niemic Buchheit, executive director of the foundation. “It is much more feasible for the nonprofits in our region to attend a local event like this at a very reasonable cost — which allows some to send a team of people to cover both sets of sessions.”
Early-bird registration, prior to Oct. 23, cost $40; after that, the registration fee was $50.
“The cost is lower, and they can attend in one day and still get back to the office at the end of the day,” Buchheit said. “This is important for some that have small offices that need to be staffed. The foundation not only awards grants to help these nonprofits, but offers programs like this to help the nonprofits ‘build capacity’ – to become stronger – so they can better serve their constituents and our region.”
Collins said he believes Networking Day is as essential to the organizations that attend as those organizations are to the community.
“Non-profits, such as those who’ll be represented on Friday, are the backbone of any community — they provide valuable services and help to improve our quality of life and make our communities better places in which to live and oftentimes they do so on shoestring budgets,” Collins said. “Networking Day is an opportunity to learn, to recharge batteries, hear new ideas and to draw on the energy of colleagues and peers.”
Although Collins has never attended the event, he said he’s excited to play a role in the presentation Friday.
“I look forward to participating and hope I can give everyone their money’s worth,” he said.
