It's important (obviously) for your logo to look great when it gets displayed, whether on a banner at an event, on a partner's website, or in your own communications. But I often see logos that are don't scale well or started at low resolution, and the results aren't pretty. Here are some tips to ensure that your logo shines no matter where it is used.

If you've ever started a new job and discovered your new employer wasn't prepared for you from the moment you walked in the door, you know that the impression you make on an employee's first day can send messages about culture and expectations right from the start. Here are three concrete ways you can ensure a new staff member's first few weeks go smoothly.

It seems like every other day we hear a news story about a major site being hacked and users' information and passwords being stolen. A new service called onetimesecret.com won't stop hackers but it will make a common thing we all do much more secure. How often do you have to send passwords, logins, or other sensitive information via email or IM? All the time, right? Well, onetimesecret.com is an ingenious way of making that task much more secure.

If you find yourself struggling, ask if you're engaging your courage, compassion, and curiosity in your work. I find that when I'm not getting the results I want, it's almost always because I'm leaving out one of the 3 C's.

Ever delegated work and then been surprised when the final product doesn't match up with what you thought you assigned? there's a simple way to ensure that the person you delegate to understands the project the way you do: Ask. When you're done making a new assignment, just a simple "Can you tell me what you're taking away here?" can help to ensure you're on the same page before your staff member spends hours on something that doesn't line up with what you have in mind.

It happens almost every day. Your boss wants to meet about a new project, your sister wants to grab lunch, and your work team wants to have a group meeting about budgeting. Everyone sends email text with suggested dates and times and it's on you to balance the calendar, manually checking dates and arranging the logistics.

If you've ever taken a writing class, you've heard the phrase "write what you know." Well, there's a similar edict for effective trainers: teach from experience. In my experience, the trainers who are most impactful incorporate their personal and professional experience into the fabric of their training. I already encouraged you to start with your Story of Self, but here are a few other key ways to integrate your experience into the training (as well as reasons the practice works)

Progressives are often frustrated that our messaging and ideas aren't breaking through, whether it's in a meeting with a campaign target, to members on your email list, or in the traditional media. There are a lot of reasons this might happen, but there are a few I rarely hear mentioned: sometimes the point just isn't relevant to the audience, is too complicated, or uses language that is difficult for the audience to understand.

When you're gearing up to trick-or-treat, it's important to prepare (whether you're pretending to be young enough or taking your kids). No one wants to spend the evening knocking on a bunch of Not Homes, whether you're canvassing for a cause or for candy. So here are a few ways to maximize your loot, using a familiar tool: the VAN!

And that, in a nutshell, is why we launched the Tip of the Day last February. We're not all data wizards or masters of Excel, but someone in the community is. So we decided to create a platform to share community knowledge, from technical tips in Data, to New Media strategies, Field tricks, management systems, and much more.

Have you ever been trapped in a seemingly endless email thread? Have you ever sent an "urgent" email and waited what seemed like forever for a response? Have you ever been offended by the tone of an email? I know how powerless it feels to be beholden to your inbox. That's why I encourage you to remember a device that has been the friend of organizers for decades - the phone.

Many times on campaigns, we end up with data in Excel spreadsheets from all kinds of sources. The spreadsheets often have different formatting, and it can be hard to pull the information together in a usable and consistent way. One I use a lot is Text to Columns, which takes information that’s all jammed in one column, and you want to break it out into multiple columns.