Montana Nonprofit Association seeks to provide high impact training to all nonprofit leaders, staff, and volunteers in Montana.
Accessibility
MNA’s goal is to lower barriers to participation for all individuals. If you’d like to request accommodations including but not limited to sign language interpreters, language translation, mobility requests, slides received ahead of time, or other accessibility requirements, please note in your registration or directly contact MNA staff at srogala@mtnonprofit.org or (406) 449-3717 at least two weeks prior to the event. Conferences and other large events may have earlier deadlines for accessibility requests, as stated on the event’s registration policies page. We will do our best to meet all accessibility requests.
Scholarships and Sliding Scale Registrations
While MNA earns revenue from our workshops and events to sustain our work, we never want financial need to be a barrier to participation. We offer consistent no-cost trainings and resources to nonprofit leaders through our monthly MNA Member Calls and Resource Library. With the purchase of an All Access Pass every member of your organization can participate in any virtual training throughout the year. We also offer scholarships for all of our trainings and sliding scale participation options for select events. Scholarship applications are here, or reach out to srogala@mtnonprofit.org to learn more.
Cancellation and Refunds
Things happen. Whether it’s roads, illness, weather, or other unforeseen events, we know there are times when you just have to cancel. Here are our cancellation policies:
In Person Events:
Seven Days in Advance: We offer a full refund minus $25 for any cancellations submitted up to seven days in advance of training.
Six Days – 24 Hours: If your cancellation is within a week up to the day before the event, we can offer a 50% refund upon request.
Day of + No Shows: Except in the case of extenuating circumstances, we are unable to offer refunds for cancellations made within 24 hours of the start date or those who contact the office during or after the event.
Substitutions: If you are not able to attend a training, we encourage sending another team member from your organization in your place. We will make this substitution at no cost.
Virtual Trainings Cancellation or Refund Policy: We do not offer refunds for virtual trainings, as opportunities are recorded and available for six months afterwards.
MNA Cancellation: We reserve the right to cancel any event or substitute presenters if needed. If we cancel an event, we will contact all registrants and give a full refund.
Request to Present
MNA hosts trainers from across the state, sector, and country on a variety of topics. If you are a practitioner, consultant, expert, or facilitator that is interested in sharing your work with our nonprofit audience, we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about upcoming opportunities. We put out calls for proposals throughout the year, which will also be posted here. We also invite you to join our community as an affiliate member to be featured in our Partners to Good Directory and be the first to know about upcoming presenting and training opportunities first.
Our staff does not have the capacity to handle all unsolicited presenting requests and cannot guarantee a response if you reach out to us personally.
Data and Privacy
In order to measure and evaluate our work to center belonging and equity, we periodically collect demographic data about our members, program users, and the nonprofit sector.
The following policy outlines MNA’s philosophy regarding demographic data collection, and our commitment to equity and privacy. Collecting data on demographics is essential to understanding the impact of our efforts to center belonging and equity. At the same time, we are committed to ensuring that demographic data remains private.
When and why do we ask for demographic information?
MNA asks for demographic information periodically, for individuals and organizations. We ask these questions most frequently in:
Anonymous feedback forms for trainings and events
Annual member surveys
Cohort entry surveys
We believe that in order to center belonging and equity, we have to be able to measure who is impacted, engaged, and involved in our work. As a membership association that serves both individuals and organizations, we are interested in understanding how well we meet the needs of a diverse range of people, nonprofits, and communities. Collecting demographic information assists in deepening this understanding. Understanding more about the composition of organizations and communities can help us direct resources more effectively.
Demographic information we collect adheres to our privacy policy. In aggregate, it will be reported back to members, funders, and in public information in order to stay accountable to our stated goals of inclusion, demonstrate data transparency, and inform organization goals and programs.
BIPOC Centered Organizations
Black, Indigenous, and People of Color led and serving organizations are historically underfunded and under-resourced, here in Montana and elsewhere. Being able to better understand and identify the needs of BIPOC led organizations is integral to centering belonging and equity. Defining BIPOC led organizations, however, is easier said than done. MNA has chosen to use the following definition when inviting organizations to self-identify:
An organization in which (1) at least half of the board of directors identifies as BIPOC, AND (2) whose executive director or half of senior leadership (decision-makers) identify as BIPOC, AND (3) whose mission statement and/or programs aim to predominately serve BIPOC communities.
For additional context on definitions of BIPOC, we recommend this resource from Mass Cultural Council. If you are self-identifying your organization on a form, please do not assume organizational members backgrounds or identities.
Rural Centered Organizations
Rural populations and organizations face barriers to accessing resources and are another target area in ensuring belonging and equity for all Montana organizations. While rural as defined by other agencies might encompass all Montana communities, we define rural centered organizations as:
An organization (1) primarily serving populations outside of the seven largest cities in Montana, OR (2) headquartered outside of the seven largest cities.*
*These cities are Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, Bozeman, Helena, Kalispell, and Butte.
Additional Organizational Characteristics
MNA may also collect information on communities served including ability/disability status, LGBTQIA2S+, and other characteristics to inform our understanding of these organizations.
Self-identifying organization questions may look like this:
Please indicate your organization:
Our organization is BIPOC centered and led.
Our organization primarily serves rural communities or is headquartered in a rural area.
Our organization is led by and serves people living with disabilities.
Our organization is led by and serves people who identify as LGBTQIA2S+.
Demographic Questions
When asking for individual demographic information, we will often ask for the following:
Gender
Race/Ethnicity
Age
These may be asked in the following format:
Age: Write-in
What is your Gender? (Select All that Apply)
Woman
Man
Cisgender
Non-Binary/Non-Conforming
Two-Spirit
Transgender
Prefer not to answer
Prefer to self-describe:
Definitions Boy/man: A gender identity born out of the gender binary. Boys/men have diverse gender expressions. Girl/woman: A gender identity born out of the gender binary. Girls/women have diverse gender expressions. Cisgender: The state of identifying with the sex and/or gender assigned to one at birth. Non-binary: The state of not identifying with either of the binary sex and/or gender options, i.e., male/female or man/woman. Non-conforming: Another term describing the state of not identifying with either of the binary sex and/or gender options, i.e., male/female or man/woman. Transgender: The state of not connecting to or identifying with the sex and/or gender assigned to one at birth. Two-spirit: An identity used by many Indigenous folks that describes their gender and/or sexuality, and role within community.
What is your race/ethnicity? (select all that apply)
The Montana Nonprofit Association (MNA) is committed to respecting privacy. This privacy policy governs our collection and use of personal and business information collected from members and visitors to our website, through our email and regular mail correspondence, telephone calls, and faxes, and reflects our policies toward privacy in respect to all other means of gathering and disseminating data.
Our policy is to use any and all data collected by any means, whether through the internet, email, our online database and/or any interactive forms or surveys only for such uses that are important to our organization and our cause, in light of the professional standards required and expected from nonprofit organizations.
MNA reserves the right to change this policy whenever deemed necessary without prior notification. Should changes be made, they will be posted on this Privacy Notice with the date of revision.
Information posted about our members on the website consists only of organization name and city. We do, however, maintain internal lists of members and contacts. Because your physical mail and e-mail addresses are confidential, we never share either type of list with outside parties, and only key MNA personnel and certain technical contractors are allowed access to the areas of the computer systems in which we store our lists. Lists are accessed only for the purpose of upgrading our computer systems or distributing MNA newsletters, publicity campaigns, alerts, correspondence, event notifications, or other professional communications that help us accomplish our mission as a nonprofit organization.
Visitors to the Website and Website Security
The MNA website collects information about each visitor to our website in these ways:
through your IP address
through cookies
through online forms for posting employment, events, and training items
through any correspondence you send us via mail to our online posted mailing address, our online listed emails, and through other forms not associated with the database
Detail about these methods of information collection follows:
IP Addresses
Your IP address does not reveal any personal information about you or your activities. Our web server host logs all IP addresses of all visitors to automate information collection concerning web traffic, usage, length of time visitors stayed, new visitors, entry and exit points, and the like. It is also used as statistical information for reporting and to find ways to improve web usability.
Cookies
Our website uses cookies to gather information about traffic and to enhance your visit to our site. A cookie is:
“A message given to a Web browser by a Web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.”
Definition from Webopedia at: http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/c/cookie.html, accessed 02/20/2004.
Cookies are used to customize web pages to provide the user with preferences. They can be deactivated in your browser if you wish by configuring your browser’s preferences not to accept them. No information gathered by any cookies we have on our site is used to disseminate information about your personal use of the Internet, nor is it ever used for any marketing or advertising purposes.
Online Forms
Online forms are generated by our database to gather information about you and your organization when you register as an author, post an employment opportunity, an event, or training. None of this information is shared with 3rd parties, except that which is intended to be shown on results pages as delineated on the form. If you post information that is available on the web, and wish to have it removed or corrected, please contact us, and we will comply with your request as soon as possible.
Correspondence
None of your contact information or any of your correspondence that you send via regular mail, online through forms, through email, or any other means is ever sold to third parties under any circumstances, and is used only to conduct our daily business in accomplishing our mission under our policies as a nonprofit entity.
MNA Sharing Practices
None of the information we collect is shared with any 3rd-party except as aggregated statistics for organizational performance reporting purposes, capturing and defining web traffic patterns, and website improvement. Information of this kind is never used to track or monitor individual users. Our purpose is to provide communications and collaboration with and among nonprofits, to improve the information flow to the nonprofit community, and to improve the content and usability of our website, programs, products, and services.
If you send us questions about our website content or any of our areas of operation, we may forward your request for information to parties who would be able to assist you, or we may respond to you with that information in kind. You may at any time request us not to do so, and we will comply with that request, except as we are required by legal regulations or a court order to do so. It is unlikely we will contact you for verification, but we reserve the right to do so, should it become necessary. If you contact us by email or phone, we may ask you to verify your personal information so that we may respond to your inquiry with an assurance of your identity.
Our online database is protected by security put in place to safeguard data integrity and to prevent unauthorized access and/or use of its systems. These security measures have been designed to provide the user with reasonable protection of private information entrusted to our possession.
Opt In/Opt Out of MNA eNews
Sign up for MNA eNews by clicking the eNews Signup link on any page of the website. Once you are part of our contact/distribution lists, you can opt out any time you like by contacting MNA by email or by calling 406-449-3717.
Links to Other Websites
MNA serves as an information clearinghouse for nonprofits across the state, and our website links to many other websites at the national, regional, state, and local levels. Although we work hard to make sure we are linking to appropriate sites, and take full responsibility for the content of our site and our own privacy policy, we are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of sites to which we link.
Online Surveys
Occasionally we may ask you to participate in online surveys in the interest of accomplishing our mission. Such surveys are always on a volunteer basis, and it is not necessary for you to fill it out. Should you decide to fill a survey out, the types of information that are collected may include demographics such as zip codes, age group, services received or provided, etc. However, none of this information will be collected on any one individual or that can be used to identify any one individual. Survey information is used in the aggregate to improve our organizational and online services.
Corrections to Personal Information
If your personal or your organization’s information needs to be updated, please contact MNA by email or by calling 406-449-3717
Online Purchases
MNA may provide you with links to affiliate sites to allow you to purchase items related to nonprofit concerns and activities. Any transaction conducted as a result of those links is not conducted on our site, but is conducted on the site of the seller or the company managing the transaction through their online ecommerce functions. Therefore, MNA does not either see or collect any personal information about you, your transaction, and/or your credit card. All transactions and transaction details are between the purchaser and the company, and MNA makes no guarantee about these transactions. Buyers are responsible to be fully informed about sellers’ and/or companies managing online transactions policies, and will hold MNA harmless of all disputes between the buyer and the seller/transaction management company. Should MNA offer products and services for online purchase directly on MNA’s website in the future, MNA will update this policy as necessary.
Contacting Us
If you believe that your personal and/or private information is being used for a purpose other than its intended purpose, or if you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or the practices of our site, contact MNA at 406-449-3717, and MNA staff will address it immediately.