PMI Minnesota members selected United Way as their #1 pick for a charitable donation in the annual membership survey.  As part of the 2015 charitable giving campaign PMI Minnesota will make a donation to the United Way, on behalf of the membership, in the amount of $500. 

Member responses to the charity selection question showed there is high level of interest about which charities PMI Minnesota supports.   Almost one-half of the people responding to the question added a charity not in the pre-determined list.  The range of other charities noted was broad and showed our members are charitable and have widely varied charitable interests; an important learning that will inform future identification and selection of charities.    

Second Harvest Heartland is the food shelf which will receive food gathered at the October dinner meeting (Monday, October 19th at the Crowne Plaza in Plymouth, MN). Bring a non-perishable food item and receive a coupon for $10 off the price of a future PMI Minnesota dinner meeting.  

Donations to member selected charities are one part of PMI Minnesota charitable giving.  Project management education is our primary charitable activity.  We contribute to scholarships locally and nationally, and are actively working to form partnerships with local K-12 education systems to deliver and help fund project management instruction. 

One of our annual donations for education goes to the Project Management Institute Education Foundation (PMIEF).  PMI Minnesota has a long history with PMIEF.  The Robert Yourzak scholarship awarded by the Foundation annually is named after PMI Minnesota’s first president, and funded by an endowment from our chapter.  Our donation supports PMIEF development of project management education materials.  Any member of PMI has access to the Foundation’s materials; see www.pmief.org.

Thank you to the survey respondents who provided information about local schools interested in working with PMI Minnesota.  We will contact those organizations and update you on our education-related charitable activity in future newsletters. 

Finally, giving to charity takes effort.  As PMI Minnesota grows education-related giving, we will need more volunteers for relationship management, administration, content development and content delivery.   If you have an interest in volunteering your time to help in any of these areas, please write to volunteercoordinator@pmi-mn.org.