Although it has been a while since I attended a two-day training from The Management Center (TMC), entitled “Managing to Change the World” (cough it was in 2023 cough), I did want to share about it. I hadn’t heard of TMC before a friend recommended it, but they are a Black-run, multicultural company focused on helping non-profits generally, and social justice and educational equity organizations specifically, run effectively and approach management in collaborative, equitable ways. I wanted to work on my supervision skills, and this was a great opportunity that aligned with important values.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a two-day virtual training, but the facilitator Gina did a great job of mixing up things like throwing folks into small breakout groups of two or three regularly, lecturing, having people come off mute to share, etc. The people I met in my breakout rooms often worked at small non-profits on the operations or administrative side; it was very cool to hear about the work that they were doing to change the world, per the training’s title, and what their day to day work and challenges were like. It was also useful to have to explain archives work to new audiences. The training also came with a workbook that is chock full of concepts, drawings, and worksheets to repurpose; I have attended trainings with helpful workbooks before, but this one is by far the one I’ve referred to the most.

TMC offers a variety of trainings for management as well as employees, and many of my fellow workshop attendees were familiar with a recent book, Management in a Changing World. Even if you don’t attend a training, I recommend taking a look at all the resources they offer online, helpfully organized into a number of categories (metadata at work, heart eyes). Whenever I go in there to browse, I find something I didn’t know I was looking for! Tanya and I have been using a revised version of their check-in document for our regular meetings and we’ve both found it useful.