Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something, wrote an interesting piece recently for Fast Company magazine about what she learned years ago in poker rooms, and how it’s helped her run a not-for-profit:

You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em … Every poker hand is like a fund-raising pitch. Your first bet needs to be high enough to garner respect from the other players, but not so high that you scare them all away. It also can’t be so low that you make them think you’re desperate. And that first bet has less to do with your cards than with who’s at the table, where you’re seated (are you the first to bet? the last?), your reputation, and chutzpah. I’ve heard foundations say they ignore requests for under $100,000, but a first-time ask for $5 million won’t get a second look either. Every entrepreneur knows that chasing early funding is similar: What can you request with a straight face and still get a "yes"?

Know when to fold ‘em … You should fold about 80% of the hands you’re dealt. That’s hard to do — you get itchy to play or you’re tempted to see if you can string something together. Dress for Success was once asked to provide suits for women seeking restraining orders in court. We wanted to help. We had the inventory. But our purpose was to support women looking for work. Our board debated it passionately and decided that we shouldn’t muddy our mission by getting involved in something complex that we didn’t fully understand. That slope would have been too slippery — we wanted to say yes, but we had to say no.

Know when to walk away. And know when to run. Sometimes you suffer a bad beat and you have to move on. In the office context, this is especially relevant to personnel. Firing an employee is never fun, especially if you hired the person. It’s like starting out with a nice pair in the hole. You’re starting strong, but it never gets better. The best thing is to just cut your losses quickly. If that new employee turns out to be a loser, better to fail fast.

This has been the hardest lesson for me: I fall in love with cards, and I fall in love with potential in employees. Do Something, my current not-for-profit, once hired a successful tech entrepreneur to be our CTO. He took a huge pay cut, which made us feel lucky to have him. He wanted to redesign our site. This was a bad use of our time and resources, but he kept arguing for it. I’d be crazy to ditch the genius, right? Wrong. He didn’t understand our priorities or our agenda. Delaying a decision to cut bait is expensive and affects your head. We finally let the guy go.

You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table. There’ll be time enough for counting when the deal is done. Don’t gloat. Even when you win a gigantic pot, you don’t want your benefactor to feel cheated — or stupid — because you want to play with her again. And counting your chips is distracting. Every second spent examining your own stack is a second you’re not using to suss out others’ cards and nerves. In the not-for-profit context, droning on about how much money you’ve brought in doesn’t help bring in more. Plus, it’s off-topic. Your goal is to build a more effective organization and reach your group’s goals, right? So communicate your strategy for change, not how much change you’ve got.

New Jersey has an interesting predicament. It needs to dissolve some school districts because they, you know, don’t actually have any students. However, some residents are up in arms because doing away with the districts would boost their property taxes. Alan Greenblatt of Governing writes:

New Jersey has just 21 counties, but it has more than 600 school districts. Although merging small districts is a problem everywhere, New Jersey’s system is so out of whack that it borders on comedy. This year, the state took what it thought was an easy first step: closing districts that don’t actually operate any schools. But even that has proven to be controversial.

Several other states allow what are known as “non-operating districts.” These have school boards and part-time staffers who take care of paperwork—largely writing checks to a neighboring district for educating the kids they send over. But they have no students and no schools. “This was a prime target to go after,” says Lucille Davy, the state education commissioner. “Clearly, it’s not efficient to have a whole system in place, with employees who are not educating any children.”

But when the state moved in July to shut down half of its 26 non-operating districts, it ran into surprising resistance. Residents of those districts groused that their property taxes would shoot up because the funding formula would switch from a per-pupil calculation to one based on home values. “When you look at the individual situations,” says Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the state school board association, “you realize that most of these arrangements are in place because it was cheaper to send their students to another district.”

The state is allowing the non-operating districts to phase in tax increases over a multi-year period. State Representative John Burzichelli, a sponsor of the legislation that led to the closures, says that the increased bite these communities are now facing reflects the fact that they have been enjoying a tax haven. Writing a check to cover an individual pupil’s education didn’t reflect the neighboring district’s full costs, including its administrative burdens. As taxes rise within the shuttered districts, they should go down by a concomitant amount within the districts that actually hold classes. And the costs of staff and paperwork in the closed districts go away.

Fast Company magazine recently publicized some very interesting findings from viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella, who examined what types of Tweets are most likely to be retweeted. This is incredibly useful for businesses who are looking to get out the word about what they offer — and for bored college students who think everyone should know they are eating Zingers while watching the World Series of Poker: 

If I wanted (to) make sure this post did not go viral–according to the standards put forth by Hubspot viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella in "The Science of Retweeting"– I could promote it on Twitter by posting something like this:

"was bored watchin the game on tv and saw this thing about RTs…made me lol after i had really bad stomach cramps"

Note the lack of punctuation, the use of of slang and abbreviations, the limited vocabulary, and the awkward overshare–all traits that Zarrella can now definititively say would turn Twitter users off. How? Because the avid Twitter-er and author of the upcoming The Social Media Marketing Book spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets (which are usually symbolized with an "RT" on Twitter). He noted when they were posted, which words they used, whether or not they included links, and more. Then, he says, he compared the two groups to get the first "real window" into how ideas spread from person to person: "Retweets may seem like a small idea…but many of the lessons [they teach us] will be applicable to viral ideas in other mediums."

The full report is 22 pages, and won’t be available until tomorrow. But Zarrella offered me a sneak peak–via Twitter, no less. Below, his nine most effective ways to get retweeted on Twitter:

1. Link Up (But Don’t Use TinyURLs)
In Zarrella’s sample, links were three times more prevalent in RTs than normal tweets (19% to 57%), suggesting that their mere prescence could help buoy your bon mots. (Not sure whether that holds true for sporadic use of French terms.) But choose your URL shortener carefully: Newer, shorter services, such as bit.ly, ow.ly, and is.gd, were much likelier to get retweeted than older, longer services, such as TinyURL. Ouch…

Zarrella also discovered that asking people to "Please Retweet" actually works, and he came upon something that I’ve noticed based on our Hootsuite tracking, which is that Tweeters are much less active in the morning. The most RTs tend to come between 3 pm and 6 pm.

For the full report, read it here.

Bob Compton, one of Indiana’s most successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, has made a sizeable splash in national education circles with his production of "2 Million Minutes," a film that compares the lives of high school students in Carmel, Indiana, to those in China and India.

On October 6, the Indiana Chamber will host the Indiana premiere of "2 Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution," a sequel to the first film that highlights an open enrollment school in the U.S. that is teaching "average" children at an extraordinarily high academic level. This school, located in a largely low-income area, helps demonstrate that American students are capable of competing academically with the best in the world if given the right curriculum, the right teachers and the right inspiration and expectations. Learn more and view a short trailer for the film.

The Indiana premiere will be held on October 6 at 11:30 a.m. in the Indiana Chamber Conference Center. Compton will introduce the film and will lead a brief conversation following its showing. Lunch will also be provided. This is a free event but space is limited and reservations are required.

To learn more, send an e-mail to Amy Elifritz at aelifritz@indianachamber.com or call (317) 264-6865.

The health care debate will be in full swing when more than 70 Indiana business representatives converge on Washington (see earlier post) in midweek for the D.C. Fly-in.

Markups (committee review of a proposed bill before it is reported out to the full House or Senate) will occur in both chambers. The Senate Finance Committee takes up chairman Max Baucus’ work that appeared to make no one happy upon its release last week and the House Energy and Commerce Committee takes care of some unfinished business.

The Senate Finance Committee will begin Tuesday, with both parties attempting to make changes to the $774 billion measure. The affordability of health insurance premiums is one of the primary cost concerns.

On the business side, there are a variety of fees and taxes, including a $4 billion annual tax on medical device companies. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Michael Enzi prepared more than 20 amendments for the markup, including one on the medical devices tax.

The Heritage Foundation offers a brief but pointed analysis of the Baucus plan, calling it "more of the same" and identifying "seven fatal flaws."

Meanwhile, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will begin a second health reform markup Wednesday, concluding business left unfinished this summer.

The committee reported out its version of the health care overhaul on July 31, but only because members agreed not to offer any more amendments. Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman assured Republicans and Democrats that the still-pending amendments — 55 in all — would be considered at a second markup this fall.

The changes will form a second, separate bill and will be combined with the overhaul in the Rules Committee.

Confused yet? Join the crowd. The Indiana business attendees and Chamber staff will seek some clarity from the nation’s capital.

Put most of a state’s congressional delegation in the same room (it doesn’t happen very often), throw in some of the most contentious issues in years (health care reform, cap and trade, etc.) and it’s bound to be interesting.

The Indiana Chamber brings these pieces together Wednesday night in Washington as part of the annual D.C. Fly-in. More than 70 business representatives from across the state will be there. Typically Sen. Richard Lugar and nearly all of the congressional representatives join in for a roundtable discussion, dinner and an opportunity to hear from the folks back home. (Sen. Evan Bayh, by the way, usually prefers taking part in the second-day office visits).

The attendees will also receive updates from policy experts in the nation’s capital and hear from Stan Jones, former Indiana commissioner of higher education who went east earlier this year to start a new organization focused on college access and graduation for at-risk students.

I’ll be there to assist with the event and plan to let you know what’s going on through the Chamber’s Twitter feed and hopefully a blog or two. All signs point to the business reps being ready to speak up on how federal decisions are impacting their companies and employees in their local communities.

The Columbus Regional Hospital staff enjoys an impressive list of benefits. Health screenings with incentives for improvement, a telecommuting option for certain positions, short-term disability coverage and a bonus program are among the more traditional offerings. On the unique side: For individuals starting a family through adoption, the hospital helps pay the expensive adoption fee. 

One perk, however, has been a home run – sometimes literally! It’s an onsite concierge service that does everything from walking employee pets to arranging for shoe repairs to picking up groceries.

“The concierge service is definitely number one. The reason why is it’s a benefit that particular employees want,” explains director of human resources Joe Turco. 

“It may be you forgot to give your child lunch money, so the concierge can run money over to the local school. To me, it may be getting my dry cleaning accomplished. For someone else, it’s getting the oil changed in their car.”

Adds Chris Raaf, vice president of professional support services, “We have such great feedback on it. Someone sent a note recently that they had planned their son’s college trips through the concierge, who had put the entire itinerary together.  She said it would have taken her many hours on her off time to do that, so she really appreciated that.”