Professional Development

Extension Foundation Members have access to numerous professional development
opportunities each month. In response to the needs identified in the 2023 Extension Foundation Professional Development Needs Assessment, the Extension Foundation has tailored its 2024 professional development offerings for its members to help meet these needs  Professional development events aligned with these needs are connected to the major needs categories and include:

  • Telling Your Extension Story
  • Community Engagement
  • Finding and Securing Funding Opportunities
  • Effective Communication and Outreach
  • Discussing Equity Needs in Cooperative Extension
  • Workforce Development

ICYMI

In case you missed one of our professional development sessions, Extension Foundation
Members can access it in our Video Resource Library on Connect after registering an account.

Register your account at connect.extension.org and visit the Video Resource Library.

2024 Events for Members

All events for members are available on the Extension Foundation Member Calendar on
Connect Extension.

Dynamic Discussions: Each fourth Thursday of the month, the Extension Foundation hostsprofessionals from across Cooperative Extension and beyond to address hot topics of interest to Cooperative Extension.

Extension Skills: Each second Thursday of the month, the Extension Skills series provides an opportunity for Cooperative Extension professionals to build capacity with tools, processes and tech skills training.

Program Center Stage: Each fourth Monday of the month, Program Center Stage highlights programs from across the Cooperative Extension system to showcase new program models and methods.

Upskilling Fundraising, Grant & Partnership Development For Extension Professionals: An Interactive Workshop Series: Led by Nate Birt of Silver Maple Strategies, this dynamic series is tailored to equip Extension professionals with essential tools and knowledge for success in today’s evolving landscape. Join us for an interactive and engaging series designed to enhance your Extension projects and programs with practical skills and personalized support. Open to all Cooperative Extension professionals, this series offers valuable insights for those seeking to advance their work.

What People are Saying

As Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, I am delighted that County Associations around New York have been involved. One example of the success of this program is the unique, virtual opportunity for our Livingston County team to work through a creative and structured process to explore and develop a concept in a short period of time. It also helped with goals they had around team building. The Extension Foundation provided our team with access to effective coaching and expert informants, which will help this work not only maintain momentum, but grow. The pandemic has been challenging for all of us, but this event and the process proved a bright spot for our Livingston County team.

The Extension Foundation prepared the CIVIC team with new skills, resources, and opportunities that have helped them come together as a team to accelerate and scale their program. Their involvement has helped create new pathways for reaching a more diverse audience, find strategic ways to engage new partners, and better help Extension professionals across Florida facilitate a process that builds community capacity in addressing challenging issues such as climate change, sustainability, opioid addiction, and water quality.

The Extension Foundation prepared the CIVIC team with new skills, resources, and opportunities that have helped them come together as a team to accelerate and scale their program. Their involvement has helped create new pathways for reaching a more diverse audience, find strategic ways to engage new partners, and better help Extension professionals across Florida facilitate a process that builds community capacity in addressing challenging issues such as climate change, sustainability, opioid addiction, and water quality.

My most recent experience was simply brilliant. Having the opportunity to develop a program idea into an achievable project through numerous interactions with subject matter specialists – not programmatic subject matter specialists, but soft-skill subject matter specialists, teams of colleagues from across the country, identified coaches and my team from home was priceless. Our interactions not only gave us a more global perspective on our project – and our National mission -, it also provided us the opportunity to become a more cohesive team.

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Our mission is to help Cooperative Extension generate a more visible, measurable, local impact.

We achieve this through our nationally funded programs made possible by member dollars and cooperative agreements with federal agencies, and through partnering on state, regional, and national initiatives with Cooperative Extension and the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP). We serve all Land Grant Universities, regardless of membership status.

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The Extension Foundation is a nonprofit established by Extension Directors and Administrators nationwide. Extension Foundation is embedded in the U.S. Cooperative Extension System and serves on Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP).

USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture

This website is supported in part by New Technologies for Ag Extension (funding opportunity no. USDA-NIFA-OP-010186), grant no. 2023-41595-41325 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Extension Foundation.

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