• Anyone can clip articles, but few are thoughtful enough to send them out to former colleagues. Email is great but snail mail shows a little more effort. Head over to Barnes & Noble and pick up a magazine like Entrepreneur, Business Week, Working Mother, or browse the back pages of a newspaper or journal (places where colleagues might have overlooked). After a quick glance, you are likely to find an article that a former boss or colleague can appreciate. Send it in the mail with a quick note.
• Don’t offer global help. Offer specific tasks. When people are juggling fifty tasks, an offer to remove one or assist is seen as much more useful and sincere than an offer of “let me know how I can help.”
• Offer to organize a “brown bag lunch” program (casual instructional sessions over lunch, topics can range from financial planning to world leaders). Find a topic of interest for your employer and colleagues. This will ensure that you get back to the office, keep in touch with professional contacts and learn something about topic of interest.

Good luck, W2W Ventures is pulling for you.