2018 – A Year In Review - The Nonprofit Centers Network

December marks the end of the calendar year, and a time to pause and reflect on the months that have passed. Our team and community have so much to be proud of.

Speaking of our team – 2018 marks a new era for us. After a period of reimagining the role of The Nonprofit Centers Network in the social change landscape, our Steering Committee adopted a broader vision to become an international resource for shared space, shared services, and social purpose real estate. It is an honor to have been selected to move this work forward, as the new Executive Director. Bigger dreams need a bigger team, and I am so happy that Jackie and Chelsea are here to stay. (You can read their bios by visiting are who we are page).

NCN members have been front of mind for us through all this change. Leena has shepherded the creation of new member benefits, like the ASK-NCN LIVE series, which has seen over sixty members participate in four videochats, so far. The knowledge, perspective, and funny stories that are shared in these sessions aren’t to be missed!

Sharing Innovation returned to our home at The Alliance Center and to screens across North America in October. The speaker applications continued to surprise us with new ideas and new ways to grow our impact through collaboration. I learned tools to help shape our movement for the nonprofit sharing economy, like a glossary of new terms that better capture our work, how to broker mergers, and how to redefine growth. At the same time, I was reminded about the importance of our work by the founders of ROCHUB in Rochester, NY and El Space in Tunis, Tunisia, who showed us the importance of space for community. The concepts of timebanking for nonprofits and emergent systems for evaluation continue to give me food for thought these months later.

Also during this year, we piloted new research, thanks to investments from the Fidelity Charitable Trustees Initiative and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and partnerships with the Center on Network Science at UC Denver. Rethinking Overhead will soon be released as a new resource for the world of nonprofit resource sharing, designed to demystify options and help nonprofit leaders maximize their time and resources. Our research into measuring the carrying capacity of the nonprofit sector through the lens of the social determinants of health is still in the data collection phase, but what I’ve seen so far has exciting implications for the shared space and shared resource world.

2018 has been so bright for the Nonprofit Centers Network. I can’t wait to see what 2019 has in store for us!

About Our Blogger:

Katie Edwards

Katie connects NCN members with the resources they need to make their projects a success. She holds an M.P.A. in Nonprofit Management from Indiana University, where she studied nonprofit co-location as part of her coursework. Katie’s research background and her first-hand experience with the Co-location Task Force for the Indianapolis’ Early Intervention and Prevention Initiative give her a unique perspective on shared spaces and nonprofit centers.