Join our email list for updates on Nonprofit Center trends, trainings and resources.

Join Our Newsletter | 

It’s time for nonprofits to break from the status quo.  At the Nonprofit Centers Network, we’ve always seen things a little differently. Sharing information, resources, expertise, and space has allowed a new dimension of impact in communities across North America and around the world.

This event showcases our network’s most ambitious ideas. Sharing space and services is not yet the norm – but we’re getting there! Join us and take your collaborations to the next level.

Missed attending Sharing Innovation 2018 in Denver or via Livestream? Not to worry! You can watch all 8 30-minute sessions (including the Q&A portion for each speaker) here. Wondering who spoke about what? See the session descriptions below and speaker bios. Get ready to be inspired.

If you’re just getting started and looking for the nuts and bolts, set yourself up for success – take the Nonprofit Centers Boot Camp Course online before you come! 

8 Videos Recorded Included

An affordable way for you to meet your professional development goals!

$47 for members
$67 for non-members

You’ll be prompted to log in or create a new user profile.

Innovation Leaders Include:

Alexis Paza,
Tides Converge
San Francisco, CA

Nada Zohdy,
Open Gov Hub
Washington DC

NEW WORKSHOP ADDED!
Growing without Bricks and Mortar: New Models to Scale Your Impact

Commercial coworking spaces, the for-profit equivalent of nonprofit shared space, have seen meteoric growth in North America via a very simple model: acquire more space, serve more tenants, generate more revenue, then acquire even more space… and on and on.  With a lot less resources and a strong focus on social impact, what models might nonprofit centers consider for our own scaling? Hear how Tides Converge in San Francisco and Open Gov Hub in Washington, D.C. are both scaling their impact without more real estate.

Nada Zohdy
Open Gov Hub
Washington DC

As Director of the Open Gov Hub, Nada oversees all programs and operations of this $1M social enterprise in Washington, D.C., which supports nonprofits promoting government transparency, accountability and citizen engagement around the world. She leads the Open Gov Hub’s efforts to provide shared services (including coworking), and to facilitate innovation, learning and collaboration across the Hub’s member network of 40 organizations. In 2015 she received an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she focused on linking democracy/governance with social entrepreneurship/innovation. She also performed research on innovative nonprofit collaborations, published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Previously, she worked for the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), where she created a program that supported a dozen local watchdog NGOs and think tanks in several Arab countries in the wake of the Arab Spring. She has also been a consultant with the World Bank and the Democracy Fund. Over the last decade, she has supported 50+ nonprofits in several capacities. These experiences fuel her passion for social impact and civic innovation, globally and locally. She studied International Relations and Arabic at Michigan State University and is a 2009 Truman Scholar.

 

Alexis Paza
Tides Converge
San Francisco, CA

Lexi is a fierce believer that the design and use of spaces are deeply linked to equity and has worked within the intersection of good design, the built environment, & the social fabric of communities for fifteen years. Currently on the real estate and operations team at Tides, Lexi leads placemaking and manages the collaborative infrastructure at Tides Converge San Francisco, a twelve building campus of 80 mission-aligned nonprofits and social enterprises.  She also leads Tides’ collaborative workspace consulting, supporting partners who want to leverage their real estate for good. Recent partners have included Google.org, who opened the Google Community Space in May 2017 which now hosts hundreds of events and coworking sessions every month for over 700 Bay Area nonprofits.  Her previous experience includes the Housing Industry Foundation, KaBOOM!, and Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley. Originally from western Maryland, Lexi has an MA in Social Service Administration with a concentration in Community Planning, Organizing & Development from the University of Chicago.

Katie Edwards,
The Nonprofit Centers Network
Denver, CO

Danielle Varda,
University of Colorado Denver
Denver, CO

NEW WORKSHOP ADDED!
Community Carrying Capacity: Network Approaches to Social Determinants of Health

Nearly a third of shared spaces try to create better access to human services. In the same vein, hospitals are using Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) screening tools to better connect people with these same services. Learn how our emerging research is building the evidence and tools to align these systems, at a crucial time for our sector.

Katie Edwards
The Nonprofit Centers Network
Denver, CO

Katie Edwards 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. The report Katie co-authored for her capstone project, Building Co-Location, is available in our online resource center. Since 2005, Katie has worked with nonprofits operating out of music storage rooms, historic churches, and converted houses. She is especially interested in how shared space can improve or revitalize a communities, especially those in rural areas.

Danielle Varda
University of Colorado Denver
Denver, CO

Danielle Varda is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver, Director of the Center on Network Science, and CEO/Founder of Visible Network Labs. She is the founder of the Network Leadership Training Academy and the author of the PARTNER tool and the Person-Centered Network App. She is a published researcher, entrepreneur, teacher, and mother – working to translate network science to questions of how to build, manage, and evaluate effective community partnerships.

Adnen Ben Haj
El Space
Tunis, Tunisia

Space, People and Machines

EL SPACE’s unique intentional design promotes an engaged community that drives innovation and deeper impact sustainably. This comprehensive approach brings together people from the business, social and public sectors to collaborate and implement new projects, through the support of EL SPACE. The hub includes a grocery and nut store, the FabLab maker space equipped with 3D printers, laser cutters and tools for creating and co-making, a creative coworking space for researchers, freelancers and IT innovators, a shared space for NGOs and social enterprises, and an events venue.  Hear how the team built and developed a space that focuses on an optimized and flexible human experience. Through their diverse pool of expertise, EL SPACE members can easily experiment with new projects and new ideas, free from limitations and constraints of the ”normal” world.

Adnen Ben Haj
El Space
Tunis, Tunisia

After founding two social businesses, Adnen became a social entrepreneurship specialist and has developed a curriculum for a MEPI funded job development project. The project will teach practical skills to young unemployed people on starting and running their own businesses. He also serves as manager of EL SPACE, a community shared workspace that he co-founded. EL SPACE provides interdisciplinary workshops for local business people and affordable office space for social entrepreneurs.  Adnen has five years of experience in the nonprofit sector and earned a Bachelors in Management from the International University of Tunis.

Karen Derrick-Davis
Community Hacking
Denver, CO

A Nonprofit TimeBank: Sharing our Assets

Nonprofit organizations often need services that are hard to write into grants: organizational development, board retreats, meeting space, and other professional services.  Many nonprofits have staff and volunteers who could provide these professional services, need to utilize someone “from the outside” to conduct the work.  This session will introduce the concept of timebanking and how a software platform (Community Weaver) can support the nonprofit community’s organizational needs.  Timebanking is a natural extension of the shared space movement and provides a mechanism for equitable sharing of assets to support one another through the use of time credits.  

Karen Derrick-Davis
Community Hacking
Denver, CO

With over 20 years of experience creating and implementing projects, Karen is passionate about utilizing effective group processes and innovation to help people work together well.  As a life-long learner and early adopter, she incorporates new technology and ideas in her practice.  Karen is a dynamic community leader who brings people together to do extraordinary things. Time and time again, Karen has shown her dedication to community building, drawing on as many resources as she can find and her passion is infectious.

Lara Jakubowski
La Piana Consulting
Denver, CO

Beyond MOU’s – Navigating Deeper Collaboration

This session will provide a roadmap for organizations looking to deepen their relationships to support resource sharing.  We’ll review a tested approach for organizations to negotiate a range of structures for working together.  Sharing space and sharing services often makes deeper collaboration opportunities more visible, but organizations often lack the knowledge and language to cross the threshold and design new ways to join forces for greater impact.  We’ll provide practical tools and take-aways that you can use in a variety of situations.

Lara Jakubowski
La Piana Consulting
Denver, CO

Lara specializes in working with complex collaboratives working toward shared goals, helping them identify successful strategies and design plans for action. She seeks to help nonprofits adapt their strategy to a dynamic environment, by identifying new challenges and opportunities. Lara joined La Piana Consulting as a Senior Consultant in 2017, working with a variety of clients on nonprofit restructurings, business and strategic planning, and executive transitions. Previously, she served as executive director of the Nonprofit Centers Network. She has also been the principal of her own nonprofit management consultancy and executive director at Mile High Community Loan Fund. Lara has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and an undergraduate degree in economics and regional science and Japanese from the University of Pennsylvania.

Thaddeus Squire
Cultureworks Commons Management
Philadelphia, PA

What’s in a name?

A discussion and mini-workshop on how we talk about the work of resource sharing.

In today’s social and political environment we bear witness every day to how the power of words can divide, discriminate, and denigrate. They can also be tools for equity, justice, and social good. In the field of nonprofit shared resources we need to examine more carefully how our choice of terms and messages can aid our cause to foster greater efficiency, equity, and positive social impact. We may find that we are currently wielding blunt semantic instruments to build our missions.

This session will look at the power of language to transform how your stakeholders understand the work of resource sharing and, more critically, how their relationship to you can strengthen as a result. We will be looking at two sample frameworks for thinking the work of sharing: the capitalist framework, which I would argue dominates our language and approach to sharing, and the commons framework, which I think holds promise to help transform how we think about sharing. We will also be engaging participants to learn about their messaging successes and challenges.

The session will be in three parts: (1) a brief overview and background on the two sample frameworks, (2) an open discussion among participants about challenges and successes in messaging and framing their work, and (3) a short “elevator speech” workshop on how commons-based language and other language set might be employed in a one or two-sentence overview of our field as a whole.

Thaddeus Squire
Cultureworks Commons Management
Philadelphia, PA

As a curator, consultant, writer, and producer, Thaddeus has worked across a wide variety of disciplines, from history and heritage to the fine and performing arts. His particular interest is in building creative collaborations and new models for resource sharing for the cultural and creative industries.  In 2013, Thaddeus founded CultureTrust Greater Philadelphia, a shared nonprofit administrative platform for projects and organizations that is the first of its kind serving arts and heritage in the country. Thaddeus has been hailed as a visionary voice in the contemporary arts by David Patrick Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and was named one of Philadelphia’s top 76 “Creative Connectors” by Leadership Philadelphia in 2011.

Roman Katsnelson
KRD Consulting
Calgary, AB

Roman Katsnelson
KRD Consulting
Calgary, AB

Tying it Together:
Open-Source Options to Support Emergent Strategy & Evaluation

If you are like most people, you cringe and shudder when thinking about databases. Shared Space operators need to learn from many different types of information about their constituents, programs and outcomes. Many end up using a hodge-podge approach – a mix of databases, Word and Excel docs, shared files, and pencil notes scribbled in daytimers and on sticky notes. During this session, we will start with describing the particular needs of “emergent strategy” work, and then dive into showcases of free, open-source software you could use to support your own missions and those of your members.  Learn how to access these free tools, see shared space and shared services use case studies, and integrate easy data collection to reflect on outcomes.

Roman Katsnelson
KRD Consulting
Calgary, AB

Roman Katsnelson is nonprofit consultant based in Calgary, Canada. He has worked closely with local nonprofit centres in Calgary, and with the NCN Canada project in 2016-2017, as part of a 15-year history supporting clients with strategic facilitation, research, evaluation and data infrastructure services. Roman is an engaging speaker who often presents on emerging topics in the fields of Evaluation and Data Science.

Dr. Tammy Butler-Fluitt, Ed.D
Samaritan Women, Inc.

Karen Rogers
Exercise Express Spinning &
Fitness Studio LLC

Linda Harrell-Davis
Me Time Massage and Wellness

Co-location and Collaboration for Holistic Care

Current health disparities show that transportation and self-care motivation adversely impact clinical outcomes and healthcare productivity. Social, mental, acute and chronic health conditions often translate into the need for support services, but often very little coordination exists between health and social service providers. This session will share the health data of the community that prompted the co-location of seven nonprofit organizations and businesses into Reaching Our Community (ROC) HUB.  Strategies, theories and practices will be shared that helped shape effective partnerships and offerings, from fitness classes, life skills workshop, massage therapy, addiction recovery, to workforce training and more, that together provides the ultimate benefit of improved community care, successful holistic health outcomes, and a better quality of life for community residents.

Dr. Tammy Butler-Fluitt, Ed. D
Samaritan Women, Inc.

Karen Rogers
Me Time Massage and Wellness

Linda Davis
R. Keith Jones and Associates

Rochester, NY

Tammy is Founder and Executive Director of Samaritan Women, Inc. a Rochester-based nonprofit organization with a mission to provide social, physical, and emotional supportive services to empower individuals and transform the community-one family at a time. As a teen mom and one-time dropout, she credits a high school counselor with telling her that she could do whatever she wanted if she put her mind to it. She holds a B.S. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Brockport, a M.S. in Organizational Leadership from Roberts Wesleyan College, and an Ed.D. in Executive Leadership from St. John Fisher College.

Karen, owner and CEO of Exercise Express Spinning and Fitness Studio, is a certified fitness professional and is very enthusiastic regarding community, health and wellness education.  Her vision emphasizes a lifestyle change that includes a fitness plan and guidance promoting good health.  She is dedicated to helping and encouraging individuals to increase their physical activity, change their behavior patterns and choose healthier lifestyles.

Linda Harrell-Davis is a Licensed Massage Therapist focused on educating people about the benefits of therapeutic massage as it relates to stress, arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure and other diseases of the body that diminish the quality of life. She is also interested in corporate wellness as well and ways to manage work/life balance and stress management.

Nonprofit Centers Network

1536 Wynkoop Street, Suite 103
Denver, CO 80202

info@nonprofitcenters.org
720.836.1189

The Nonprofit Centers Network is an Initiative of
Tides.

The Nonprofit Centers Network is a fiscally sponsored project of Tides Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your gift may be tax-deductible pursuant to §170(c) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please visit www.tides.org/state-nonprofit-disclosures for additional information. Copyright The Nonprofit Centers Network 2016-2024. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy | Site Requirements | HTML Sitemap | XML Sitemap