We’re super pumped at NCN about the upcoming Sharing Innovation event. It’s honestly like no event we’ve ever done before. You’ll get to hear about groundbreaking collaboration happening all over the country. No matter the size or scope of your organization, our speakers will have actionable advice and creative strategies you can tailor to meet your goals and needs. You might just get so excited you come up with your own ingenious idea…
When you provide shared space or back office services for nonprofits it can be a challenge to explain what exactly it is that you do. This was the focus of NCN’s virtual Community of Practice last week. Honing our message is a continual work in progress. For many years, we’ve included Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” TED Talk in our Nonprofit Centers Boot Camp Curriculum. While providing affordable space for nonprofits is a noble endeavor, most of us are in this field for a greater purpose. Sinek argues that if you can articulate the “Why” behind the “What” that you do, you will be more success and convincing people to support your cause. Another tool that I have found to be incredibly useful is Mission Minded’s Minute Messaging Model, which was recently featured on their blog. Mission Minded asks people to develop a series of timed stories about their mission:
Built in the 1880s as a residential development, Jefferson Avenue is noted for its broad boulevard with a park in the center, and handsome Italianate buildings
Community Door is the result of collective efforts of socially-focused agencies looking to combine resources and work together to better serve the community through a centralized social services location.
Arts Estuary 1024 is a multi-tenant arts facility in a renovated historic building. The center is located at 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans on the edge of the St. Claude Avenue Arts District. Arts Estuary 1024 supports a collaborative environment that fosters the growth and development of individuals and organizations dedicated to the creative arts and community engagement. The facility is primarily used as administrative space for local cultural organizations but can also accommodate meetings, gatherings, rehearsals, receptions, and events.
For most people, sharing resources – whether it be office space, accounting staff, or a common kitchen – is a new way to work. With the release of the Streamlining Social Good report and our recent webinar on the same topic, I’ve been thinking a lot about my biggest takeaways from this convening and what I would tell other people
For many years, I’ve believed that building the trust necessary for collaboration takes time – weeks, months, maybe even years. While at the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s institute on Network Leadership, a presentation by David Sawyer and David Ehrlichman of Converge for Impact shook loose my perspective on the subject. Over the course of a two-hour session, I and over 300 participants were led through a series of exercises focused on what we could do to build trust for impact in our own networks. At the end, I was surprised, not only at what had been shared with me, but also at what I had shared with others, and how quickly we had found common ground upon which to build. Here are my top take aways from the session...
In September, I had the privilege of attending the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Nonprofit Management Institute on Network Leadership. I have been interested in the topic of network leadership because every nonprofit center that we know of is or has the potential to be a network for catalyzing social good. For many years, the idea was that to increase your social impact, you had to bring your model to scale. However, researchers like Jane Wei-Skillern have found that there have been many organizations who have multiplied their ability to achieve impact by taking the opposition – slimming down their operations, specializing, and working in concert with partners.
Lately we’ve been hearing a lot from funders about their interest in addressing inequality: in income, race, sex, education, economic opportunities and more (see Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation here). The Ford Foundation has used this lens to rethink how it conducts its grantmaking and how it measures its success. Other foundations are following suit and there’s even some controversy around how to define the goal of equity. This has led me to wonder how nonprofit shared space fits into this new lens. How do we, as a sector, address inequality? Here are three ideas:
Two recent pieces make me wonder if the pendulum is shifting on the open floor plan model. There’s no changing the fact that the trend in workspaces is toward smaller footprints, leaner offices, more mobile furniture and flexible set-ups.
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April 15, 2024
March 19, 2024
