by Holly Delany Cole - When Community Resource Exchange was established 30 years ago, its initial aim was to create a ‘space’ where nonprofits could assist one another directly, create support networks and share tools, templates and strategies for getting greater community outcomes. CRE eventually became an intermediary whose staff partners with nonprofits to identify and solve institutional concerns and provides them with information and other resources, but we’ve never lost sight of our fundamental interest in promoting productive direct exchanges between and among nonprofits.
We know that nonprofit leaders have a lot to share with their peers about effective day-to-day management practice and about how to lead in ways that successfully addresses the larger, seemingly more intractable issues. And we know that nonprofits can get to greater outcomes for community when they coordinate efforts at the service level or as advocates together informing and lobbying for more cogent public policy. These beliefs have guided the development of several of our offerings. CRE helps to form and resource ‘ED Circles’, we staff peer-based ‘action learning groups’ and sponsor Leadership Caucuses in which nonprofits leaders ‘give and get’ ideas about effective leadership practice in a structured program that meets over time. We also host ‘town hall meetings’ and ‘exchanges’ of similar situated nonprofits and advocates who want to share their analysis of common challenges and identify coordinated approaches.
With this blog, we want to make additional ‘space and place’ for nonprofit leaders and those who follow and support this work to raise questions that matter to the field, offer new thinking, offer old good thinking for that matter, and declare how you would like to ‘give or get’ support or partner to move issues. Turns out being engaged with each other in this way and looking outside your own organizations to share resources, expertise and advance issues is a hallmark of high-impact nonprofits according to research reported in a favorite publication of ours, the Stanford Social Innovation review. Heather McLeod Grant (an advisor to the graduate schools of business at Duke and Stanford Universities) and Leslie Crutchfield (managing director of the Ashoka Global Academy) studied 12 high-impact organizations and identified 6 key competencies that were critical to their success. Nurturing nonprofit networks is one such competency. The authors say, “…Although most nonprofits pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other groups as competition for scarce resources. But high impact organizations help their peers succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their fields. They freely share wealth, expertise, talent, and power with other nonprofits not because they are saints, but because it’s in their self-interest to do so.” There are good examples of such networks in the city, including the 38 member Executive Director Council of United Neighborhood Houses of NYC.
To read more about this research and what the authors believe to be other competencies of high-impact organizations. Let us know what you think about the study’s findings. If you are in a network that is productive, tell us about it. If you are not yet in one, write us about what you might like to ‘give and get’ from your fellow nonprofit leaders.
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