By Jeff Ballow, Senior Consultant - Is training more valuable for participants when you bring the training experience to their communities? This is one question that has emerged during the last year as part of our Neighborhood Based Capacity-Building Initiative funded by the New York Community Trust. So far we’ve taken this mountain-to-Mohammed approach to management development in East New York in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway in Queens, and in early May we launched a similar training series in the High Bridge section of the Bronx. Here’s what we have learned so far: Read more >>
News & Views
A blog for those interested in what affects, motivates and drives the New York City Nonprofit Sector — written by CRE’s crackerjack consulting team. We hope you use this space to share your thoughts, ask questions and engage in conversations about our city, social justice and the nonprofit sector.
Leaving the Projector Behind: CRE’s Community-Based Training Efforts
The Impact of the Fiscal Cliff on Nonprofits
By Karen Erdos, Director of Development - As the President and Congress negotiate about how to deal with the fiscal cliff, the proposals on the table could have very different outcomes for nonprofits. The first, proposed by President Obama, is to have the Bush-era tax cuts remain in effect for households with incomes up to $250,000 ($200,000 for individuals) and to let the tax cuts for higher-income households and the estate tax rise back to levels last seen in the Clinton administration. Read more >>
What Do Invisible Nonprofits Mean For Community Leadership?
By Valyrie Laedlein, CRE Co-Director - Those of you accustomed to visiting this website know that CRE exists to support nonprofit organizations in becoming stronger and more effective in their work to fight poverty and advance social justice. So it came as a bit of a shocker to hear the director of a foundation who is a significant supporter of social services and nonprofit capacity building say in a meeting last week that nonprofit organizations are becoming increasingly “invisible.” Read more >>
Framing the Impact of the Recession on Nonprofits
By Louisa Hackett, Senior Managing Director - Last week, two presentations about the current state of affairs facing New York City’s nonprofits were a reminder that solutions need to come from within as well as from outside of our sector. Read more >>
The Power of Collaboration and Why Evaluation Stinks Part II
By Michael Hickey, Independent Community Development Consultant - Just recently I attended a very compelling conference put on by The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, and my alma mater the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, entitled The Power of Collaboration. The title of the event comes from the very engaging article “Collective Impact,” published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Its authors make the argument that only through collaborative efforts can funders and nonprofit providers rise above the fragmentation of their service niche. The lay out a helpful framework include the following four components of effective collective action: Read more >>
CRE’s Current View of the Nonprofit Sector and What’s Needed Today
By Holly Delany Cole and Valyrie Laedlein, CRE Co-Directors: It’s grim – politically and economically – for nonprofits, including CRE, and more significantly, for the people nonprofits are working with and issues that are important to them and us. CRE sees five key issues facing the nonprofit sector in the Fall of 2011. Read more >>
5 Questions Driving Organizational Effectiveness
By Louisa Hackett - What makes an organization effective? Sure strong managers, high performing staff, visionary leaders, sufficient resources and up-to-date technology all play a part. But a critical element, maybe the most critical, is clarity of purpose. Without knowing fundamentally what an organization is striving to accomplish and for whom, the chance to have the most effective programs is lost and muddled, diffuse programming can follow. Read more >>
Succession Planning and Performance Evaluations: Two Sides of the Same Coin
By Jean Lobell - In an earlier post, I outlined Three Key Issues in Succession Planning. Today’s post is a continuation of the insights I shared on the key elements of a successful succession planning process. Read more >>
Three Key Issues In Succession Planning
By Jean Lobell - The talk about succession planning tends to be fraught with some anxiety, some confusion, and some misconceptions. My experience is that this can be avoided or at least minimized, if we got clear about three things: Read more >>
A Bone To Pick About Government Contracting
By Holly Delany Cole, CRE Co-Director - There is a lot to talk about in the recently released Daring to Lead Report. We chose first to talk about what the report points to about the sustainability of the nonprofit model in the current environment, given the behavior of its most frequent funding partner. Read more >>
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