C06 Session: Collaborating for Change

Collaborating for Change: Ensuring Equal Voice for Small and Medium-Sized Nonprofits in Statewide Collaboration and Advocacy

Friday, August 4, 4:00pm - 5:30pm

Track:  Advocacy and Social Change

Presenters

Description

This session will give conference participants the tools to empower both small and medium-sized community-based organizations to effectively collaborate on statewide issues with larger nonprofits.  It will also provide an overview of the unique and proven model that helped establish smaller organizations as powerful resources alongside larger, more vocal nonprofits at the statewide level.  Presenters will share insights that can be applied to equalizing power dynamics in order to reinvigorate collaborations and enlist the participation of small and medium-sized organizations to their fullest potential.

Traditionally, small and medium nonprofits' capacity to advocate on a statewide level is limited due to their staff and budgetary constraints. Often though, these organizations are most directly connected to the population, sometimes through direct services or education and outreach, and therefore can speak to the critical issues more concretely than larger organizations if given the opportunity. As collaborations and coalitions emerge regionally and statewide to address issues, small and medium nonprofits are sidelined, leaving out key input from the population most affected by the issues and possibly rendering the collaboration ineffective and out of touch.

In New York State, the Empire State Pride Agenda has coordinated the New York State Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Health and Human Services Network for over ten years. The Empire State Pride Agenda is the country’s largest statewide LGBT civil rights organization, and through its partnership with Network members, has stronger connections to the diverse parts of the state than ever before.

In this workshop, the Network model will be presented and explained in each increments of its development in order for participants to examine the applicability to their own collaborations with smaller organizations. Particularly of interest to state association leaders, community based organization leaders, and technical assistance providers, this workshop will not only present a proven model for maximizing small and medium nonprofit participation, it will also afford participants with an opportunity to work on case studies and role plays from their own work in order to practice the implementation of the different model components. Drawing of research by Rita Mano-Negrin and Lasker & Weiss, this workshop engages participants in the critical intricacies needed to implement and sustain research principles as well as showcasing proven and tested methods in order to maximize the participation of small and medium nonprofit organizations.

About the Presenters

Nora Yates, Empire State Pride Agenda

Nora K. Yates is Coalitions Coordinator for the Empire State Pride Agenda and Foundation (Pride Agenda). Based in Albany, Nora is responsible for coordinating the New York State LGBT Health and Human Services Network, which is comprised of over 50 community-based organizations providing social services to the LGBT communities throughout the state. She also coordinates the activities of the Dignity for All Students Coalition as well as other emerging statewide coalitions facilitated by the Pride Agenda.

Nora was formerly Project Manager of the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group (KJCG) where she was responsible for conducting trainings for private corporations on diversity and inclusion. She also developed educational materials on team building and devised their implementation strategy with Fortune 500 organizations. Before KJCG, Nora was the Campus Coordinator for the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NYSCASA) where she was responsible for enlisting statewide support on college campuses for anti-violence activities. She has also been an Adjunct Faculty at the University at Albany's Department of Women's Studies since 2000.

Outside of her work at the Pride Agenda, Nora is involved in the Albany community working on projects with the Women's Building (Albany), the Capital District Gay and Lesbian Community Center, and the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN)–New York Capital Region Chapter. During her undergraduate and graduate studies at University at Albany, Nora also coordinated and directed four year's performances of "The Vagina Monologues" by Eve Ensler, raising money for local rape crisis and domestic violence shelters.

Nora graduated from University at Albany in 2000 with a Master's in Women's Studies and received her undergraduate degree in 1999 in Women's Studies and French Studies, finishing cum laude. She is currently pursuing her Master's in Public Administration from Sage Graduate School.

Carmen Vazquez, Empire State Pride Agenda

Carmen Vazquez is Deputy Executive Director of Empire State Pride Agenda (Pride Agenda). She provides leadership for shaping the vision, content and program development of Pride Agenda's statewide advocacy and grassroots organizing work and is responsible for oversight of Pride Agenda's programs including public policy and education, government affairs, community organizing initiatives and the political action committee.

Vazquez is formerly the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community
Center's public policy and government relations director, a post she held from June 1994 through November 2003. As the Center's Public Policy Director she developed the Center's advocacy and education work in the public sector including: Center Kids, the Center's LGBT families project; Promote the Vote, New York's largest LGBT voter registration and mobilization program; SpeakOUT! Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Voices for Recovery; and Causes in Common, an organizing project to create alliances between reproductive rights and LGBT liberation activists. She oversaw the Center's government relations and public funding work and was a founding member of the steering committee for the New York State Lesbian & Gay Health and Human Services Network the Network), a Pride Agenda statewide advocacy coalition she has been instrumental in developing since 1994. To date, the Network has secured more than $12 million in state funding to meet the health and human service needs of LGBT people throughout the state.

Born in the hills of Puerto Rico and tempered in New York City's black Harlem projects, Vazquez returned to New York City after living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area for 19 years. She served as coordinator of Lesbian & Gay Health Services for the S.F. Department of Public Health from 1988 through 1994, and was the founding director of the S.F. Women's Building. She has also worked with a host of other organizations including Community United Against Violence; the San Francisco Human Rights Commission; Somos Hermanas (a Central American Women's Solidarity Network); the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; the Lesbian Agenda for Action; and the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center. She served on the board of directors for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from 1990 through 1993. In 1998, she completed a 4-year term of service with the board of directors of the OUT Fund for Lesbian and Gay Liberation, a project of the Funding Exchange. Vazquez currently serves on the board of directors for the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies/City University of New York, and on the national advisory boards for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GenderPAC.

Vazquez has had her speeches and essays published in several anthologies.