Capacity Building with Immigrant and Refugee Led Organizations

Presenters:  Sida Ly-Xiong and Sarah Gleason, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation; Alfredo Vergara-Lobo, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services

The presentation will cover a project recently funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation that is designed to:  1) Strengthen the work of 15-20 leading capacity building organizations; 2) Package and share resource information with other capacity building organizations that are interested in becoming more proficient in working with immigrant and refugee communities.

Doing it 'Right': The Public Policy Grantmaking of Conservative Foundations

Presenter: Rick Cohen, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
Respondent: Janine Lee, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

The federal government has been involved in nonprofit technical assistance for quite some time, and can offer useful insights for the field.  This session will discuss lessons learned from federal capacity-building programs and uncover opportunities for action.

Knowledge Practices - Building Adaptive Capacity for Nonprofit Survival

Presenters:  Monika Moss, MKM Consulting; Amy Eugene, Cuyahoga Community College

As nonprofit organizations with high turnover and heavy pressure to perform miracles using volunteer power, it would be to our advantage to apply knowledge management (KM) practices in order to hold onto, disseminate, and innovate what we know.  Participants will learn how knowledge management can support the nonprofit sector with regards to succession planning, organizational development, peer learning, and utilization of existing technology.  This session will cover the basics of knowledge management and allow participants to actively engage in thoughtful, identification of practical and useful applications for KM practices in their organizations.

Moving Towards Long-Term Action on Tax and Budget Issues

Presenters:  Gary Bass and John Irons, OMB Watch; Bruce Astrein, Arizona Community Foundation; Debbie Weinstein, Coalition on Human Needs

Nonprofit advocates tend to spend most of their time fighting against "bad" policies like program cuts or tax giveaways to the wealthy. Rather than remaining on the defensive, this session will describe recent survey results on this issue that show great energy for change, and will discuss ways for the nonprofit sector to put forward a positive vision of what considers to be sound tax and budget policy. 

Scenario Planning: A Strategic Planning Approach for an Uncertain Future

Presenter:  Cathy Silverstein, Enterprise Resource Group, Inc.

This session presents the innovative "scenaric" approach to developing strategic scenarios that enables planner to consider different variations of the future, based on the methodology developed by futurist Peter Swartz. How do you plan for the future if there are too many variables to consider? How do you prepare your organization to make adjustments if your assumptions about the future are incorrect? In this session, participants will learn about the "scenario planning" process: a method of planning for variable futures, isolating key decisions, and preparing for uncertainty.

The Next Leaders: Developing Tomorrow's Nonprofit Executives

Presenters:  David Birdsell and Douglas Muzzio, Baruch College, CUNY; Jacqui Ebanks, United Way of New York City

Concerned that too little has been done to groom the next generation of nonprofit leadership and that too little is known about which kinds of development programs will be both useful and appealing, the United Way of New York City and the Baruch College School of Public Affairs conducted a study of executive directors (EDs) and "pipeline leaders" to determine how best to shape nonprofit leadership programs. The results are striking, revealing that while more than nine in ten of today's New York City-based EDs believe that development plans would benefit their organizations, fewer than half of the 314 surveyed organizations have such a plan, partly due to resource constraints, but also because EDs have a hard time finding programs responsive to their needs. In this session, facilitators will discuss findings from their research and explain how they have shaped a new, collaborative program for nonprofit leadership in response to the study data. Participants will gain insight into an extensive empirical study of the appetite for capacity building among nonprofit organizations, talk with facilitators about their models for program partnership between a key MSO and an academic institution, and have ample opportunity to contrast the New York City results with circumstances in their own areas.

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