The murder of George Floyd brought attention to the long list of black men and women killed in recent years by the police, including Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castle, and Breonna Taylor. We are outraged by the continued police violence and oppression of black people and other people of color. At NNSI, we condemn this violence and stand with the Black Lives Matter movement to

Higher Expectations for Racine County has existed in some form since 2007. In 2014, Higher Expectations’ executive director Jeff Neubauer came together with the national director of the StriveTogether organization, Jeff Edmonson, to outline a new vision for the coalition. Edmonson wanted to galvanize the community, bringing new energy to the network and identify core and measurable areas for Higher Expectations to focus. These areas included kindergarten readiness, elementary reading,

In 2007, EDvention was formed as a collaborative aimed at improving science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) opportunities for youth in Dayton, OH.  In 2011, EDvention expanded its focus beyond STEM, becoming what is now Learn to Earn Dayton—the cradle-to-career initiative focused in Montgomery County.  In 2015, Learn to Earn Dayton merged with Ready-Set-Soar, a readiness and reading proficiency program, and became part of the national network, StriveTogether, dedicated to

Leading a network is much more complicated than advancing a single organization. Many successful organizational leaders are not good network leaders. Organizational leaders are often accustomed to making a decision and then having it implemented by paid staff. Network leaders get organizational leaders to work together without merging into a single organization – meaning they neither make decisions independently nor have the power to mandate their implementation. Conveners and long-term

In 2004 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Jewish Association on Aging, Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, and Jewish Family and Community Services were brought together by the Jewish Community Foundation to form Agewell Pittsburgh. The partnership was convened initially around a Nationally Occurring Retirement Communities  (NORC) grant. The funds made it possible to create the first version of their network. They created care teams across the participating organizations. Social workers

Foundations, technical assistance organizations, and government programs often claim to promote nonprofit capacity. But, many times, it’s not clear what they mean.  Merriam Webster defines capacity as “the facility or power to produce, perform, or deploy.” Nonprofit capacity is the facility of nonprofits to produce, perform, or deploy their resources. It’s not the same as effectiveness. Instead, it describes the ability of a nonprofit to accomplish its organizational goals and