Memberships Unite!

A full house consisting of Michigan Nonprofit Association member organizations and PRSA Detroit members (Public Relations Society of America) participated in a free half-day workshop providing support and insight into nonprofit public relations. PRSA Detroit’s membership consists of individual public relations professionals.

The workshop was held at Wayne State University in Detroit. The morning keynote was presented by Don Tanner from Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications. Following the keynote, each nonprofit was matched with at least three public relation experts. The three experts consisted of an experienced practitioner, a young professional and a Wayne State University graduate student. Each nonprofit discussed their own current and future strategies, tactics and goals as they relate to public relations and received feedback and advice from the experts to help direct their future efforts.

This was one of many special member benefits that occur for MNA members throughout the year.

For more information on MNA member benefits, visit Member Central on the MNA website.

Submitted by Bill Gesaman, Membership Manager, Michigan Nonprofit Association

MiCC Member Campuses Receive National Community Service Recognition

17 colleges and universities from Michigan Campus Compact (MiCC) membership were recently named on the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.  Deserving recipients include the Presidential Award Finalist, Kalamazoo College, and Honor Roll with Distinction recipients Michigan State University, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and Western Michigan University.  Albion College, Alma College, Aquinas College, Calvin College, Central Michigan University, Davenport University, Delta College, Eastern Michigan University, Kellogg Community College, Lawrence Technological University, Madonna University, and Olivet College were all recognized on the Honor Roll as well.  Congratulations to all campuses!

Campuses recognized on the Honor Roll lead volunteerism efforts across their country by offering hundreds of service-learning courses and by engaging students in community service.  Their dedication is unprecedented and their impact is impressive..  These higher education institutes are recognized nationally as leaders in the effort to better communities and reflect their historic civic missions.

Michigan Campus Compact (MICC), an affiliate organization of the Michigan Nonprofit Association and the national Campus Compact, supporting the civic engagement activities of colleges and their students in the State of Michigan.

Submitted by Hanna Porterfield, Michigan Campus Compact Communications Intern

Thanksgiving Food Collection

This fall season Michigan Nonprofit Association’s (MNA) continued its efforts to involve staff in civic engagement opportunities by coordinating an organization wide food collection intended to create complete meal boxes for local families in need. Opportunities like these help MNA staff connect with the local community, service organizations, and learn more about an existing community challenge. Food security is a real challenge for many individuals and families.

Since the beginning of October, MNA collected more than 200 food items to fill food boxes for six families. The food boxes were distributed through Northwest Initiative in Lansing to families who have a student participating in the weekend backpack program at a local school and to a family who has a student enrolled in a LEAGUE Michigan school in the Detroit area.

Northwest Initiative is a neighborhood based organization who serves individuals in the northwest region of Lansing. One of their programs includes the weekend backpack program that provides a backpack full of food for students who would otherwise not have consistent access to food for the days they are not in school.  The food boxes made up of the items donated by MNA staff were designed to help feed the student and their family for the five days of the Thanksgiving break when the student would not receive breakfast or lunch at school.

Northwest Initiative works closely with the Greater Lansing Food Bank to help increase the food stability of the families they serve. The boxes donated by MNA not only support a student and their family but allow Northwest Initiative to serve additional families with the food resources they receive from the food bank and individual donations.

The Thanksgiving holiday offers a reminder about the critical role food has for families and communities but it is important to remember the need exists year round. Because of the success of this project and the partnerships it helped MNA develop, future food collection efforts can be coordinated year round as the community need arises.

Submitted by Chelsea Martin Program Coordinator, Michigan Nonprofit Association

College Students are Leaders!

When I was in my 6th grade English class, my teacher said to the entire class, “You are the next generation of leaders!” The thing is, this teacher didn’t tell us how to learn how to be a leader or when we were supposed to assume this role. Now, at age 23, I’ve been figuring out the ways I am a leader in my community and the ways that I want to lead in my future. I attribute this awareness of my experiences to the Residential College in the Arts & Humanities at Michigan State University, and my AmeriCorps VISTA term at Michigan Campus Compact.

Michigan Campus Compact (MICC), an affiliate organization of MNA, supports the civic engagement activities of colleges and their students around the state of Michigan. After the 15th year of Service Leadership Camp last fall, the MICC team thought about whether or not the program was meeting the needs of students, and also posed this question to the network of faculty and staff. The result was the decision to begin a new leadership program and I jumped at the opportunity to pioneer this project!

Throughout the last six months, I have worked with my supervisor, Shannon Zoet, and a network planning committee to coordinate the program for MICC’s first Active Leaders Student Conference this October! No participant will leave this one-day conference without recognizing that they are a leader and learning specific steps to accomplish their aspirations through community service, advocacy, and philanthropy.

“It’s exciting to be a part of something as unique as this event, even more so when you are helping to plan it. This event is very grassroots in the way that it is planned by, geared toward, and has presenters all for the same age group. Many of the leadership events at the college level are only for student leaders that belong to a certain group or specific career path. This event is geared toward leaders from every background who are entering career paths that are just as diverse.”

-Zoe K.D. Haynes, Planning Committee Member, Undergraduate Student, Wayne State University

Amber Cruz, program manager of Mobilize.org will be the keynote speaker at the event and she is excited to share Mobilize resources and ideas to organize voter engagement efforts during the 2012 election season.

For more information about the Active Leaders Student Conference, click here.

Submitted by Jessica Johnson,  AmeriCorps*VISTA, Michigan Nonprofit Association 

Returning Refreshed and Ready to Roll

For anyone who has registered for a large conference featuring many “tracks” for attendees to follow and countless session options, you will be able to relate to the registration process for the National Conference on Volunteering and Service (NCVS). It takes a lot of time to comb through session descriptions, deciding which sessions of many will be the best to attend. Like any robust conference, putting together a session itinerary can be daunting.

In preparation for my attendance at the 2012 NCVS at McCormick Place in Chicago, I put together a great itinerary. I was excited about my session selection and went ready to go learn new things to apply to my work. What I found once I got there was a bunch of great sessions but also a unique experience to network with other likeminded individuals, hear questions other attendees were asking, and get a sense of the wide scope of work being done in communities throughout the country.

More than any conference sessions I attended, the time I spent listening to the inspiring things happening with other organizations, discussing my past service as an AmeriCorps*VISTA, and sharing recent projects started with the Volunteer Centers of Michigan (VCM), made my first time attending the NCVS invaluable. Having the opportunity to listen to the questions being asked in sessions gave me new perspective on the resources organizations need to work effectively. This gave me ideas on how to improve future trainings and the outreach VCM does to the field.

By the end of the three days spent in McCormick Place, moving from one session to the next, it was clear that the best learning didn’t happen because of a well constructed itinerary. The greatest learning moments took place between sessions, over meals, and during the discussions that were part of session presentations. It was great to return back to Michigan with new ideas, new connections, and prepared to implement things I learned.

Submitted by Chelsea Martin, 2012 Sara Ballard Scholarship Recipient, Capacity Building and New Media Consultant

Mackinac Policy Conference Review

Last week, the Detroit Chamber of Commerce held its annual Mackinac Policy Conference at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Donna Murray-Brown and I were fortunate enough to attend the conference this year on behalf of MNA. One difference in the conference this year, was the lack of lawmakers. Michigan legislators stayed behind in Lansing to put the finishing touches on the FY’12-13 state budget.

This year’s theme was on making Michigan and Detroit a place for global competitiveness. To help attendees think about Michigan in a global setting, the Detroit Chamber had two very high-profile foreign affairs experts, Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman. Both had very similar messages, Michigan and the United States can no longer think of itself as the sole “super power” on the global stage – both in foreign policy and economic progress. Both Zakaria and Friedman came to the same recommendations, improve US infrastructure (including wireless deployment), open up immigration policy, and invest in K-16 education. Detroit Public Television has both sessions on their website, you can view each of them here.

Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman were not the only ones touting the need for Michigan to invest in the future. Numerous keynote speakers and panelists also reiterated the point: if Michigan is going to succeed, it must invest in the future.

One slightly low point of the conference was the “Fab Five” panel, where the leaders of Macomb, Oakland, Wayne, and Washtenaw counties, and Detroit Mayor, David Bing discussed regional collaboration. There was much more of the usual bickering around turf and who should pay for what, instead of broader discussion of a vision of what regionalism looks like for the Detroit area, which would have built upon what the other keynote speakers proposed. There is always next year…

 

Submitted by Christina Kuo, Senior Director of Public Policy and Public Affairs, Michigan Nonprofit Association

Capacity Building: Detroit Sub-Grant Award Program for Culturally Diverse and Inclusive Arts and Culture Organizations

In September 2010, the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the Kennedy Center in Boston began delivering a local program called Capacity Building: Detroit. The program will run for 2 years and supports arts and culture organizations located in Southeast Michigan by providing seminars, web-chat discussions and one-on-one coaching for the 52 participating organizations. The goal of the Capacity Building: Detroit program is to equip arts and culture organizations with the tools necessary to become more efficient and effective in the day-to-day organizational management of their organizations, helping them to better meet their missions.

Thanks to support from the Ford Foundation, Michigan Nonprofit Association in partnership with Cultural Alliance for Southeastern Michigan has been able to offer a special sub-grant program to augment the work of the Capacity Building: Detroit program and extend further resources to participating arts and culture organizations that are culturally diverse and inclusive or are serving culturally diverse communities in Southeast Michigan.  The goal of the sub-grant program is to provide these culturally diverse and inclusive organizations with the additional resources needed to increase their capacity to deliver services to culturally diverse and inclusive audiences by implementing the skills learned through the Capacity Building: Detroit program.

MNA is committed to infusing the principles of diversity in all facets of its work and recognizes that gaps in access to capacity building opportunities exist more frequently for culturally diverse organizations: this sub-grant program seeks to address that gap. For the purposes of this awards program, participating organizations deemed to be eligible as culturally diverse and inclusive were asked to meet the following two criteria: 1) The board or leadership staff of the organization is more than 50% culturally diverse; and 2) The audience/participants of the organization are 80% or more culturally diverse, and the organization has a proven track record of serving the needs of one or more of the targeted cultural groups.*

In February, facilitated by the Metro Detroit Partnership and MNA’s Capacity Building team, the sub-granting scheme awarded 15 participating organizations with grants of up to $15,000. Successful applications were awarded funding to develop projects that focus on implementing organizational capacity building initiatives, including: institutional and programmatic marketing strategies, fundraising, strategic planning, season planning, and board development and training opportunities.

Congratulations to the successful organizations!

Heritage Works

Living Arts

MSU Community Music School Detroit

Matrix Theatre Company

Sphinx Organization

Arts League of Michigan

Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit

Music Hall

Michigan Youth Arts

Detroit Public Library Friends Foundation

PuppetART Theater

Stagecrafters

Heidelberg Project

Arab American National Museum

*Targeted Cultural Groups: African American, Asian American, Latin/Hispanic, and LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered) groups.

Submitted by Annie McGuigan Fenton, Capacity Building Manager, Michigan Nonprofit Association

Despite differences, education is central to both State and Federal Budgets

These past few weeks have demonstrated the challenges of creating sound, effective budgets at the state and national level. The Michigan and federal budgets, however, paint two very different pictures of the health of their constituents.

The recession over the past four years has not been kind, but there seems to be a glimmer of hope in Michigan. After several consecutive years of painful cuts, it appears the financial outlook is more optimistic with 2012’s budget surplus. Education funding increased by 0.2%, public safety funding is also set to increase, and the “Rainy Day” fund will grow by an additional $130 million, according to the State Budget Office. At the Federal level, by contrast, the deficit still weighs heavily on programs most Americans take for granted, but rely on – the President offered a 52% decrease in Education, a 35% decrease in Labor, and slight increases for Health and Human Services (3.7%) and the Corporation of National and Community Service (1.3%).

Still, there are some common commitments between the two budgets, such as improving performance and affordability of education. President Obama promotes a ‘Race to the Top’ and links financial aid to universities that keep their tuition under control. Governor Rick Snyder also wants to link increased spending in education to improved performance, best practices, and college tuition restraint. And they are politicians from two different parties.

Despite the other differing priorities of the two budgets, it is clear that superior education for future generations must be a priority for education beyond high school. Whether it is community college, traditional four-year, or vocational – higher education has become increasingly important to achieve personal financial security.

Submitted by Michelle Eichhorst, Public Policy Fellow for Michigan Nonprofit Association

Volunteer Impact on Michigan Communities

During my year serving as an AmeriCorps*VISTA with the Michigan Community Service Commission, I had the opportunity to see just how important national service funding can be to volunteer engagement in Michigan communities and the impact individuals can have in a community when brought together.

In the recent past, people have had to ask more and more of nonprofits in communities throughout Michigan to help provide social services like food resources, job training, medical care, and much more. Many times those nonprofits turn to volunteers to help meet those community needs. Through the support of national service programs like the Volunteer Generation Fund (VGF) and AmeriCorps, organizations like volunteer centers (volunteer connector organizations established in communities to help place volunteers in local organizations) have been able to engage individuals in an intentional and productive way.

While serving as a VISTA, I helped support Michigan’s VGF grantees, who are part of the volunteer center network, implement a new volunteer management technology called HandsOn Connect. The technology has been extremely challenging for the volunteer centers and while supporting them, I saw them struggle to find the staff time to rollout their new system. But despite the difficulties of using HandsOn Connect the volunteer centers were able to see the capacity that the system was creating within their organization. HandsOn Connect allows the volunteer centers to recruit potential volunteers with greater success and help manage them throughout their time as a volunteer. The system also allows local partners of the volunteer center to find volunteers that are a good fit for their organization and bring much needed skills to volunteer positions.

One of the things that spending a year supporting the VGF grantees as a VISTA really impressed upon me is the lasting impact small investments of capacity building funds, like those that made HandsOn Connect possible, can make on local communities and their ability to serve one another. Given the right structure and knowledge, individuals can be called to service and address some of the most complicated and pressing challenges Michigan communities face.

The capacity built by funds made available through the VGF and the placement of AmeriCorps members in volunteer centers allows countless hours of volunteer service to be leveraged. In a practical sense, it gives volunteer centers the chance to improve their volunteer management practices, invest time in training nonprofit partners to use volunteers successfully, and host community service projects around National Days of Service that help to raise awareness of volunteerism and create a store of future volunteers. As a VISTA, I was able to see firsthand how National Service funding helps create the opportunity for local organizations to mobilize volunteers around critical community issues and start to use volunteer service as a strategy to make lasting change. It is a perspective and experience that was made possible by national service funding that allowed me to give a year of service and that experience will stay with me as I continue through my life.

Submitted by Chelsea Martin, Capacity Building and New Media Consultant, Volunteer Centers of Michigan

Nonprofits Ready to Partner

Wednesday night, Governor Snyder gave his second State of the State address. As he talked about how far Michigan has moved forward in 2011, and his Administration’s priorities for 2012, he continually came back to two key ideas: collaboration and innovation. Collaboration brings with it a sense of community, inclusion, and hope for the future. With innovation, Michigan can creatively improve upon what is already great or throw out the bad. These are indeed keys to a successful future in Michigan and keystones to the good governance Gov. Snyder also advocates.

But you can’t talk about collaboration with just these two sectors (business and government) while ignoring the impact of nonprofits on many of the metrics on the MiDashboard. By including nonprofits at the table of this discussion from the beginning, alongside elected officials and businesses, Gov. Snyder would not only see a broader, more complete view of the impacts of his proposals, but also a better solution to the problems he has identified.

While Snyder’s agenda was positive and avoided controversy, he can no longer ignore the growing importance of nonprofits that are integral to achieving many of his goals for 2012. By championing his own values of collaboration and innovation, the state, nonprofits, and other key players can work together to achieve the desired results of a healthy and prosperous Michigan.

Submitted by Michelle Eichhorst, Public Policy Fellow for Michigan Nonprofit Association