My bosses are friends with everybody. I must have met 200 people since I started here. Every time, “Hey! How are you doing? Good to see you!” I could think, now, “So, clearly, relationships help in the nonprofit business.” And I think it makes sense that to find grants and scattered funding, it helps to know a lot of people. But their greetings are so wonderfully natural every time. It doesn’t feel like the lesson here is to assemble a network for business. It feels more like, enjoy the opportunities to make friends, and the benefits will come.
My bosses have emphasized collaboration to me before when I’ve interviewed them for suggestions to other CBOs, but I’ve been observing them act on it for weeks, now. They must really believe in teamwork. As I understand from them, it’s essential to combine forces to attract sufficient resources. Funders want to see that an organization is partnered with and endorsed by others because it seems to reflect trustworthiness. There’s an opportunity for more than partnership and respect, too, though, especially among necessarily “nice” organizations like these nonprofits. These people I meet at meetings, they care! They want to know how the family is doing! It makes a nice, motivating environment in a field that might especially drain someone’s patience.
My attached picture would be of the block that ONA has received a grant to revamp completely. It’s from my first day but it looks the same, still. They’re houses that are in bad shape, but which haven’t been forgotten: they have boarded-up windows and doors. And they’re painted with famous black athletes on a solid blue background. It’s beautiful.
Emma,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on your work, and your reflections on the social aspect of networking within the nonprofit sector. I totally agree that, although the relationships we make as nonprofits with one another are for benefit, they are still genuine. I think it’s because we’re all, to a degree, going to face the same challenges as nonprofits. When we come together, I think it not only reinforces each nonprofit’s trustworthiness, but the communities they strive to empower and engage.
I would have loved to see the picture of the art displayed on the houses! It reminds me of a project my nonprofit has for local youth to take portraits of each other and their surroundings, which are then printed out and placed onto vacant houses. It really is beautiful.
Bash