Our Core Beliefs

Our core belief statements present the lens through which we view our world and our work and serve as the foundation for our organizational endeavors:

• About Community: It is our belief that communities should be comprised of necessary systems and resources that support the lives of the people within them. Furthermore, the degree to which people have access to these life-affirming community elements should not be affected by or dependent on the socio-economic category they happen to fall within. Communities that are configured in this way emerge when the people within them are able to voice their needs and concerns and the primary decision makers are responsive to what is articulated.

• About Nonprofits: Because of its ability to engage and mobilize people, the nonprofit sector is an integral actor in affecting positive, sustainable change to the conditions that exist in community.  This ability is the primary strategic advantage of the sector and one that is important for the sector to recognize and embrace if we hope to see substantive improvements in the quality of the lives of the people we serve. Ultimately, the nonprofit sector must act as the vehicles by which people recognize their inherent power to change the circumstances of their own lives at both the individual and societal level.

• About Our Work: It is our vision of community and our understanding of the vital role and important work of nonprofits in bringing that vision about that compels us to be agents of change on behalf of our region’s nonprofit sector. Over time we seek to engage the sector’s stakeholders in exploration, support and adoption of the principles, practices, and resources that creates a regional environment that enables nonprofit organizations to be effective in the accomplishment of their missions. This belief is the central organizing tenet of our work.

Program Model

At the core of our program model are the programmatic interventions for enhancing the capabilities of nonprofit organizations. The accompanying diagram depicts this work at the center in the form of a pyramid. Each level reflects a different program modality. Moving from the base to the summit of the pyramid reflects movement from activities that are less time and resource intensive, engage larger audiences, and have a lesser impact on the ongoing practice of nonprofits to those that are more time and resource intensive, engage smaller groups of individuals, and have a greater, more lasting impact on how nonprofits function.