Creating Awareness for the Third Sector

After the three-day Nonprofit Congress in May, the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA), which produced the Nonprofit Congress, organized a lobbying day to create awareness about the nonprofit sector. The New York delegation was one of many that went to Capitol Hill to lobby our Representatives and Senators about the National Capacity Building Initiative (put forth by NCNA). The bill provides $25 million for training and infrastructure for charities to help them become more effective and sustainable (half the funds from the federal government, half from private sources). That’s me (Howard Adam Levy, Principal of Red Rooster Group) in the yellow jacket, with Fred Fields, from the United Way of New York City, behind me, and Doug Sauer, Executive Director of Council of Community Services of New York State, bottom left.

The lobbying effort was important on three fronts:

1. To generate awareness about the need for funds specifically for non-program activities to allow nonprofits to pay for leadership training and operational costs.

2. To demonstrate to government the impact and importance of the nonprofit sector, which accounts for $1 trillion of the economy and 10% of the workforce.

3. To promote advocating for the nonprofit sector as an essential activity for nonprofits and to show that we can be effective when organized (with the NCNA the organizing body for the social services sector).

WAKE UP CALL: What are you doing to advocate for the nonprofit sector?

Drawings from the Nonprofit Congress

The opening session of the National Nonpofit Congress held in June in Washington, DC, kicked off three days of conference sessions bringing together the best ideas to promote the public sector.

Kari Galloway

Karrie Galloway, the Director of Friends of Guest House, shares the joys and challenges of helping recovering addicts to acclimate to society.

Jenifer McDaniel
Former heroine addict, Jennifer McDaniel shares her heart-breaking story of being sexually abused as a child and kicked out of her home, leaving school without learning to read, entering the foster care system, becoming a drug addict and her ultimate path to literacy, a job and normalcy.
The format of the conference combined personal stories such as this one, with macro level sessions on issues and best practices affecting the public sector. On the last day participants broke out into statewide groups in order to form committees to continue the discussion during the course of the year. The conference concluded with all the statewide delegations assembling to share their plans for promoting the visibility and viability of the nonprofit sector in their states. Some, as I did, stayed in Washington, DC another day in order to participate in lobbying on behalf of a bill which would provide $25 million in funds for capacity-building for the nonprofit sector. The Nonprofit Congress reconvenes in May of 2009 in New Orleans.