Independent Sector Kicks Off Unprecedented Initiative to Strengthen the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Community

Third, the initiative will encourage participation from people associated with organizations of all sizes, mission areas, and locations, as well as from thought leaders throughout society. This approach enables participants to work across fields, rather than focusing on their standard networks.

Kicking off Envisioning Our Future will be this week’s StrategyLab. Held in Colorado, it will bring together approximately 75 accomplished people connected to the charitable community. This group was carefully constructed to create a dynamic mix of participants of varying ages, from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, different fields, geographic areas, types of organizations, and political perspectives.

Starting in September will be extensive and accessible online conversations designed to include all nonprofit staffers and stakeholders. Content from these discussions will then be fed into a series of FutureLabs at the IS Annual Conference, to be held in Detroit November 4-6 in partnership with the Council of Michigan Foundations. FutureLabs will focus on specific issues, such as technology and communications, demographic shifts, or new sustainability models for the sector, and use interactive techniques to draw on the knowledge and experience of conference attendees.

In early 2010, the insights from this initiative will be broadly distributed among the nonprofit community. Ultimately the initiative is designed to offer findings that the staff and board of any organization can use to evaluate how its work can be improved in the future by recognizing the insights and strategies identified through this process.

“The economic struggles of the American people and of many charitable organizations makes this an exceptional time to hold these conversations,” noted Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and co-chair of Envisioning Our Future. “Moments of crisis are when it is vital to think strategically about how to maximize the positive impact that the nonprofit sector can have despite financial challenges,” added Marguerite Kondracke, president and CEO of America’s Promise Alliance and the initiative’s other co-chair.