Marcia Avner

Welcome to my first effort at a blog. My time for reflection, poetry, and occasional sparks of new ideas coincide with my morning walks with Sunshine-the-Wonder-Dog, who will appear here, too. SO as we skipped through the snow shower today, I was thinking about the nonprofit sector as a sector, as more than the sum of its parts.

In a discussion with students of nonprofit advocacy and lobbying, I had an “aha” moment, realizing that many staff and board members have a keen sense of their own organization’s issues, goals, messages, and support base. Most, though, don’t have a compelling sense of the nonprofit sector as a whole. My 42 year career with nonprofit and public sector work (I do have close friends in the private sector, too) has reinforced my conviction that it is in our collective best interest to be recognized and understood as a sector—by ourselves and in the public affairs community.

We are not profit making. And we are nongovernmental. We know what we are not. We must define who we are. What we are is an essential component of American life and participatory democracy. Nonprofits – across the range of activity areas from arts to youth intervention programs (anyone have a “z” program?) – provide opportunities for people to connect to one another, to pursue their interests, to contribute to the overall well-being of the community. I suppose that is why the IRS sees us as “purely public charities.” We are key vehicles for people to be activists and leaders in their communities and on their issues.

Together we nonprofits are a powerful component of life in Minnesota. If we contextualize our individual efforts – service, program, and advocacy – in the framework of that larger whole, our collective presence and power will serve us well. This legislative session, as we work for tax and budget policies that promote strategic investments in state priorities, as we play our role in shaping the direction of the Commission to End Poverty, as we respond to the Office of Legislative Auditor’s report on the shortcomings of the state’s grant-making process and help shape a better system, we serve our individual interests by speaking within the context of the sector and the community’s interest.

For our organizations to succeed at their particular mission-driven advocacy, for democracy to flourish because more Minnesotans participate in the policy dialogue, we need to see ourselves and our organizations as something larger and more powerful than our fragmented possibilities. As a sector, we have the talent, the reach, and the clout to shape decisions that touch the lives of the people, institutions, and communities that are our base. We should use that framework of the important work of the sector as we advance our individual and shared goals. Contextualize your efforts as part of what the nonprofit sector contributes to the community, as essential to the “social contract.”

MCN will engage many of you around the focal points of this session that have an impact on all of us: grants, lobbyist reports, funding, election reform, and more. You can count on the context that we foster to strengthen all that we all do.

More from the dog walks…ideas are invited: marcia@mncn.org