North Carolina Center for Nonprofit Organizations

Innovate learning: the North Carolina Center for nonprofits trained 3,826 community leaders this year through 57 presentations, webinars, and workshops across the state about best practices in Nonprofit governance, leadership, and management. These trainings provided opportunities for Nonprofit board and staff members to strengthen community assets, exchange solutions to problems, share the lessons they have learned, and offer support to each other in their challenging work. Topics included board fundraising, capital campaign readiness, retooling your fund reserves, Nonprofit advocacy basics, and building equity into your employee benefits. During other training activities, we: - educated 235 Nonprofit leaders about emerging issues and best practices at our 2021 statewide conference: belonging... This three-day virtual conference featured two keynote presentations from jaki shelton green, nc's poet laureate, and julia campbell, a speaker, author, and Nonprofit consultant, both of whom shared presentations focused on storytelling. The event featured dozens of workshops tackling a wide variety of Nonprofit management topics as well as a virtual exhibitor hall. - partnered with the Nonprofit finance fund, triangle community foundation, john rex endowment, and the North Carolina network of grantmakers to offer the webinar "trends in philanthropy" to 365 registrants with a follow-up workshop for select attendees. - collaborated with North Carolina pandemic recovery office, chatham county manager's office, and nc child to offer the webinar american rescue plan funds: what nc nonprofits need to know about partnering with state and local governments for 549 registrants. Walking the talk - edi programmatic updates: the Center continued building upon our "walking the talk: equity, diversity, and inclusion in North Carolina nonprofits," a multi-year initiative to support the capacity of nonprofits to address issues of race equity and inclusion in their programs and within their Organizations. Planning dates have been set for a new 2023 6-session series, "edi roundtable for Nonprofit executives: bold spaces for bold action". This executive leadership program will continue to focus on the racial leadership gap, the generational leadership gap, and the policies, practices, and organizational cultures in nonprofits that exacerbate these gaps. Upcoming in 2023, the Center is planning a second edi project entitled "executive leadership development series: building equity and anti-racist change agents." Nonprofit management institute: since september 2020, the Center has offered its "Nonprofit management institute" twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. This learning cohort of Nonprofit executives, managers, and board leaders gathers virtually to assess their Organizations' management practices, identify successes and challenges, build capacity where there are gaps, and work towards long-term sustainability. Developed from ongoing Nonprofit management research and education, and the Center's guide, principles & practices: best practices for North Carolina nonprofits, this six-session series facilitates learning, discussion, and management strategies around board governance, program design and evaluation, strategic planning, fundraising, financial management, and human resources. Participants graduate with a Nonprofit management institute certificate and can earn up to 15 credit hours as part of the duke university Nonprofit management program. To date, 271 Nonprofit leaders have graduated from the Nonprofit management institute. Centered managed solutions: centered managed solutions (cms) is a new professional services program offered by the North Carolina Center for nonprofits. Cms will go beyond the usual transactional programs and services by offering a progressive engagement model, beginning with an organizational assessment and building on an advisor/coaching relationship that empowers the executive and its team to assess better and address the organization'Organizations's needs. The Center worked with the North Carolina partnership for children to make this service available for up to 10 of their local partnerships (lps) at no cost. Lps who participated in this pilot project (january - june 2022) agree to offer valuable feedback regarding their experiences and how to improve organizational capacity and long-term sustainability. The Center partnered with the unc school of government on capacity-building research to help document our cms approach, planning, and evaluation. This partnership will continue into the 2023 fiscal year, as well as a new cms project developing with the z smith reynolds foundation.

Value our members: the North Carolina Center for nonprofits offered member benefits, programs, and services to increase knowledge about Nonprofit management. More than 6,500 board, staff, and volunteers working with over 1,100 member nonprofits took advantage of these programs. Fy22-23 ended with a total of 1080 members, 189 being new. Members have access to over 800 vetted resources through the Center's online resource library. Members may ask staff questions through a member assistance tool on specific Nonprofit management topics, from board governance to public policy. The Center managed 78 member assistance cases - fundraising & philanthropy, financial management, board governance, legal and human resources being the most common inquiries. The Center serves members with pro bono support through six program areas: legal, marketing, human resources, accounting, coaching, and executive transition. The Center considered 184 pro bono cases - 94 legal, 45 in accounting, 21 human resources, 11 coaching, 10 marketing and 3 in executive transition. Members receive registration discounts on webinars and publication downloads, discounts on products and services offered by businesses through the Center's money saving partners program, receive monthly e-newsletters, and are invited to offer feedback about the Center's programs and services through an annual membership survey. There were 469 publication downloads, 575 job board posts from members and fy22-23 annual survey had 263 responses. The Center launched a 1-year lapsed member campaign to encourage members from the previous fiscal year to renew their membership, recouping over 9,400 in revenue, as well as a new join campaign that encouraged never been members to join along with those who have not been members for 2 years or more, which recouped over 10,000 in revenue. The Center renewed the nc partnership for children group membership for its 2nd year and added 2 additional group memberships including hands on nwnc and the harrelson Center. A new cms cohort funded by z. smith reynolds also joined as a group member through the cms program. The Center underwent by-law changes in the fall of 2022 which granted members voting rights. This prompted the Center to draft a member agreement. The Center has received an estimate of 500 signed agreements during the time of launch (12/17/22) through the end of fy22-23 (6/30/23). The Center had its inaugural annual member meeting which had 424 registrants and 265 attendees on the day of the meeting. 316 Organizations were represented (29% of membership). The Center held its first nominations and board elections receiving 31 nominee recommendations from members and 100 votes during the voting period.

Champion the sector: we advocated for a positive policy environment to support the work of 501 (c)(3) nonprofits throughout North Carolina so that these Organizations can more effectively deliver programs and services to help communities across the state. Some examples of specific results include: - kept the Nonprofit sector united on federal, state, and local tax policy issues affecting the tax-exempt status of 501(c)(3) nonprofits and affecting the operations of Nonprofit Organizations. - advocated on state and federal legislation and rules to ensure the sustainability of charitable Organizations and to help nonprofits save time and money. Examples include advocacy to modernize state Nonprofit corporation and charitable solicitation laws, to simplify the state sales tax exemption process for 501(c)(3) nonprofits, to ensure that state conflict of interest laws are consistent with best practices for nonprofits, and to increase incentives for all North carolinians to give generously to support the work of charitable nonprofits through changes to federal and state tax laws. - tracked dozens of bills in the nc general assembly and congress that could affect nonprofits in a wide variety of ways. - kept Nonprofit staff and board members across the state informed through weekly email updates, social media postings, and online workshops. - provided training and written materials to help North Carolina nonprofits understand the implications of the state budget and other recently enacted state and federal laws for their Organizations' fundraising and operations. The Center continued to track trends in the economic impact and fiscal health of North Carolina's charitable Nonprofit sector.

Cultivate connections: the Center offered opportunities for both nonprofits and businesses to promote their programs, services, products, or open staff positions to North Carolina nonprofits. The Center had 57 businesses listed in its business finder directory, a searchable database for nonprofits looking for services around accounting, diversity, equity, and inclusion, insurance services, and technology. Nc Nonprofit careers, the Center's online jobs board, provided over 800 job postings for job seekers looking to work in North Carolina's Nonprofit sector. The Nonprofit marketplace brought 24 exhibitors at the in-person 2022 conference. In fy22 the Center issued three publications: principles & practices: best practices for North Carolina nonprofits was downloaded 139 times (free to members); toolkit for organizational resiliency was downloaded 81 times; and the legal compliance checklist for North Carolina nonprofits was downloaded 330 times. Strive to model best practices: the Center continues to work to better understand the scope of capacity building challenges nonprofits face, the make-up of its current and potential members and program audience, potential revenue opportunities, and operation costs. It has continued work on a new program, Center managed solutions, to help nonprofits strengthen their management capacities through a progressive engagement approach. The Center also continues to revise its organizational chart to better manage and support the staff capacity needed to carry out its mission. Beginning in the summer of 2023, the Center underwent an executive search process for its next president and ceo. The Center's current, president and ceo, jeanne tedrow, will be retiring in early 2024. It also continues to evaluate policies and benefit programs to be more equitable and reduce unnecessary barriers for employees' participation. Where and when possible, the Center has extended and increased benefits to its members. The Center continues to utilize various technology platforms to deliver and expand programs and services for nonprofits. The Center will be launching a new website to help deliver products and services more efficiently to nonprofits in early 2024.