Sunshine and Showers: The highlight reel

Intro by Nathan Magel (@nathanmagel)
Video by Chris Oien (@coien) 

Lucky for me and more than sixty YNPNers facing a dour and uncertain 2012, last Friday’s Nonprofit Forecast event was both portent and panacea as the sage words of Sheila Smith (Executive Director of Minnesota Citizens for the Arts) and Marcia Avner (Senior Fellow at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits) were unpacked and reimagined through the art of improv by the fine fellows of the Theater of Public Policy.

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Scratching the Surface: Conversations on Race & Privilege in the Nonprofit Sector

“What we do not say, what we do not talk about, allows the status quo to continue.” -Stephanie Wildman, Making Systems of Privilege Visible YNPN-TC partnered with the Racial Justice Program at the YWCA Minneapolis a few weeks ago to host a discussion of race and privilege in the nonprofit sector. We had a tremendous response to the event: Tickets sold out in the first day and a subsequent wait list was some 70 people deep.

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Working together: Six of 1, 1/2 a dozen of the other

It's the late seventies. The air is filled with Kenny Rogers' gruff warbled yarns and the punchy funks and heart-rending swoons of the Commadores. Lionel Richie (Commadores) and Rogers are plump in their respective pigeonholes. Then, in 1980, "Lady" drops. Putting country music to R&B tracks, these two hairballs found a syrupy benign, and hugely successful denominator, firmly establishing Richie as a cross-genre powerhouse and Rogers as a bellwether of 80s adult contemporary.

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In The Year 2000

I spend a lot of time in coffee shops, conference sessions, and meetings galore trying to make sense of the crazy mixed up world we live in today. What does our current milieu of threadbare budgets, frenetic innovation, and the ever clarion call for measurable results mean for the work of our organizations? A question we’re all grappling. But for a moment or two, let’s shove away from our desks, quit clinking our iPhones, and look into the future. Yes, that’s right the future. As Conan would facetiously exclaim, all the way to the year 2000.

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