If we really believe in creating lasting change, we have to find ways for everyone to be part of that – not just our friends, not just the people we know, and maybe not just doing the things we can think of… 2021 is a great time for that to happen.
Skills-based volunteers from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts collaborated with East Boston Social Centers to develop frameworks for nonprofit managers to support their team’s mental health in moments of crisis.
As COVID-19 cases continue to climb across the country, many Americans are experiencing a mental health crisis too, especially healthcare and frontline workers. At East Boston Social Centers (the Social Centers), a nonprofit that provides afterschool programming, childcare, nutrition, and activities for the elderly, the staff were not exempt from the mental health toll of the pandemic. Blue Cross Blue Shield of …
In the spirit of service this MLK Day, we had the exciting opportunity to interview Amiko Foster of Youth Finance Institute of America (YFIA), a California-based nonprofit that provides personal finance education programs designed to teach finance life skills to youth in disadvantaged areas.
Common Impact is proud to partner with the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Action Network. This December 2020 webinar helps nonprofits understand opportunities for leveraging skills-based volunteering to build capacity. The presentation features information on skills-based volunteering resources, how to find volunteers, and how pro bono projects can be used strategically to benefit your …
Pro Bono 101 Webinar with the Clinton Foundation Read More »
Last year we worked through the “why” of our work, asking ourselves “so what?” until we hit our north star. We work towards alleviating inequality by building the capacity of social change organizations fighting for equity through skilled volunteerism by partnering with companies, the largest and most sustainable source of pro bono expertise. Our 2020-2022 …
[There is] this narrative of ‘This is not who we are,’ when a lot of us, and I think a lot of folks from marginalized communities – Black, Indigenous folks, etc. – are saying, ‘This is exactly who we are, who we have been.’ I think about it like a twelve step program where you cannot really heal and change if you don’t go through the first step, which is to admit you have a problem, and we just haven’t done that. We as a nation just have not acknowledged that we have a problem here. This is who we are.
There’s been an intense focus on getting back to normal, but what this year and our Pro Bono Perspectives guests have highlighted is that normal is not okay and we don’t want to go back there. That to me is the light that is shining through the cracks: we are coming out of 2020 with a new and clear mandate for social and racial justice and a renewed sense of purpose.
It’s really important for those of us in a position of power – as a funder with nonprofit organizations especially – to be very transparent about it and not allow it to be a barrier for meaningful partnership. We’re not going to have the impact that we want to have if it’s us telling you exactly how we want you to run programs for us; it will be far more fruitful for us to have a conversation about the outcomes we seek to achieve – ideally together – and then to think about resources we have or you have and hopefully align on the impact we can have together.
How do we put the [communities] in the driver’s seat? When we’re investing our time and our resources and our energy, how are we shifting the power that may have sat with funders who might have pre-determined what those criteria were, and create a new set of criteria around investments?
