Nonprofit Hub Magazine | Fall 2017

magazine FALL 2017

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Featuring: A look into the inaugural Breakthrough Initiative Grant, analysis on the Place Matters mapping project and our quarterly Leading the Good Life spotlight series.

A LETTER FROM magazine

Randy

FALL 2017

So my parents delivered the pumpkinshaped sugar cookies yesterday, signalling the start of another holiday season. Since Kindergarten, my mom has made these cookies as the birthday treat that I got to share with my class. This tradition followed me through college, and now my staff and other lucky members of Nonprofit Hub get to join in on the sugar rush too. This, and the arrival of the ginormous Sears holiday catalog, were key indicators for a young me that giving season was upon us.

WHAT'S INSIDE

2 3 5 7 8 9

Members in Brief

by Keona Koster Collaboration For Good

by Nick Small Place Matters

by Hana Muslic How America Gives

by Jordan Geisert

Over time the excitement of receiving gifts transitioned to a thrill of giving gifts. Actually, for me, holidays have become less about the notion of gifts and more about a sense of community. And, consequently, my anticipation of Christmas has evolved into a deeper admiration of Thanksgiving.

Member Spotlight

by Spencer Creal

As you’re reading this, our Nonprofit Hub membership will be sitting down at a long table for our annual Thanksgiving feast to celebrate the community we’re building here. We’ve grown to nearly 100 members who call this place home.

Leading The Good Life

by Sydny Boyd

In this issue you’ll read how our mission of community expands beyond our walls every day. I am honored and humbled to sit at these community tables working to solve city- and state-wide issues as a team. You’ll learn about a long-time favorite organization of mine, Leadership Lincoln. As a young professional, this organization helped me to understand Lincoln on a much deeper and more intimate level.

OUR CREW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Randy Hawthorne DIRECTOR OF CONTENT STRATEGY Spencer Creal MARKETING COORDINATOR Molly Bretz GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jordan Geisert CONTENT STRATEGISTS Hana Muslic Sydny Boyd MARKETING ASSOCIATE Keona Koster SALES ASSOCIATE Garrett Miles CONTENT CONTRIBUTER Nick Small

You’ll read about the Place Matters mapping project and how a series of wellresearched maps is defining Lincoln in interesting ways. You’ll understand more how the funded groups of the Woods Innovation Grant are addressing some of these issues in Lincoln’s oldest neighborhoods. And finally you’ll meet one of those committed individuals working in those communities through our Leading the Good Life series, Shawn Ryba.

Now that I’m older and I’m entrenched in the nonprofit sector, my mailbox is filled with year-end asks rather than pages and pages of the latest toys and gadgets. And it excites me just as much to be reminded of all the people doing good to make Lincoln an awesome place to live. We have some impressive goals that we’ll be sharing soon about a few of our community-building initiatives at Nonprofit Hub. Please feel free to add this magazine to your stack as a reminder that we’ll happily do good with your support.

And if you’re wondering about the availability of the pumpkin cookies, I’m sorry you missed them.

They disappear pretty fast. But feel free to stop

by Nonprofit Hub soon for mom’s next round of holiday cookies. We’ll have the coffee on.

RANDY HAWTHORNE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

2 | Nonprofit Hub Magazine | Fall 2017 | Nonprofit Hub Members in Brief

NONPROFIT HUB

Members In Brief Leadership Lincoln has started its 33rd year of classes to engage people in serving in a variety of ways in the community to make Lincoln even better. In August, a group of highly motivated young people shared ideas at TEDxYouth@Lincoln. Then, in September, TEDxLincoln Main featured nine great ideas.

Nebraska Civic Engagement Table now has 40 501c3 nonprofit members who are creating and/or expanding their grassroots advocacy efforts through resources the Table provides, including a grant program through which they recently distributed $80k to facilitate meaningful conversations through deep-canvassing programs.

The Lincoln Midwest Ballet Company has been creating opportunities to promote the art of ballet in our community. On December 16 and 17, a cast of over 200 local dancers and professional guest artists will delight this year’s audiences with a magical performance of The Nutcracker on the Lied Center stage accompanied by live music from the Nebraska Symphony Chamber Orchestra.

Live Well. Go Fish. purchased a 14-passenger wheelchair accessible pontoon boat to serve seniors, youth, veterans, and people with disabilities in January. In May, several veterans, including a Pearl Harbor survivor, cut the ribbon at the first official season kickoff at Lake Wanahoo. To date, they have taken 117 boating and fishing cruises that include fishing, kite flying, bird watching, singing, and laughing with some pretty great people!

Prosper Lincoln is aiming to create a world-class innovation/entrepreneurship ecosystem and to have Lincoln be the white-hot epicenter for that. They get there by focusing their efforts on talent, collaboration, mentorship/internships and capital/commercialization. The hope is to connect the dots so the collective efforts of the community create incredible momentum for start-ups, investors and entrepreneurs.

Think bigger. Act bolder. Be better.

My Talented Teacher believes the talents of teachers reach way beyond the classroom!

They have created a platform where teachers can promote their side-hustle and make it easy for the public in general to find these teachers and hire them! They have a functional website with teachers in 6 different states to be hired for freelance services.

Browne Innovation Group is pioneering the shift from traditional offline fundraising methodologies [think direct mail and events] to a less expensive 100% online model that is content marketing-based and relationship-centered. This new fundraising business model reflects the new reality that your current and potential supporters your community - live online. The result is that over time, your nonprofit raises more sustainable revenue from more engaged supporters.

Live, Love, Discover has been hard at work developing and releasing a fully functional augmented reality game app named “FindIt! AR.” The app is one of the first AR apps in the Apple iOS App Store and is free to download.

Collaboration For G ood

by Nick Small

The Woods Charitable Foundation (WCF) introduced the Breakthrough Initiative Grant earlier this summer to “support promising and groundbreaking new programs, collaborations and/or organizational best practices in Lincoln, Nebraska,” according to the grant announcement. The first Breakthrough Initiative Grant was awarded to Collective Impact Lincoln (CIL), an umbrella name for the collaboration between Nebraskans for Civic Reform, the South of Downtown Community Development Organization (SDCDO) and Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest.

The collaborative effort is being led by Nebraskans for Civic Reform, and exists to equip Lincoln with resources, build communities and leverage policies to improve the quality of life for low-income Lincolnites. CIL is rolling up their sleeves and sparking real conversations, door-to-door, in targeted neighborhoods and communities affected most by poverty.

Liz Codina, CIL’s Program Manager, describes the collaborative project as a “connector”.

“While we will focus on the six Lincoln neighborhoods that have the highest rates of poverty, we will also work with agencies, businesses, and other entities all over Lincoln to bring people to the same table so we can begin addressing larger system-wide issues that affect Lincolnites and our community.”

CIL aims to bolster communities to be actively involved in policy changes.

The hope is to create community-led solutions, brought to light by actual members of the most affected neighborhoods. It will include initiatives ranging from neighborhood revitalization to local resource reallocation. CIL believes members of these communities know what’s holding them back better than anyone, so they want to empower neighborhood leaders to pioneer the change themselves.

4 | Nonprofit Hub Magazine | Fall 2017 | Collaboration For Good

“Any community development work should start with connecting with residents. It is crucial and essential to listen and learn from residents what is most important to them and their vision for their neighborhoods. It is important to have resident voices at the table where decisions are often being made that impact where and how they live,” said Shawn Ryba, Executive Director of SDCDO. The three pillars of focus for the program are community conversations, leadership opportunities and community action groups. They’ll be working towards revitalization in the Belmont, Clinton, Everett, Hartley, Near South and University Place neighborhoods.

The South of Downtown Community Development Organization welcomed new Community Builder, Isabel Salas, in early October.

“It is important to speak with residents of these six neighborhoods because they know better than anyone what resources and initiatives will help preserve their vibrant communities,” said Jose Lemus, Community Organizer at Nebraskans for Civic Reform.

Nebraska Appleseed will leverage researched policies to catalyze success and mobilize their network for change.

Each of the three organizations that make up CIL play an important role in strengthening low-income neighborhoods and improving the quality of life for all Lincolnites. Nebraskans for Civic Reform is taking the lead in “deep canvassing,” where they’ll have door-to-door conversations with members of each neighborhood to identify a network of diverse leaders for targeted programs. The SDCDO will build vibrant communities, preserve safe and affordable housing for all income groups and improve the overall quality of targeted neighborhoods.

“We have all worked together in various ways in Lincoln and Nebraska. We saw the opportunity presented by the Woods Charitable Fund and realized we had common missions and goals,” said Adam Morfeld, Founder of Nebraskans for Civic Reform. His dream for the project is that it will “not only improve the quality of life those in our neighborhoods, but it [will] also lead to long-term, sustainable leadership development and policy outcomes that allow equal opportunity for all Lincolnites, not just some.”

The grant from WCF will support CIL with over $1 million over three years. Last year alone, WCF awarded over $1.1 million to nonprofits in Lincoln, and over half was allocated to community and human services efforts. WCF President Tom Woods said in a press release that the “Woods Charitable Fund is excited to partner with Nebraskans for Civic Reform, Nebraska Appleseed and South of Downtown Community Development Organization on this promising, transformative project addressing various issues concerning six of Lincoln’s most challenged neighborhoods.”

If you want to learn more about Woods Charitable Fund and the opportunities they provide for Lincoln nonprofits, visit their website at woodscharitable.org.

The Nebraskans for Civic Reform staff pose for a photo at their annual retreat.

Place Matters

by Hana Muslic

“Place does matter,” said Lori Seibel, president of the Community Health Endowment (CHE) in Lincoln. Her work with the Place Matters maps project is proving that assertion.

S

eibel and her team first released a report of the city’s neighborhoods and their health data in 2015. They invited members of the public to come view maps of their neighborhoods—areas bigger than a block but smaller than a zip code— and make note of the things they observed. Then, they placed the maps online for public viewing.

“You could see that people were drawn to looking at things from a geographic perspective,” Seibel said.

“We think of ourselves as a small midwest city, but we’re growing and becoming more distant from each other. Sometimes you talk to people who’ve never been to other parts of town.”

The maps span several topics, from fitness levels, to obesity rates and asthma levels, to life expectancy rates.

The project has since shown Lincolnites that despite the fact the city is doing “great across the board,” according to other social and economic indicators, pressing health issues still exist in many neighborhoods.

“Now, our call as a community is to not look at what separates us, but what can bring us together to achieve better health,” Seibel said.

When the leadership at F Street Recreation Center studied the maps and saw the childhood obesity rates

6 | Nonprofit Hub Magazine | Fall 2017 | Place Matters

Left: Everett Elementary School students get ready to run in the Feet First program.

Middle: A map from CHE’s ‘Place Matters– More Than Ever’ report featuring the Percentage of People Living in Poverty 2011-15. Right: Tymar and Willis take a break after running a lap during Feet First.

in the Near South neighborhood, they decided to establish a running program for kids. With a grant from CHE and donations from the Lincoln Running Company, F Street implemented the program to positive reception from the community and a great turnout from the kids.

“It was about exercise but also about the idea of self-control and learning the idea of reaching and setting goals,” Seibel said. “It taught them about pushing your body to a place where perhaps it’s never been before.”

F Street’s running program is just one story of the effects the maps have had on a neighborhood. The maps also show that some areas have a lack of access to health care—an observation that led to the development of the Health 360 Integrated Health Clinic on 23rd and O Streets.

“We saw that here is our medically underserved area and we don’t have services for them,” Seibel said. “Then we worked really hard and said ‘it needs to be in this neighborhood.’ We could put a clinic in a lot of places, but it had to be in this place. It took a lot of strategic work.”

Seibel said that now, two years after the initial launch of the project, she hopes the maps will allow Lincolnites to look outside of their neighborhoods and reach out to those that need the most help in dealing with health related problems.

neighborhoods that don’t necessarily mean health in a clinical sense. This includes mental and emotional health, and establishing healthy habits early on, like balanced meals for children and available access to playgrounds and parks.

“One challenge is working alongside people in neighborhoods we don’t live in,” Seibel said. “Part of that is to say, ‘these are my people and we’re all sharing this 90 square miles of earth...how can we make it better for all of us?’”

Once that’s established, CHE hopes that it can give Lincolnites the extra push they’d need to start assisting in communities with more immediate needs.

Seibel’s approach to this is to focus on “placemakers,” or people and organizations who recognize challenges in a certain place and are willing to invest in it. She believes the way to appeal to placemakers is helping them find a human connection.

“Our goal is to take the information on these maps and make it real... to have it tell stories and then get people to work,” she said. “It’s about embedding them in these neighborhoods.”

Part of this will come from looking at “health beyond healthcare,” in Seibel’s words. That means focusing on issues that affect our

“The challenge is getting them to think beyond the borders that we’ve somehow put around ourselves by virtue of our neighborhoods or our schools,” she said. “And to stretch those borders to the whole community and say, ‘I have a responsibility as a citizen of this community and the world to be part of a bigger solution.’”

If you want to learn more about the Place Matters maps project and how it’s affecting Lincoln, visit chelincoln.org/placematters.

HOW AMERICA GIVES

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lancaster county vs similar us county populations NORTHAMPTON COUNTY, PA / $127.6 M

299.6 K

Population

299.1 K

299 K

ANCHORAGE MUNICIPALI, AK / $164.4 M ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, NH / $156 M

298.1 K

LANCASTER COUNTY, NE / $195.8 M

296.9 K

DUTCHESS COUNTY, NY / $159.1 M

291.2 K

SPARTANBURG COUNTY, SC / $179.6 M

$120 M

$130 M

$140 M

$150 M

$160 M

$170 M

$180 M

$190 M

$200 M

Total Giving

nebraska vs similar us state populations

Population

2M

NEW MEXICO / $711.9 M

1.9 M

NEBRASKA / $1.1 B

1.9 M

WEST VIRGINIA / $454.6 M

1.6 M

IDAHO / $935 M

1.4 M

HAWAII / $580.2 M

1.3 M

MAINE / $421.6 M

100 M

200 M

300 M

400 M

500 M

600 M

700 M

800 M

900 M

Total Giving

Source: The Chronicle of Philantropy, How America Gives Data, October 2017

a few americans who gave to us recently Abel Foundation

Koren and Kyle Cartwright

Corn Republic Parrot Head Club

Rhonda Seacrest

East Lincoln Business Association

Bryan Seck and Janell Wather

1B

1.1 B

nonprofit hub member spotlight

LEADERSHIP LINCOLN

by Spencer Creal

I’ve worked with dozens of organizations focused on developing leadership, and most, if not all, hold the same basic idea of what leadership development looks like.

They push for building personal leadership skills—that is, honing in on an individual’s abilities as a leader, and further improving them. There’s nothing wrong with this approach; there’s a reason why leadership development organizations around the globe employ this same strategy.

involved in making Lincoln a great place to live,” Hale said.

“Leadership Lincoln helped make sure there were more people at the table, and that the people in those seats worked to help make Lincoln the vibrant city that it is.”

Leadership Lincoln is different. In addition to teaching individuals how to be leaders, Leadership Lincoln serves as a platform for people to engage with their community through a lens of leadership. And “engage” is only one of the organization’s key tenets.

“Graduates of our programs and other community leaders are generous with their time as they help plan and produce each program for our classes,” she said. “We have business leaders, leaders of nonprofit organizations, state senators and city council members who are graduates of Leadership Lincoln organizing, and even speaking at our programs.”

“At our core we’re a community education organization. We seek to engage members of the community, connect them to one another, and get them to serve,” said Mick Hale, Leadership Lincoln’s Executive Director.

Engage. Connect. Serve.

Those are the pillars of Leadership Lincoln’s mission, and, if you ask me, they’ve been doing a pretty stellar job of carrying it out.

Laura Uridil, Leadership Lincoln’s Program Director, praised the organization’s volunteers who give so much of their time to help make the program successful.

The organization is successful because so many of Lincoln’s leaders offer their time to help teach classes for each of Leadership Lincoln’s programs. They educate participants on topics ranging from healthcare, to government, to human services. In the past year, for example, more than 150 people helped with Leadership Lincoln’s programming.

Since 1985, 3,300 Lincolnites have gone through one Hale, Bretz and Uridil Top Left: LL staff get excited about an elevator at the Nonprofit Hub Top Right: Leadership Lincoln Fellows class learns about community planning of Leadership Lincoln’s four agree that the move into Bottom Left: Youth LL kick off their year with a retreat programs—three for adults, Nonprofit Hub has given Bottom Right: Youth LL spend the day learning about Lincoln’s Community Visions and one for high school Leadership Lincoln a sophomores. Not surprisingly, graduates of these programs larger sense of community and some added energy (I can permeate just about every imaginable sector of Lincoln. certainly attest to the added energy; we had to pause the interview four or five times so we could finish our “We have graduates on the city council; we have graduates laughing fits). on the school board; we have graduates in the state legislature; we have graduates who are business leaders; Leadership Lincoln is an organization built for passionate we have graduates on the university’s board of regents. We Lincolnites, run by passionate Lincolnites. They’re doing have graduates everywhere,” said Randy Bretz, Leadership work no one else in the community is doing, and for that Lincoln’s Communications Coordinator. we owe them our gratitude.

Leadership Lincoln’s founders wanted more people at Lincoln’s decision-making table, so they decided to do something about it.

“Back in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s, Lincoln’s business and community leaders realized the city needed more people

If you want to learn more about Leadership Lincoln and its programs, visit leadershiplincoln.org, or stop by Nonprofit Hub at 211 N. 14th Street and say hello—they’ll love it, I promise.

Leading the Good Life

by Sydny Boyd

It’s incredibly important that members of our community be recognized for all the good they do. Of course, they wouldn’t dream of recognizing themselves, so we’re going to do it for them. Each quarter, Nonprofit Hub will recognize an outstanding leader from the nonprofit community to be featured. We’ll invite them to our home at 211 N. 14th St., have some coffee and talk about how they’re Leading the Good Life each and every day. This quarter we were lucky enough to meet with Shawn Ryba, Executive Director of the South of Downtown Community Development Organization, former COO of NeighborWorks and someone who continually brings Lincoln to new heights.

10 | Nonprofit Hub Magazine | Fall 2017 | Leading The Good Life

Shawn Ryba Shawn Ryba walked into Nonprofit Hub at 4 p.m. on a Monday.

His schedule was packed tight, so we had to squeeze in a time to meet. I asked him if I could get him anything; he said a glass of water.

We went into a meeting room, water in hand, and sat down. I started simple: “Are you from Lincoln originally?” I asked.

“I’m originally from Columbus, Nebraska and I came here for college,” he said. “I went to Omaha for graduate school and then got a job and came right back here. I can’t get enough of the place. That was 15 years ago.”

We talked about Lincoln for a while, including all the things he loves about it. The food, as it turns out, is one of those things.

“El Chaparro is the best Mexican food you’ll ever have and it is in the neighborhood,” he said.

When he says “the neighborhood,” he’s referring to the 500-acre area south of downtown Lincoln from 17th Street to 6th Street, and from A Street to L Street. But Shawn doesn’t love the neighborhood for the Mexican food—that’s just a perk.

“We have beautiful, mature trees,” he said. “We have refugee and immigrant families that live there. It’s a very diverse area with at least 25 different languages being spoken. When it comes down to it, we have a lot of assets and that’s what I am hoping to expand on.”

Back in February, Shawn was hired as the Executive Director of the South of Downtown Community Development Organization. Before that, he served as the Chief Operating Officer at NeighborWorks Lincoln. He also helped launch the Lincoln Policy Network, which unites neighborhood residents, business professionals, landlords and city representatives interested in implementing change in Lincoln’s neighborhoods. Now, his main task is community development.

“When I talk about community development, I’m talking about helping residents build the social fabric of their neighborhoods,” he said. “I want to build relationships and get people to meet each other, work with one another and just get out and know who you live by.”

Shawn works with his team to go door-to-door getting to know the people that live in the neighborhood. “We need to look at what types of services are being provided and what ones are still needed,” he said.

It took him by surprise, and he was quiet for a minute.

“I am honored and privileged to serve this area and to meet and work with the people that live there,” he said, and paused for a moment.

“I also understand that this is going to be a huge challenge and require a lot of collaborating,” he said. “It’s forced me to deal with my own privilege. I don’t necessarily represent the neighborhood. It’s forcing me to think about my privileged space and my biases and how I grew up white, having every privilege you can possibly imagine,” he said, before pausing again.

“How can I come in and add value?” he asked, more to himself than to me. “How do I use my space to improve the quality of life for the folks living there, being as empathetic and humane as possible?”

He took a drink of his water and leaned forward.

“I’m grappling a lot with my space,” he said. “I am a white dude.

I’m grappling with what that means and how I can best serve the community. So yes, it’s forcing me personally and professionally to really get into an uncomfortable space and have those hard conversations about inequities, racism and discrimination. It’s tough to have those conversations, but in order for us to move forward and come up with viable and sustainable solutions, we have to have them.”

We both took a deep breath and I blinked back the tears that had formed. The interview had taken a heavy turn, but it was important.

Nonetheless, I decided to lighten the mood a little.

“What has been your best day since you were hired on February 7th?” I asked.

“Every day is the best day,” he said. “Every day has been my favorite day because it’s brought a new challenge. It’s a new difficult conversation, it’s meeting a new person, it’s everything. It puts gasoline in my tank. But it’s not about me. It’s about listening and doing what we can for the community.”

At this point, I’d taken up almost an hour of his time, but I had one final question.

“Why should people who live outside of the neighborhood care about what you’re doing?”

It was inspiring to see Shawn get so excited about the Lincoln community, but I had a tough question to ask him.

“We’re all Lincolnites, and we all live here,” he said. “When one area is struggling, we’re all struggling.”

“How can you, a white male, walk into such a diverse neighborhood and expect to make a difference? Why should they care what you have to say?”

If you know someone who should be featured in Nonprofit Hub’s Leading the Good Life spotlight series, send Spencer an email at spencer.creal@nonprofithub.org with your suggestion.

Events

NONPROFIT ORG US POSTAGE PAID FIRESPRING

November 15 Leadership Lincoln Poverty Simulation magazine

November 18 Giving Thanksgiving Food at the Center for People in Need

FALL 2017

211 N. 14th Street Lincoln, NE 68508

December 3 & 17 Holiday Harvest Farmers Markets December 9 Toyland For Kids December 9 VolunteerLinc Holiday Open House Monthly Nonprofit Hub First Friday Clinic With A Heart Free Health Clinic For more details visit http://lincoln.nonprofithub.org/community-calendar.html

WITHOUT YOU, THERE IS NO US. Everyone at Nonprofit Hub would like to thank Lincoln for another great year. Here’s to many more.

To help us support the startup community, visit NonprofitHub.org/donate.