A Week in DC

At the beginning of October, two of our team members, Alex and Allison, had the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. for the second installment of the City-Catalyst Program under the Stand Together Foundation. This program brings together “non profit organizations from around the country, who are all working to alleviate poverty through intentional and innovative means”. We were honored to be identified by the Leadership Foundations as a “high-performing nonprofit”, and be selected among our peers to participate in this leadership development experience. 

Over nine months, we are coached on how to use the proven business management philosophy called Market-Based Management® to magnify our impact in our communities through: “refining vision and principles, applying decision-making frameworks to capture opportunities that will drive the most value, and developing sustainable talent management strategies to grow teams and strengthen organizational culture”. 

The second session in our program was centered around the theme of Virtue and Talents-- using the MBM framework to “develop an approach to supervising and cultivating talent for your organization that emphasizes culture-building and an individualized approach to talent decisions''. For us both, one of the most valuable parts of the conference were the organization-led discussions-- listening and learning from the other organizations in our cohort. 

One of our new and most impactful ways to describe our work came out of one of these discussions: we believe that our work should be transformational, not transactional. What does that mean? We want to lead with a relationship-first mentality. We want to be centered around work that transforms our community, not merely based on a transactional mentality- giving and getting. 

We came back from D.C. with hearts and heads full! We are honored to be included in a cohort of incredible leaders and organizations who are positively impacting their communities every day. We have learned so much from them, and continue to be inspired by their work and their passion:

4Tucson, Partners in Change, Together Chicago, Fresno Pacific University Center for Community Transformation, Next Chapter Ministries, Houston Responds, National Leadership Foundations, Memphis Leadership Foundation, Savannah Leadership Foundation, Resurgence Leadership Foundation, and The First Coast Leadership Foundation