The Center for Nonprofit Management (CNM) has announced the winners of the 2008 Salute to Excellence awards. Nine winners and $159,000 in awards were announced on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 to the 1,000 people attending this nonprofit celebration. Here is NewsChannel 5’s coverage of the event:
If you have trouble viewing this video, click here. For a complete list of last night’s winners, click here.
Here is the story on one of our finalists:
By Wednesday night, Dr. M. Craig Ferrell will know whether he’s taking home the KraftCPAs Board Member of the Year Award during the Center for Nonprofit Management’s Salute to Excellence banquet.
Ferrell, BrightStone’s board chairman who is an orthopedic surgeon and founder of Franklin’s Bone & Joint Clinic, is among three finalists for the award.
“It’s as big as being up for a Heisman around here. So it’s an honor for both him and BrightStone regardless of how it turns out,” said Brenda Hauk, executive director of the nonprofit that provides work and social outlets for adults with disabilities.
Continue reading ‘BrightStone, Salute, Featured in Tennessean’
From today’s USA Today:
It’s a hard time to be a charity
By Kevin McCoy and Oren Dorell, USA TODAY
Every year for the last decade, the Child and Family Network Centers, a small, Virginia-based non-profit, submitted a fundraising request to the Freddie Mac Foundation.
And every year, the charitable arm of the mortgage-finance giant contributed thousands of dollars that helped the non-profit provide education and support to hundreds of needy children.But this year’s $350,000 request went to the foundation in early September – days before the federal government took over Freddie Mac and mortgage sibling Fannie Mae amid rising losses. Now, both firms’ charitable grants, questioned by some as politically motivated, are on hold pending a Federal Housing Finance Agency review.
“We are in deep trouble if we don’t hear something soon,” says Barbara Fox Mason, the non-profit’s executive director. “That’s the money we count on to carry us through to the holidays,” when other contributions arrive.
FHFA Director James Lockhart wrote on Oct. 2 “it is envisioned” that Fannie and Freddie “will continue to make charitable contributions.” Corinne Russell, an FHFA spokeswoman, said Friday no final funding decisions have been made.
“If it doesn’t come through at all, we’ll have to cut families,” says Mason.
The economic crisis threatening the nation with the worst recession in decades has set off tremors among non-profits and charities large and small that rely on donations from Wall Street, industry and average Americans.
Continue reading ‘USA Today: “It’s a hard time to be a charity”’
From today’s Nashville City Paper:
Habitat for Humanity’s battle for a new development north of downtown has exposed one of the greatest challenges for any effort to help the lower economic rungs into homeownership. Simply put, the conundrum is where and how to provide in-demand low-income housing efficiently and affordably.
Typically, these battles expose hypocrisy more than anything else. That could be said about folks opposing Park Preserve, Habitat’s largest planned project in Nashville. In a recent public hearing of the Metro Planning Commission, there was plenty of “Habitat is a great organization, but…” or “I’ve helped build a Habitat house, but…”
The “but” is that the area already has two Habitat developments in their backyard. Residents’ concern is that 400 more homes will concentrate too much low-income housing in a working-class area, although Antioch has the greatest percentage of Habitat housing.
They may have a point. Folks in the affordable-housing sector and city planners acknowledge that there is an issue with “ghettoizing” an area if there is a high concentration of low-income housing, even with for-sale homes.
The Tennessean reports the latest in Habitat’s effort to build in northeast Nashville:
Habitat for Humanity is a step closer to sending its volunteer army of homebuilders into a northeast Nashville neighborhood after winning approval Thursday to build 34 homes there.
But the go-ahead from the Metro Planning Commission came at a price. Planning commissioners criticized Habitat for not working harder to reach an agreement with angry neighbors, and they entertained – but ultimately shot down – a motion to reject the development.
The neighbors showed up with an attorney for the first time and promised to look at all their legal options. “There’s a huge volume of people who are very adamant about making certain our voices are heard,” said Michael Pendleton, who spends much of his time running a private-equity firm in New York but owns a home in the Brookview neighborhood near Habitat’s Park Preserve site.
Habitat wants to build 350 homes on 220 acres off Ewing Drive and Whites Creek Pike. The planning commission approved the first phase of that plan. It still must pass Metro Council.
Nonprofits to get guidance on economic challenge
By Corinne Ciocia
Tennessee Voices
The Center for Nonprofit Management is currently hosting a series entitled “Weathering the Economic Storm” for area nonprofit directors.
It is dedicated to helping the Middle Tennessee nonprofit community learn the necessary skills to meet the economic challenges that lie ahead. We have seen an incredible turnout. That tells us Nashville has a nonprofit community determined to find a way to continue to serve its clients, even when it becomes harder and harder to find the means necessary to do so.
Those of us who call Nashville home know it is a special place. As the financial news remains unstable, and on some days dire, our center is seeing what makes this area special every day. The nonprofit community is realistic about the challenges that lie ahead, but committed to facing those challenges and optimistic that it will continue to find a way to help those in need.
Continue reading ‘CNM Highlights Nonprofit Community in Tennessean’
The Tennessean has a story today on how the nonprofit community is preparing for a possible drop in donations. CNM’s Lewis Lavine, Meg Nugent of Nashville Adult Literacy Council, and Hal Cato of Oasis Center, among others, are cited:
Charities expect drop in donations next year
By Bob Smietana
THE TENNESSEANLewis Lavine has some good news and some bad news for local charities.
The good news is that most of them will make it through the end of the year without much trouble. The bad news? Next year is going to be a bear.
“We believe 2009 will be a very difficult year,” said Lavine, director of the Center for Nonprofit Management in Nashville.
Despite the economic turmoil, local charities say they are holding their own right now. While demand for their services is up, donations have yet to drop dramatically. But some charities fear that donations may fall next year while the need for help grows.
Jaynee Day, of Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, says requests for food boxes are up almost 10 percent over last year, and most of those requests have come from people who have not needed help until now.
“It’s a tough time for families, who are having to decide between putting food on the table or paying the light bills or the health insurance,” Day said.
Second Harvest, which distributes food in 46 counties, is in the middle of its biggest fundraising campaign of the year.
Now’s the time to prepare for the gathering storm of need, experts say.
Continue reading ‘Tennessean Examines Area Nonprofit Challenges’
Today, CNM hosted the third installment of our Lunch and Learn Series. Entitled, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” the session focused on new ways to get your message out. If you missed out, Stephen Mosley and Sam Davidson of CoolPeopleCare put together a fantastic summary of the session, and even posted their handy online communication’s guide. Here is the intro video:
A story on how two Nashville natives created a new exhibit at Cheekwood was published in today’s Tennessean:
Nashville native Charles Rogers “Red” Grooms and Lysiane Luong, husband-and-wife artists and collectors, are seeing this particular arrangement of their art collection for the first time.
The show has been 18 months in the making, beginning when Benjamin Caldwell, a longtime Cheekwood donor and supporter and a collector in his own right, hit upon the idea while visiting the couple’s art-filled Manhattan apartment. Cheekwood president Jack Becker got involved and the result, Artists Collect: The Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong Private Collection, is on view through Jan. 4.
The internationally known pop artist Grooms and his wife aren’t sure how many pieces are in their collection, which includes works by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jasper Johns, Lars Chellberg, Larry Rivers and on and on.
“Some people think we are absolute nuts to want to collect art, because I already have so much stuff,” Luong says, seated next to her husband in a sunroom at Cheekwood. “But I just feel like it’s a totally separate part of what I like to do.”
Adults and children alike should make time to go see a show at the Nashville Children’s Theater. The newly renovated venue is a special place. The Tennessean published a review today of Frakenstein:
Nashville Children’s Theatre has a good, ghoulish, gothic Frankenstein that’s just right for the Halloween season.
The 2008-09 season-opening production uses a stage adaptation by Nick DiMartino of the 1818 Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Shelley’s cautionary tale about the potential for disaster when man plays God is focused theatrically into an examination of Victor Frankenstein’s horrific ultimate experiment and the human tenderness his Creature desperately seeks as told by the woman who shows compassion to both.
This show is recommended for ages 10 and up, and given the subject, this play might be a little too scary for small children. But director Scot Copeland and his capable cast have fashioned the appropriate balance between our revulsion at the Creature’s actions and appearance and our sadness that he can never feel the sustaining power of love.
Continue reading ‘Nashville Has Unique Treasure in Children’s Theater’
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