Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

17 Apr, 2024

Ask Nicole: Managing Nonprofit Mission & Funder Demands

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2024-04-17T11:01:37-04:00April 17th, 2024|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Ask Nicole, Grantees, Philanthropy|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

I’ve been fortunate to work with a variety of client organizations, including philantrophy.

Navigating grantee-funder relationships while staying true to your mission is complex. It’s a landscape where aspirations to create meaningful change often intersect with the practicalities of securing funding.

However, amidst the pursuit of financial support, I’ve observed how nonprofits, in their eagerness to access resources, may place themselves in funding relationships that run counter to their organizational mission.

Ideally, grantees should be able to leverage a grantee-funder relationship while also feeling confident to push back against unreasonable demands and not lose sight of their mission. This delicate balancing act underscores the complexity and importance of navigating the grantee-funder relationship with confidence and integrity.

Here are five tips for maintaining your organizational mission while engaging building relationships with funders:

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6 Mar, 2024

Ask Nicole: The Role of Social Workers in Reproductive Justice

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2024-03-07T11:09:44-05:00March 6th, 2024|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: Ask Nicole, reproductive justice, Social Work|0 Comments

March is Social Work Month, and the 2024 theme is “Empowering Social Workers!: Inspiring Action, Leading Change.”

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that my passion area is Reproductive Justice, and how the framework looks through a social work lens.

Reproductive Justice and social work are very complimentary. As RJ is a community organizing model that centers community leadership and challenges structural inequities, the framework provides a holistic understanding of our circumstances, and how they help or hinder our sexual and reproductive decision making. Social work supports individual and collective capacity for social functioning, working to create societal conditions that support communities in need. Together, they acknowledge that we seldom make life decisions in a vacuum. Social, economic, racial, gender, and cultural dynamics impact what we have access to and how we make decisions to support our sexual and reproductive care.

Reproductive Justice stands at the intersection of social work practice and human rights. As social workers navigate our roles in advancing RJ, we’ll encounter multifaceted challenges and opportunities across micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. Consider these questions as you navigate your social work education and career to advance Reproductive Justice:

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29 Feb, 2024

Try This: Get Your Ideal Community Partners On Board

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2024-02-28T21:57:39-05:00February 29th, 2024|Categories: Speaking & Facilitation|Tags: Community Partnerships, Facilitation, Stakeholders, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this activity and let me know how it goes for you.*

Engaging the right community partners to join your partnership is crucial to facilitating a process that’s mutually beneficial.

As you plan your introductory partnership meeting, you need to figure out who to invite, and why.

You see the value in working with these organizations, and you want them there to advance your mission.

The WHY behind your ask is important as these potential partners will ask:

What’s in it for me?

If they can’t see their value add to this partnership, they won’t join you. So, be prepared to show them.

This activity is ideal for:

Staff responsible for facilitating workshops, meetings, or trainings
Staff with experience in engaging community organizations

What you’ll need:

Your community organization partner invitation list
A method for taking notes

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14 Feb, 2024

Choosing Your Community Partners Wisely

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2024-02-28T19:38:09-05:00February 14th, 2024|Categories: Speaking & Facilitation|Tags: Community Partnerships, Facilitation, Meetings, Workshops|0 Comments

When building a partnership with other organizations, engaging the right participants is crucial to facilitating a process that’s mutually beneficial.

Your organization knows the key community players who are doing the same work, whose work is adjacent to yours, or whose work is in another areas but they can champion your work.

A facilitator may not be responsible for generating buy-in for your organization’s call to action, but they can support you in identifying the right organizations for your partnership.

Here’s how you can choose your community partners wisely, with support from your meeting facilitator:

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7 Feb, 2024

Ask Nicole: The #1 Misconception About Meeting Facilitators

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2024-02-07T11:23:31-05:00February 7th, 2024|Categories: Speaking & Facilitation|Tags: Ask Nicole, Facilitation|0 Comments

Let’s get straight into it !

The #1 misconception about meeting facilitators is that they are responsible for generating buy-in to your organization’s call to action.

Let’s say you want to build a partnership with organizations doing similar work to address an emerging issue in your community.

You may have worked with some of these organizations before, but this would be the first time you’re coming together for a common goal.

Selecting potential partner organizations based on their area(s) of expertise, their networks, and your commonalities is the first step. Convening a meeting to introduce the idea of working together is second.

Next, you have to build the ask. This is the hardest part. Why should these organizations partner with you?

Creating an opportunity for these organizations to come together is one way to learn about your call to action for this partnership. If they’re showing up, it means they’re at least curious. But you need something compelling to draw them in and keep them engage.

When they arrive, they should already have a clear understanding of the goals for the meeting, what’s expected of them, how they are to participate, and what the meeting’s subject matter is about. At the end of the meeting, they should leave with a clear understanding of next steps and also know exactly their organization’s value-add to this partnership.

If you’re not clear on any of this, there’s only so much the meeting facilitator can do.

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Ask Nicole: Managing Nonprofit Mission & Funder Demands

Ask Nicole: The Role of Social Workers in Reproductive Justice

Try This: Get Your Ideal Community Partners On Board

Choosing Your Community Partners Wisely

Ask Nicole: The #1 Misconception About Meeting Facilitators

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