FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:

Adrienne Langlois, Communications Manager
Massachusetts Nonprofit Network
617-330-1188 x285, alanglois@massnonprofitnet.org

or

Suzanne Ouellette, suzanne_ouellette@ccab.org, 617-451-7939

The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network has announced that Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston, a human services organization in Boston, has been selected as a finalist for the 2012 Nonprofit Excellence Awards. The Excellence Awards are given each year to outstanding nonprofit organizations and professionals in the Commonwealth as part of MNN’s Nonprofit Awareness Day, a statewide holiday recognizing the nonprofit sector in Massachusetts.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston has been selected as a finalist for the Nonprofit Excellence Award in Communication for its impressive work on the Friends Feeding Families Brown Bag Campaign. Recognizing the growing need to go beyond traditional forms of communication, Catholic Charities launched a campaign microsite to provide a constant source of updated information to current and potential donors, used Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about the campaign, and utilized new branding opportunities. The 2011 campaign alone engaged 3,700 donors who provided over $860,000 in contributions and donated food – a donor increase of 42% compared to 2010—providing a source of emergency need services for over 200,000 neighbors in need in Eastern Massachusetts.

“Our communities would not be the same without the work of the extraordinary nonprofits in Greater Boston,” said Ruth Bramson, CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. “Finalists like Catholic Charities represent the best of an exceptional group of individuals and organizations serving the Commonwealth.”

Excellence Award finalists and winners are nominated by community members and their peers and are selected by an independent panel of nonprofit leaders. This year, MNN received 122 Nonprofit Excellence Award nominations.

“Nonprofit Awareness Day was created to recognize the essential role that over 25,000 statewide nonprofits, with nearly a half million employees, play in our lives,” said Rick Jakious, CEO of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. “These finalists represent the very best of this critical sector.”

Nonprofit Excellence Award Finalists and winners will be celebrated at the 2012 Nonprofit Awareness Day celebration on the morning of June 11 at the Massachusetts State House. Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and Speaker Robert DeLeo will all serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of the event and the event will be emceed by NECN Anchor Kristy Lee. For more information about Nonprofit Awareness Day and to register to attend, visit bit.ly/NPAD2012.

About the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network
The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network (MNN) is the voice of the entire nonprofit sector in Massachusetts.  MNN was launched in 2007 to strengthen communities by serving nonprofit organizations through advocacy, public awareness and capacity building. MNN includes nearly 500 members, representing nonprofits in every part of Massachusetts, from the Berkshires to the Cape and Islands. For more information, visit www.massnonprofitnet.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:

Adrienne Langlois, Communications Manager
Massachusetts Nonprofit Network
617-330-1188 x285, alanglois@massnonprofitnet.org

BOSTON- The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network (MNN) is pleased to announce that 27 Massachusetts nonprofit organizations and individuals have been selected as finalists in the 2012 Nonprofit Excellence Awards. The Excellence Awards are given each year to outstanding nonprofit organizations and professionals in the Commonwealth as part of MNN’s Nonprofit Awareness Day, a statewide holiday recognizing the nonprofit sector in Massachusetts.

“Nonprofit Awareness Day was created to recognize the essential role that over 25,000 statewide nonprofits, with nearly a half million employees, play in our lives,” said Rick Jakious, CEO of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. “These finalists represent the very best of this critical sector.”

Excellence Award finalists and winners are nominated by community members and their peers and are selected by an independent panel of nonprofit leaders. This year, MNN received 122 Nonprofit Excellence Award nominations.

Below are the 2012 Excellence Award Finalists:

Excellence in Advocacy:

·         EPOCA – Worcester

·         MassEquality – Boston

·         MotherWoman – Amherst

·         Youth Jobs Coalition – Dorchester

Excellence in Board Leadership

·         Acre Family Child Care – Lowell

·         Friday Night Supper Program – Boston

·         Friends of Resiliency for Life – Framingham

·         Lawyers Clearinghouse – Boston

Excellence in Collaboration

·         Acre Family Child Care– Lowell

·         The Civitan Club of Pittsfield – Pittsfield

·         Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion (IBA) – Boston

·         Raw Art Works – Lynn

Excellence in Communication

·         Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston – Boston

·         Crittenton Women’s Union – Boston

·         The School for Field Studies – Beverly

·         The Cotting School – Lexington

Excellence in Innovation

·         119 Gallery – Lowell

·         Families United in Educational Leadership (FUEL) – Boston

·         Southwest Boston Senior Services (dba Ethos) – Jamaica Plain

·         The Immigrant Learning Center, Inc. – Malden

Excellence in Leadership:

·         Robin Organ, Green Schools – Mansfield

·         Sister Lena Deevy, Irish International Immigrant Center – Boston

·         Dorcas Grigg-Saito, Lowell Community Health Center – Lowell

·         Ronald Willoughby, Springfield Rescue Mission – Springfield

Young Professional:

·         Nicki Eastburn, Assabet Valley Collaborative/Family Success Partnership – Marlborough

·         Marquis Cabrera, Foster Skills, Inc. – Woburn

·         Joanne Paterson, REACH Beyond Domestic Violence, Inc. – Waltham

·         Jon Feinman, Inner City Weightlifting – Boston

Nonprofit Excellence Award Finalists and winners will be celebrated at the 2012 Nonprofit Awareness Day celebration on the morning of June 11 at the Massachusetts State House. Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and Speaker Robert DeLeo will all serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of the event and the event will be emceed by NECN Anchor Kristy Lee. For more information about Nonprofit Awareness Day and to register to attend, visit bit.ly/NPAD2012.

About the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network
The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network (MNN) is the voice of the entire nonprofit sector in Massachusetts.  MNN was launched in 2007 to strengthen communities by serving nonprofit organizations through advocacy, public awareness and capacity building. MNN includes nearly 500 members, representing nonprofits in every part of Massachusetts, from the Berkshires to the Cape and Islands. For more information, visit www.massnonprofitnet.org.

Rapid-fire Changes Stun Nonprofits: Donations and investments dry up, need for services grows. All in just months

New Nonprofit Reality: A BBJ Series

Boston Business Journal by Mary Moore Friday

As bad as this recession feels for business, imagine the tsunami hitting the nonprofit sector — trickling corporate and foundation dollars, steep endowment losses, harsh government funding cuts and all the while growing demand for many services nonprofits provide.

As dollars have nearly frozen, the wind has been knocked out of a sector that, for years, has embodied strong pride in the breadth and depth of its presence in Massachusetts — a pride shared, even buoyed, by the state’s political and corporate leaders. The nonprofit sector employs nearly 14 percent of the Massachusetts workforce and generates more than $86 billion in revenue.

Today, the feeling is one of distress, especially for nonprofits that largely have been dependent on government dollars or large institutional grants, according to experts.

“There’s a tremendous amount of fear in the sector about what’s going to happen. There are already some cuts that are severe and some folks have been hurt dramatically,” said David Magnani, Executive Director, Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. “What we’re concerned about is whether it’s the iceberg or the tip of the iceberg.”

Distress has led the sector to do what most of us do when we are in crisis — take a hard look at old models, consider previously undesirable possibilities, find new ways to do business.

Leaders of the sector, who may have mingled in political circles but typically have avoided politicking, now are trudging Beacon Hill for meetings on funding issues, discussing tax policy changes and hoping for a lifeline thrown to the nonprofit sector out of the federal incentive package promised to Massachusetts by the Obama administration. And they are asking a question that, while not new, has more relevance than ever: Should foundations and corporations, rocked by the economic nosedive, be nonetheless digging deeper at such a critical time?

“I’ve been in this business for 30 years and I’ve never seen anything this bad,” said Kristen J. McCormack, faculty director of the public and nonprofit management program at the Boston University School of Management. “Every income stream that supports nonprofit organizations has been impacted by this economic implosion. In previous times you’d have significant downturns in private contributions, or big cuts at the state level or the federal level. Rarely do you get the simultaneous cuts of the magnitude that we’re beginning to see.”

The impact of the dwindling funding is being felt across the board, from human service organizations and health centers to theater groups. The Women’s Lunch Place, for example, scraped its way to meeting the budget goals for 2008, but has an emergency plan in place, said Sue Morong, chief operating officer. The North Shore Music Theatre rocked the Boston-area arts scene by announcing plans to shut its doors if it fails to raise $4 million by spring.

Organizations that have built strong networks of independent donors may be more insulated. The Giving USA Foundation reports that 75 percent of philanthropic giving nationwide is done by individuals compared to 12.5 percent from foundations.

“Organizations that have strong and healthy development staffs and have been good in securing major gifts and annual contributions from wealthy individuals are probably the strongest in an economy like this.” said Ron Ancrum, president of Associated Grant Makers.

As funders push for greater collaboration and less duplication among nonprofits, nonprofit leaders are looking to foundations and corporations for relief. Some players question why foundations are not giving more, especially those that only give the 5 percent of endowment required by law. In good times grow the endowment, they argue, in bad times spend it.

But foundations in Massachusetts are in little better shape than the organizations they fund, and they are reporting endowment investment losses of as much as 35 percent, Ancrum said.

Foundation executives, such as Jarrett Barrios, president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, which announced cutbacks this month, said there is a fine line that foundations must walk between spending down their already thinning endowments and keeping enough principal invested to fund future needs.

In today’s best-case scenarios, foundations are maintaining the status quo — distributing the same amounts in 2009 that they granted out in 2008, and keeping the same grantee relationships they developed last year. During the financial good times, Ancrum said, foundations typically increased giving to nonprofit organizations by between 4 percent and 6 percent a year.

“I hope that whatever form is possible, that the funding community really steps up and keeps their levels of giving as high as possible. American philanthropy as a whole has not often gone backward. It usually grows, even in bad times,” Boston Foundation head Paul Grogan said.

Ancrum also noted the importance of funding that comes through straight corporate donations. Buying tables to support black-tie fundraising affairs or organizing volunteers — all of that is charitable, Ancrum said, “but just not the same” as giving cash.

“If I were a company, I’d spend less money on a gala dinner and spend more money on direct services,” Ancrum said.

While nonprofits and funders may never agree across the board as to how much foundations and companies should contribute, they certainly agree on the enormity of the financial problems they share.

At a recent 400-person meeting, nonprofit and foundation leaders came together to strategize, discussing possible increases in state taxes in response to state funding cuts last fall that have left some nonprofits staggering. They also discussed lobbying for a piece of the federal stimulus package.

“We’re going to enter this wave of government cuts which, if not moderated by the federal stimulus bill, and it may be, you’re going to see a lot of carnage in the nonprofit sector,” Grogan said.

For immediate release

BOSTON– Former State Senator David P. Magnani has been named the first executive director of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, a statewide organization established to raise awareness of the state’s nonprofit sector, advocate on behalf of its members, and develop services and programs to build capacity for individual member organizations.

The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network (MNN) was given a “soft launch” in January of 2007, after a three-year process of convenings and conversations with leaders and stakeholders in the sector. The new entity was designed to balance geographical concerns, as well as challenges related to the number and diversity of potential member organizations.

The MNN is governed by a board of directors that includes seasoned leaders within a wide variety of established organizations, has a founding membership of more than 200 organizations.

According to an article in today’s Boston Globe, Magnani, who will start his job after Labor Day, will be paid $100,000 a year.

A veteran of the Massachusetts state legislature, Magnani served for 20 years, as a state representative and then a state senator, representing the 2nd Middlesex-Norfolk District, which includes Framingham and Ashland.

He stepped down from his Senate seat in 2005 to found EdAction Associates, a consulting firm focused on education and technology-based economic development. Magnani has a long record of innovation and leadership in the nonprofit sector. Among other accomplishments, he served as founding director of the Citizen Involvement Training Project, which provided support to more than 400 nonprofit organizations in the course of eight years beginning in 1976, earning national honors for innovation in education.

“Massachusetts is blessed with a robust nonprofit sector,” said Magnani. “The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network fills a critical and timely need to help this great community of service become better organized and more visible, and to strengthen its ability to help shape the state’s strategic priorities.

“Nonprofits are uniquely positioned to act as laboratories for innovation, garnering and incubating ideas as they emerge from the culture, and this new statewide organization will make it possible to tap the extraordinary capacity of the sector. I am deeply honored to be given this opportunity to serve a network of organizations and the people who contribute so much to the culture of the Commonwealth, and to its ability to thrive in an increasingly competitive and global economy.”

The MNN serves a sector that includes more than 25,000 individual organizations, employees more than 420,000 men and women, and pumps close to $50 billion into local Massachusetts economies each year.

Until the MNN was founded, Massachusetts was one of only seven states with no statewide, member-driven organization—despite the fact that Massachusetts contains more nonprofit organizations per capita than any other region of the country. The founding board of directors includes representatives from local and statewide associations in arts and culture; education and youth; the environment; health; housing and community development; human rights; human services; and philanthropy. The board also includes regional representatives to guarantee that organizations from every corner of the state are reflected in its work.

“The appointment of David Magnani is great news,” said Paul S. Grogan, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation. “He is a seasoned leader with a deep understanding of the world of nonprofits and also of the political process in Massachusetts. He brings credibility, experience and a formidable personal network to the organization.”

The Boston Foundation provided $100,000 lead grant this year to catalyze the formation of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, and Grogan serves as an at-large member of the Board of Directors.

About the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network

Full membership in the MNN is available to organizations with nonprofit status, and individuals and organizations that are not nonprofit may join as non-voting members. Annual membership fees range from $50 to $100, and additional support will be sought through gifts and grants. The work of the first year is expected to focus on:

• Building partnerships with existing advocate organizations;
• Identifying and developing capacity-building services such as training, group purchasing and benefits programs that can serve a broad membership;
• Developing online resources;
• Providing opportunities for convenings and networking to share best practices; and Working with a new and growing membership to craft a public policy agenda.

“Nonprofits across the Commonwealth have shared many common challenges in the past, and now we have a common voice,” said Bill Walczak, CEO of the Codman Square Health Center, President of the Founding Board of Directors and a leader in the effort to bring the MNN to fruition. “This organization has been launched after three years of outreach to nonprofit colleagues all over the state, and much conversation about goals and means. Now we are ready to deliver on the promise of our mission, to strengthen Massachusetts through nonprofit advocacy, public awareness, and capacity building. The selection of David Magnani to lead this effort sends a powerful message—this is the beginning of a new era for the nonprofit sector in Massachusetts.”

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