Community Wealth Vanguard

Client Spotlight

Community Wealth Ventures congratulates the Home Safety Council on the 10th anniversary of their award-winning mobile education exhibit “Great Safety Adventure” and a successful Salute To Home Safety Awards Dinner held in June, which celebrated how students, teachers, families, companies and agencies are working together to make homes across America injury-free.

Congratulations to the Home Safety Product Innovations winners and the Kids Prepare America contest winners recognized for their safety advocacy and work.

Pictured above: CWV project team Christina Ng and Diana Peacock with Lynette Sappe-Watkins, Director of Development at Home Safety Council and the Home Safety Council mascots Code Red Rover and Flashlight Freddie.

New Team Members
CWV is excited to welcome two new senior consultants to the organization: Stephanie Norwell and Suzanne Steffens. Stephanie will focus on co-leading the Cleveland Collaborative and the North Central Massachusetts Workshop Series. Suzanne will co-lead the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Collaborative. Both will also be leading Nonprofit Services engagements. Click here to read more about CWV’s most recent additions.

CWV and SFV are also looking forward to having the support of five interns for the months of June, July, and August. As we are in one of our most project intensive times to date, their research support will be highly valuable to the organization. We look forward to the arrival of Mohammad Al-Shawaf, Caroline Whistler, David Ellis, Rachel Roth, and Peter Lanyfalvi. Each will make an excellent addition to the CWV and SFV teams this summer.

CWV is supporting Helping Teens Succeed, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the number of low-income teenagers who go to college by analyzing the potential for market expansion.

CWV has been hired to assess organizational capacity and to identify social enterprise business opportunities for the National Business Coalition on Health, a national, nonprofit, membership organization of employer-based health care coalitions dedicated to purchasing health care services through the collective action of public and private purchasers.

University of Maryland’s School of Pharmacy has engaged CWV to conduct a financial analysis of one of its pharmacist service delivery programs, run by both the School of Pharmacy and the Maryland Pharmacists Association. This financial assessment will provide important information for the organization as it makes plans to expand.

EdSource, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to clarify complex education issues and to promote thoughtful policy decisions about public school improvement, hired CWV to identify and analyze new trends in the publishing industry. CWV recommended a plan for increasing the number of subscribers to its Information Service by restructuring the subscription options currently in place.

Foundation Services Update
Cleveland
The third Cleveland Community Wealth Collaborative officially began on April 9, with Community Wealth Ventures and its partner, The Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University, selecting six high-performing organizations to participate. The organizations are:

For more information on the Cleveland Community Wealth Collaborative, click here.

Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
The Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Community Wealth Collaborative is scheduled to kick off this fall with an anticipated eight nonprofits focusing on launching or expanding social enterprises. An information session for interested nonprofit organizations was held on April 30 in Cincinnati. For more information on the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Community Wealth Collaborative, click here.

North Central Massachusetts
The North Central Massachusetts Community Wealth Workshop series began on April 29 with five high-performing organizations selected by Community Wealth Ventures to participate. The organizations are:

The workshop series includes six peer learning sessions and three customized consulting sessions and will run until September 17. For more information on the workshop series, click here.

New Orleans Workshop Series
In partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations, CWV will lead a workshop series to support New Orleans nonprofits in the development or expansion of a social enterprise. CWV will hold an information session on June 11 and review applications in the summer to select the participating organizations. The workshop series is set to start in September. For more information on the information session, click here.

Alcoa Foundation
With generous support from the Alcoa Foundation, CWV has partnered with The Phoenix Project, which promotes social entrepreneurship in Virginia, to alleviate poverty by building a sustainable partnership between Virginia higher education and the Commonwealth’s most distressed communities. CWV was a featured presenter at the Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship conference, Round II, on March 19 in Richmond, Va. delivering two workshops to more than 80 Virginia nonprofit leaders. Other noted speakers at the conference included: Virginia Governor Tim Kaine; Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling; Dr. J. Gregory Dees, Professor of the Practice of Social Entrepreneurship and Nonprofit Management at Duke University; and Dr. Diana Wells, President of Ashoka. CWV will continue its participation in this initiative, again with the support of the Alcoa Foundation, during a similar convention in the fall in the Tidewater area of Virginia.

Social Franchise Ventures Update
SFV is excited to welcome two new clients: Ardmore Enterprises of Mitchellville, Md,. and Eggleston Services of Norfolk, VA., have engaged SFV to develop a social franchise strategy that will provide integrated employment opportunities for their constituents and generate unrestricted revenue.

Doug Sudell and Ben Litalien of SFV conducted a social franchise workshop at the NISH National Training and Achievement conference from April 14 to 16 in Los Angeles. SFV also presented at Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s Urban Forum conference on neighborhood economic development and commercial revitalization, in Minneapolis, from April 28 to 30.

CWV Publications
CWV has released the findings from its study, “Assessment of Demand for Social Enterprise Support Services in Central Appalachia,” the most comprehensive survey of nonprofit enterprise activity in the region to date. The report, commissioned by the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, assesses the level of nonprofit enterprise activity in the region, analyzes the potential for future growth, and identifies key challenges and opportunities to provide the sector with a strategic course of action to advance nonprofit enterprise in the region. The full report can be downloaded here.

CWV has published "Achieving Impact and Sustainability Through Market Based Approaches: Discussion Highlights," a collection of presentations and discussions from a summit of philanthropic leaders hosted by CWV in October 2007 in Washington, DC. Participants explored how to use market strategies to fulfill the missions of nonprofit organizations. The publication includes presentations by leading nonprofit leaders:

Recent and Upcoming Conferences & Workshops

June 2008

2008 Nonprofit Strategies Forum, La Salle University -- Philadelphia“ More Money for Your Mission” Panel
June 3, 2008
Heather Peeler, Managing Director

Alliance Executive Leadership Conference, Alliance for Children and Families -- Napa Valley, CA.
“Reinventing Ourselves Through Community Wealth”
June 5-6, 2008
Heather Peeler, Managing Director

Atlantic Philanthropies, The Cleveland Foundation, The O’Neill Foundation, and The Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations -- Cleveland
Introduction to Social Enterprise
June 5, 2008
Nicole Hanrahan and Stephanie Norwell, Senior Consultants

National Performing Arts Convention -- Denver
“Beyond Audience Development: Innovative Strategies for Performing Arts Sustainability”
June 12, 2008
Heather Peeler, Managing Director
Diana Peacock, Senior Consultant

Alliance of Community Assistance Ministries Co-Learnings Event -- Houston
Introduction to Social Enterprise
June 12, 2008
Sara Brenner, Senior Consultant

Alliance for Nonprofit Management Annual Conference -- Detroit
July 9-11, 2008
Heather Peeler, Managing Director
Sara Brenner, Senior Consultant

The Raymond John Wean Foundation -- Warren, Ohio
Introduction to Social Enterprise
July 2008
Nicole Hanrahan and Stephanie Norwell, Senior Consultants