As the newest member of the NCN team, I’ve started my year my jumping joyfully into the deep end of our consulting practice. This has involved so many exciting moments: coaching calls with members, presentations on findings to existing clients, and exploratory calls with prospective clients. But there have been unglamorous ones as well: learning new software, drafting contracts, and reading training manuals. All in a day’s work!
Thankfully, support of the wonderful NCN team has been a constant boon. Passionate, patient, and persistent, they’ve served as a source of inspiration as well as assistance (thank you, Elizabeth, for always knowing where to find the file I’m looking for). The humility I’ve felt as I learn and stretch in new ways has been perfectly balanced by the gratitude I feel to be part of such a tightly knit team working together for a cause we believe in.
Time and again in my consulting chats, I have seen this dynamic reflected as well: often organizations come to us motivated by both the hardship of going it alone and the joy of doing it together. For many of them, as I know is true for so many of you in our network, their commitment to collaboration is not limited to a physical site, it is embedded in the way that they work. Whether it’s three diverse Latinx arts nonprofits, a young LGBTQ+ coalition, or a network of organizations serving populations impacted by HIV and AIDS, their passion is first to build solidarity, support, and social power for their peers and their constituents. Co-location is the vehicle by which they hope to make this solidarity more visible and enduring.
It’s this spirit of interdependence that represents, for me, the magic of this network. Just as I can do more through the support of my team, so too can we do much more for the communities we love by learning and evolving together.
Thank you for welcoming me into the network; I look forward to growing this movement with you!