Representatives from 250 nonprofit organizations gathered on the Downtown campus Tuesday for an event meant to create dialogue among nonprofit groups.
National Bank of Arizona Freeport-McMoRan hosted the inaugural Nonprofit Leadership Forum in partnership with Phoenix Philanthropy Group.
The event at the Eight PBS newsroom in the Cronkite building included guest speakers from several successful national and local nonprofit groups such as the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure breast cancer movement and a former director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Our goal today was to draw a broad audience of nonprofit leaders together,“ said Jathan Segur, senior vice president of marketing for National Bank of Arizona. “It’s not often you get CEO’s, executive directors and board chair presidents in one room and have the opportunity to talk about collective impact.”
The Nonprofit Leadership Forum was organized in an effort to bring together nonprofit leaders from all parts of the state to discuss what more and what differently they can do to accomplish their end goal — improving the life of citizens of Arizona, Segur said.
“We spend a lot of time talking about the nonprofit sector as a whole not having a voice and about having the need for that, which is what this forum hopes to bring,” Segur said.
The invitation-only forum is only one part of a statewide initiative that will include nonprofit research and facilitated online forums.
“Innovation starts with a dialogue,” founder and president of Phoenix Philanthropy Group Richard Tollefson said. “We have done a lot of research; we are assembling and managing the data which we can use for direction moving forward.”
Phoenix Philanthropy Group is a consultant organization based in Phoenix that works directly with nonprofit groups and offers a line of services that include fundraising, alumni relations, interim management, volunteer leadership development and individual, foundation and corporate philanthropy.
“The nonprofit sector is large and influential,” Tollefson said. “In Arizona alone there are 21,000 nonprofits that generate more than $19 billion in revenue.”
The Lodestar Center at ASU worked closely with National Bank of Arizona and Freeport-McMoRan to bring the Nonprofit Leadership Forum to ASU.
“What Lodestar Center is doing is building the capacity for the nonprofit sector,” said Robert Ashcraft, founding executive director of Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation.
The Lodestar Center exists to advance nonprofit leadership so that organizations can better achieve their mission through research, organizational assistance, professional development and advancing philanthropy initiative.
“If we can align a common agenda around the social issues we all agree we can work on, we can make some change,” Ashcraft said.
Reach the reporter at ealopez7@asu.edu
