The Second Job Nobody Applied For: Caregiving as the Nonprofit Sector’s Unpaid Second Career
by Dr. Kevin Dean, President & CEO, Tennessee Nonprofit Network Every few months, a well-rested productivity consultant will post a diagram explaining that an orderly life divides neatly into three equal eight-hour blocks: eight hours for professional labor, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for personal rejuvenation. It is the kind of clean math
Why Your ‘Accountability’ Process Might Actually Be Total Nonsense
by Dr. Bev Vitali, Leadership and Capacity Fellow, Tennessee Nonprofit Network I was standing in the hallway at a past employer, catching up with a coworker, when my supervisor walked up, handed me a clipboard, and said, “Sign here.” It was my annual review. Not a conversation — a signature. She’d written it up, printed
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Tennessee Nonprofit Network Launches Nonprofit Academy Learning Cohort for Southeast Tennessee Area Nonprofit Professionals
Tennessee Nonprofit Network, in partnership with United Way of Greater Chattanooga, is launching a seven-month Nonprofit Academy Learning Cohort* based on our recently updated Nonprofit Academy curriculum. This collaborative program is designed to support 25 nonprofit leaders – specifically in the Bledsoe, Bradley, Grundy, Hamilton, Marion, and Sequatchie counties – by strengthening their knowledge of nonprofit best practices. This cohort
Rare Job Opening: East Tennessee Regional Director
Tennessee is long. Anyone who has ever driven the full stretch of Interstate 40 knows that you can listen to an entire audio series, question your life choices, stop for snacks twice, and still find yourself within the same state borders. Because our state is vast and each grand division has its own distinct character,
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One State, One Sector: Why Tennessee Nonprofits Need to Stop Acting Like We Live on Different Planets
by Dr. Kevin Dean, President & CEO, Tennessee Nonprofit Network If you pull out a map of Tennessee, you will notice something deeply impractical: our state was shaped like a long piece of geometric gum. It takes nearly eight hours to drive from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains. That is longer than it
The Day Gary Bought Fourteen Llamas: A Cautionary Tale of Board Governance
by Dr. Kevin Dean, President & CEO, Tennessee Nonprofit Network It began on a Tuesday morning with an urgent phone call from a local livestock haulage company. The executive director of a mid-sized literacy nonprofit, who was at that moment trying to figure out why the office coffee maker was leaking brown sludge onto the
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ACTION ALERT: Contact Your Members of Congress About Key Federal Legislation Affecting Nonprofits
Why it matters: Congress is voting on a measure that could pause sweeping changes to federal grant rules. Tennessee nonprofits are encouraged to contact their representatives today to support this delay. How to act: Scroll to the bottom of this update for a ready-to-use email template you can send directly to your U.S. Senators and






