Blog

by Dr. Kevin Dean, President & CEO, Tennessee Nonprofit Network It started with the type of silence that expands until it fills a whole house. My friend Sarah was almost five months pregnant when she lost her baby. It was her first pregnancy, and she was a deeply private person who worried that announcing a […]

by Dr. Bev Vitali, Leadership and Capacity Building Fellow, Tennessee Nonprofit Network “If you don’t have anything good to say about someone, come sit by me.” That was basically the unspoken culture at an organization I once worked for — one going through a lot of change. The gossip was rampant, and I understood why:

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

by Dr. Kevin Dean, President & CEO, Tennessee Nonprofit Network Every sector has its unique archetype, but the nonprofit sector seems to cultivate one specific persona with particular flourishes: the hero. Enter Alex. Alex is bright, hardworking, and deeply committed to the mission. But if you were to listen to Alex speak for more than