Inside this Issue
Message from the President
Dear NACC Members,
I know that everyone is sprinting to finish grading in time to get out of dodge for the winter break. But I wanted to take a quick moment to report on and thank everyone for a great NACC member meeting in Austin, Texas.
Let me begin by saying that the real heroes of the day are our Interim Executive Director Dave Eaton and TAMUs incredible Nicole Collier. Dave worked with the hotel, the restaurant and the ARNOVA staff before game day to ensure that everything was in place. On game day, Nicole stepped in and stepped up to make sure that it all worked. From notes, to name tags to nachos, Nicole made it all happen. Without the efforts of both Dave and Nicole we would have been eating potato chips and hitting the Starbucks in the hotel lobby.
Instead of that, we kicked off the NACC member meeting with a great lunch speaker. Mike Nellis is the CEO of the Austin Community Foundation and has a long history in bringing together diverse stakeholders to solve local problems. As we finished our lunches Mike and Dave Springer the director of the RGK center at UT Austin told us about the fascinating data and research based partnership between The Community Foundation and RGK Center. In addition, to getting great information the pair looked absolutely fabulous in these massive brown leather chairs.
We then spent a considerable amount of time doing our traditional member center updates. This is where we go around the room and everyone tells stories about what is going on at their center. We hear tales of great things happening and of terrible things happening. But it is always a highlight of the NACC member meetings.
Next we received an update from Stuart Mendel about the NACC accreditation process. It was a great opportunity to catch everyone up where we are in the accreditation process. Stuart has done a phenomenal job shepherding this process. We currently have 10 schools going through NACC accreditation, many of them are reaching the external reviewer stage. This means that very soon someone will say “We are NACC Accredited,” and it will be a real thing.
We wrapped up the formal part of the meeting with a brainstorming exercise led by Renee Irvin and Peter Weber. The goal of this was to identify what members thought NACC should be doing to sort through and evaluate the various publishing opportunities. It was an interactive event that generated fantastic feedback for moving forward.
We then had a chance to spin records (yes, actual vinyl) with David Springer and the UT Austin All-stars. I picked a Grateful Dead album and taught a group of millennials the words to Casey Jones and Sugar Magnolia, something they will perhaps eventually be thankful for… someday, maybe.
We then headed on over to the Austin Taco Shop for the NACC reception. With plenty of drinks and lots of fun the conversations continued around issues NACC and non-NACC related. While most people headed back to their rooms to get ready for their conference presentations the next day, a few intrepid NACCsters made it over to The Continental Club for a night of amazing live music. One of the band members clearly identified with NACC when he said, “I am a musician, we invented the term “Not for Profit.”
So with that we will call 2018 a success and call it to a close. I hope everyone has great holidays and a restful break. Lots of fun stuff coming on your NACC dial in 2019, so stay tuned.
As many of you know, the next ISTR (International Society for Third-Sector Research) conference is going on July 10-13 in Amsterdam. This is a great organization and conference that many NACC members will be attending. When NACC decided it was necessary to hold our conference every other year we looked to ISTR as an example of how that could work.
Matt
Matthew Hale
Seton Hall University
NACC President