|
What is CORE?
CORE is a network of individuals and organizations who are passionate, visionary, on-the-ground change-makers willing to discover and share wisdom, generosity and joy in community. The CORE network includes people engaged in transformation towards equity and resilience in a wide variety of roles — from community-benefit organizations and grassroots leaders, to consultants, coaches and trainers, to individual philanthropists and institutional funders. By bringing people together in new ways, we are expanding our collective capacity for community change-making. |
To see the words to the limerick, click here.
|
How does CORE come together?
CORE is informed by experiences of organizational leadership, consulting, and funding in the nonprofit or community benefit sector, and is also an effort to transcend the limitations of each of these roles. CORE is not just a network of consultants improving their work with nonprofit organizations, though it is that. Neither is CORE just a new way to fund organizational capacity building. Like other efforts around the country to broker and support funded engagements between nonprofits and consultants, our matchmaking and matching funding fill a distinct set of needs. However, we approach all of our activities from a transformational set of values and methods.
What does CORE do?
CORE brings people together in a variety of ways, hosting space and time for people to reflect, build real relationships, and get creative. Because we embrace experimentation and emergence, our programs are evolving. They currently include:
CORE Action Café
A creative, high-impact “Pro-Action Café ,” a half day of collaborative reflection on real-time issues participants are facing.
Consultants’ Circles
A monthly gathering of capacity-building providers for peer learning and relationship-building.
Match for Change
Trained volunteer Connectors meet with organizational and consultant applicants and work together to discern 2-3 well-fitting consultants for each organization. The program includes assisted contracting, where organizations are given $500 to provide a stipend to their selected consultant to craft a clear capacity-building plan, and matching funding, where organizations with a clear, realistic, and fundable plan are awarded matching funds up to $5000 for the capacity-building project.
Funder Confabs
Regular gatherings for building funder community to strengthen the capacity of the social sector in Dane County.
Where does CORE come from?
Lead organizer Becca Krantz tells the story:
"Like many great ideas, CORE was prompted by frustration — mine, in particular. After years of working for social change in one way or another, I found myself in the role of lead staff person for a startup nonprofit organization. Like many executive directors, I had no idea how to do about 80% of my job. I needed help. Sometimes I got it, and sometimes I didn’t. And sometimes I was too mired in day-to-day urgency to step back and wonder whether I was being effective and how or where to find help to make my efforts more skillful and sustainable.
Later I became a consultant and a funder, two new roles I didn’t know how to do well. How, as an outside facilitator and leadership coach, could I tell if I was really making a difference for my clients? And how, as a grant maker, could I make the best use of the money entrusted to me?
Lead organizer Becca Krantz tells the story:
"Like many great ideas, CORE was prompted by frustration — mine, in particular. After years of working for social change in one way or another, I found myself in the role of lead staff person for a startup nonprofit organization. Like many executive directors, I had no idea how to do about 80% of my job. I needed help. Sometimes I got it, and sometimes I didn’t. And sometimes I was too mired in day-to-day urgency to step back and wonder whether I was being effective and how or where to find help to make my efforts more skillful and sustainable.
Later I became a consultant and a funder, two new roles I didn’t know how to do well. How, as an outside facilitator and leadership coach, could I tell if I was really making a difference for my clients? And how, as a grant maker, could I make the best use of the money entrusted to me?
