The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit is a manifesto for mindset change in our sector, raising the conversations about the importance of self-care.

This blog is a part of our monthly Board Member series.

With YNPN’s National Conference and Leaders Institute now a few weeks behind us (thank you, Portland!), chapter leaders are back to the important work of supporting the emerging nonprofit talent in their communities -- planning events, securing sponsorships, and recruiting new members to the YNPN family.

This blog is a part of our monthly Board Member series.

It is the distributed, grassroots nature of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network that got me interested in the first place. Living in Durham, North Carolina, I really loved that the YNPN Triangle chapter was a natural and easy home for the many young professionals who understood themselves as “transplants” to the region, as well as long-time native Tar Heels.  

"Learn from each other. That’s the whole point of YNPN - learn. Fail forward. Make mistakes. Take risks. YNPN is the perfect place to take chances and risks - so why not? It’s easier to do it now and learn from it." - Emily Davis, YNPN San Diego Co-Founder & Alum and YNPN Denver Alum

"One of the things we talk about a lot when recruiting volunteers and board members, in addition to having something on your resume, is that you can build skills and relationships and test the waters and practice things you will be able to use in your career in the future. So many of us on the board have done exactly that." -Lindsey Hardegree, YNPN Atlanta Founding Board Member

"Reflective leadership is instilled through YNPN. It makes you think about what you are doing in your job now, where you see yourself, what do you want to do and where the gap is. I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out for myself without YNPN." - Andy Felder, YNPN Alumnus

This blog is a part of our monthly Board Member series.

It took me a while to write this post.  I wanted to tell a story about the perspective of a former chapter leader on the National Board.  And if you know me personally, then you know I tend to ramble on without a point (insert ideations for postmodern literary glory here).  Then I attended a YNPN New Mexico board meeting briefly the other day and realized that I couldn’t tell a story about my perspective, I had to tell one from our perspective.  

This blog is a part of our monthly Board Member series.

In March, our treasurer Kari described the conversations that the YNPN Board of Directors had about being a network and what that means for how we work together with our chapters to shape the future of our work. As the chair of our fundraising committee, I immediately put on my “revenue generating hat” and wondered how we could model this change in such an important element of the Board’s work.

This blog is a part of our monthly Board Member series.

I’m sitting down to write this having just wrapped up our most recent executive committee conference call, the first after our YNPN board retreat in Baltimore late last month. At that retreat, we came to terms with what it means for YNPN --now and in the future-- to be a network, and not an association. Or, since every movement has elements of both, what it means to be more like a network and less like an association.

We are excited to officially announce our involvement in this year’s Nonprofit Talent & Culture Summit! The Nonprofit Talent & Culture Summit is the only nonprofit-focused talent conference in the world, providing you with the tools and actionable ideas you need to cultivate, engage and sustain the talent that will help organizations achieve their mission.

This year, we are partnering with Nonprofit HR to put on the conference’s first Millennial UnPanel, which will give a voice and a stage to the next generation of nonprofit leaders. Rather than present on what “experts” claim is the future for the millennial generation, we’ll explore answers to that question directly from the source.