A New Starting Place

Look for a new nonprofit sector “concierge” service sometime this summer.  Psychologist, idea guy, and civic sector researcher Tom Backer, Ph.D., who runs the San Fernando Valley-based Human Interaction Research Institute, reports that he and his advisors have raised three years worth of start-up funding to launch a “virtual management support organization,” as he calls it.  To the rest of us, it’s going to be known as Valley Nonprofit Resources, or just VNR.

Backer aspires to have VNR become another bit of the essential glue – in this case, a digital, web-based adhesive – every community of any size needs to bind together leaders and practitioners across a diverse and dispersed family of nonprofit and civic organizations.  You can use VNR as an electronic map helpful in finding Valley-focused resources, locating training and technical assistance offerings, and, my favorite, tying into what Backer has started calling “Valley Young Nonprofit Professionals.”  He sees it as a kind of exchange where the emerging generation of nonprofit sector leaders and practitioners can find one another, get acquainted, and develop lasting relationships with others who have similar aspirations and social values.

Always practical, Backer says, “I’m conscious of how expensive it is to maintain a traditional bricks and mortar management support center site.  So I thought that if we put even a fraction of what that might cost into creating and staffing a web presence to provide information and make referrals, we would get good value with much less cost.  That doesn’t mean we’ll never have live, in-person events.  On the contrary, we’re planning on using the treasure trove of perfectly fine meeting places scattered across the Valley as our extended reception area, training room, and gathering place.”

I’m proud to chair the advisory board of VNR.  I’m proud to call Tom Backer – a civic entrepreneur with his head and heart well tuned to what communities genuinely need – a colleague and friend.  And of VNR, I defer to Tom’s description:  “It will be a portal, an entryway, a starting place from which change can begin.”

Paul Vandeventer, President & CEO, Community Partners

May 2008