Often, we can identify the symptoms of poverty and poor health in our community, but it can be much harder to quantify how we’re organized to treat those symptoms systematically – this is where Nonprofit Network Mapping comes into play.
CFC’s efforts around the Healthy NC 2030 indicators will help identify and quantify the symptoms. Our collaboration with UNCW’s Center for Social impact on mapping the nonprofit sector will support leaders and community members in identifying, scaling and implementing collaborative efforts to address those symptoms. This asset-based mapping is a critical step in building a better tomorrow for all citizens in the Cape Fear Region.
About The Study
Researchers and students from UNCW’s Center for Social Impact are collaborating with Cape Fear Collective to learn more about the nonprofit sector in New Hanover County.
We are currently conducting interviews with nonprofit managers in our region and collecting information about each entity’s funding and communication flows and their collaborative programmatic engagements. We’re also learning what organizational outcomes they track and what type of support they require. Combining this information with publicly-available federal and state data will allow us to identify inefficiencies in the local service-delivery market, areas of duplication, gaps in service provision, and viable avenues for productive collaboration. Policymakers and nonprofit practitioners can also use these insights to inform their decision-making and program design.
We’ve interviewed 56 organizations so far, and we’re hoping to reach hundreds of more nonprofits and other organizations that provide them with financial support, programmatic resources, and volunteer labor. Our goal with this research is to help local nonprofits, for-profits, and government organizations create a shared understanding of the community’s assets and deficiencies, make collective decisions that produce mutual benefit, and align programming to pursue a healthier and more equitable community for all Cape Fear residents.
If you’re a nonprofit manager or sit on a board of directors and want to join us in this effort, then please click here to select a 30-minute window that works best for you in the months of February and March.
