As a Fair Chance board member for over a year, I have been honored to serve with such a hands-on, motivated board and dedicated, resilient staff. In the past several months, I have spent significant amounts of time interviewing the executive directors of the nonprofits with which Fair Chance has partnered. What has impressed me most is the truly transformative effect our capacity building has on these dynamic, community-based nonprofits serving youth, children and their families in Wards 5-8 of Washington, DC. To a person, these executive directors have discussed how Fair Chance has helped to stabilize, strengthen, and sustain their organizations in areas like board development, fundraising, financial management, human resources and succession planning. It is obvious to me that there exists a direct correlation between having a stable, sustainable community-based nonprofit and the positive outcomes these nonprofits can achieve. Moreover, Fair Chance has truly developed the leadership skills of these executive directors, who now feel more effective in their roles as leaders of their organizations. One executive director gave me the following apt analogy of the relationship between her organization and Fair Chance: her organization is the mission, the heart, and Fair Chance is the structure, the skeleton that protects and nutures that heart to ensure that it can do great works in the community. That’s a great way to think of what Fair Chance does at its best.
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