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| Photo by Tellumo. Source: Flickr Creative Commons |
As I packed up our humble little Care2 booth at the Nonprofit Congress yesterday, I heard a loud commotion coming from the conference room across the hall where nonprofit leaders from around the country were gleefully announcing their action plans for the coming year after two days of deliberation. Each state delegation, and most of the 50 states were represented, committed to some sort of steps to strengthen collaboration opportunities in their states, and in particular, to get the needs of the nonprofit sector (and their constituents) on the state and national political agendas in the coming elections. It's a tall order, but I'm glad someone's doing it. The Nonprofit Council of Nonprofit Association (NCNA) folks are an impressive little team with big vision.
Jodi Williams, a 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate, set the tone with the afternoon plenary on Tuesday: "emotion without action is totally irrelevant". Williams helped mobilize 1300 NGOs and 80 governments to ban anti-personnel landmines beginning in 1991-92 using fax machines. Let me repeat that: Jodi Williams helped mobilize 1300 NGOs and 80 governments to ban anti-personnel landmines beginning in 1991 using fax machines. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL ) achieved its goal of an international treaty banning anti-personnel landmines during the diplomatic conference held in Oslo in September 1997.
Si, se puede. Fax machines, folks. Fax machines. Imagine using fax machines to keep everyone in only your organization in the loop and on the same page. I was heartened to hear one of the state delegations stand up and announce their action plan was to launch a wiki for the state nonprofit groups to collaborate and share information.
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