Bringing together funders and the nonprofits they support can go a long way toward encouraging ongoing dialogue, increasing understanding and building bridges for the good of our communities.
That’s why we created the annual C(3) Forum in partnership with Colorado Nonprofit Associationand Community Resource Center. This week’s ninth annual, all-day convening around the theme of “convergence” brought the sector together to talk about everything from moving away from lengthy grant applications to laying the groundwork for honest feedback.
This year’s day of sharing and learning was largely inspired by the leadership cohort we formed last year with support from the Fund for Shared Insight and United Philanthropy Forum. We invited nonprofits to join with funders in thinking through what the concept of “openness” means for our sector and how it might be a means of increasing the field’s impact.
We’ve attempted to sum up some of the initial observations and approaches in this publication. We hope it will help to prompt more conversations and that both funders and nonprofits might use it to spark discussions with their staff and boards. The findings are far from scientific and are by no means meant to be prescriptive. We did try to reflect a cross-section of people from an array of organizations around the state. We’ll be doing more work to broaden and deepen dialogue on the topic and hope you will share with us what you’re seeing and learning in the months ahead.