2023 Emerging Topics Recap

By: Kristi Luzar | News & Events, Uncategorized

Thank you for joining us for our 2023 Emerging Topics Series!

This year we featured a wide range of interests that included community-based journalism, new research on disparities in wealth-building and homeownership, technology tools to help streamline our daily work, and the upcoming update of Southeast Wisconsin’s Regional & Land Use Plan, VISION 2050.

A huge thank you to the 85+ people who attended this year’s series, our Partners & Presenters, and Sponsors for their support!

Session 4 Recap: VISION 2050: Weigh in on the Region’s Future

Thank you to the 25+ people who participated in our last session for 2023, which featured an overview of the process for the upcoming review and update of Southeastern Wisconsin’s VISION 2050 Regional Land Use & Transportation Plan. We learned from Regional Planning Commission staff about the Plan and the process to update financial and equity analyses, meet federal requirements, and gather public input over the next 6 months. View the slides here>>

UEDA is proud to be a Community Partner of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC), learn more about them here.

Session 3 Recap: Making Tech Work for You – Leveraging Technology for Small Organization

On October 11th, we celebrated WI Tech Month at this hands-on workshop with presenter Tim Syth, Contexture, who discussed how to effectively and efficiently use existing technology tools such as Google Workspace and the Cloud. Thank you to the small group who joined us for some interactive learning on how to leverage automation and streamline tasks, save resources and time, and increase our ability to achieve mission. We also learned how small organizations can unleash the power of ChatGPT and explore other AI alternatives while gaining insights into how they can improve organizational operations. See the slides here>>.

Special thank you to Milky Way Tech Hub and Latinos in Tech for their support of this month-long series of events.

Session 2 Recap: Bridging the Racial Disparity in Wealth Creation in Milwaukee

On September 12, nearly 40 people attended our second session of the 2023 series to learn about new research on household wealth and homeownership from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, supported by the Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation (MGIC). The project included a multi-disciplinary team and looks to create a foundational approach to identifying and measuring how effective homeownership can be as a generator of wealth, and inform policy and social investments that help address racial disparities in homeownership and wealth-building.

Attendees shared feedback on the initial research findings and ideas on intentional ways we could support residents in neighborhoods with lower homeownership rates, strengthen efforts to prevent foreclosure, and how other factors could impact wealth generation across different areas. As our learning from these findings continues, we look forward to future research that could guide policy and investment.

View the press release and the presentation slides. Thank you to our presenters and partners!

Session 1 Recap: Neighborhood News Connect

Thanks to all who joined us for our first Emerging Topics Series for 2023 on June 27, held in partnership with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS). NNS is a nonprofit news organization that covers Milwaukee’s diverse neighborhood stories that are important to the people who live, work, and serve in the city. The NNS staff members who presented were: Ron Smith, Executive Director, Deborah Heffner, Director of Development and Partnerships, Princess Safiya Byers, Report for America Staff Reporter and Bevin Christie, News 414 Project Manager.

They talked about the changes they’re seeing in community-based journalism, and the power it holds to empower and uplift communities. NNS covers topics such as education, public safety, economic development, health and wellness, environment, recreation, employment, youth development and housing. One of their most read articles last year focused on what Milwaukee Mayors actually do, a part of their efforts to promote civic education. Look for more pieces like that in the coming year.

NNS also shared how they leverage storytelling to create impactful narratives, and the tools available to the community to engage with them:

Their Community Voices section allows community members to submit opinions on topics of interest.
Posts from Community is where groups can submit news releases and articles about their issues and events.
And News414 is their service journalism project in partnership with Wisconsin Watch.

Learn more about NNS at https://milwaukeenns.org, we thank them for partnering with us on this session. We hope to collaborate with them more in the future. And a very special thank you to Bader Philanthropies for hosting our first session of the 2023 series!

New partnership to enhance technical assistance services

By: Kristi Luzar | News & Events

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UEDA and the Nonprofit Academy of Wisconsin (NAWi) are excited to announce a new partnership offering capacity building services to nonprofit organizations in the Greater Milwaukee area, building off work that began in mid-2019 to provide organizational-focused technical assistance to nonprofits.

This partnership will strengthen and extend the range of education and consulting services to nonprofits. NAWi will serve as the technical assistance partner for UEDA, focusing on, but not limited to, agencies that receive Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding. The NAWi team will include Rob Meiksins, Martha Collins, and Andrea Rodriguez, who will work with UEDA to deliver these services. Our Technical Assistance Advisory Committee will provide guidance to the implementation of this partnership.

“This is an exciting opportunity,” said UEDA Executive Director Kristi Luzar. “We have been working with nonprofits in the community and economic development sector for a long time but have had limited capacity ourselves to reach more nonprofits. This partnership with NAWi provides that.”

Our shared goal is to help nonprofits be intentional about how they build and strengthen their organizations and is based on the Standards for Excellence, a nationally recognized organizational model that NAWi has followed since its inception. The Standards are a set of competencies that are used as a lens to review where a nonprofit organization is in terms of governance and operations. Our approach is to then work with the nonprofit to see how they want to adapt what the Standards recommend to align with the nonprofit’s mission, culture, age, and size with an eye towards organizational sustainability.

“We have been working together for a couple of years now,” said Rob Meiksins, co-founder and President of NAWi. “It has been a good working partnership between UEDA and NAWi, and this seemed like a natural progression.”

To launch this new partnership, we will offer a free two-part introduction to the Standards model and how it can benefit nonprofits on May 31 and June 7. Sessions will be 90 minutes and led by Rob and Martha of NAWi, who are both certified consultants in the Standards for Excellence. The Standards are made up of 6 guiding principles, and each session in this webinar series will cover three of the Standards and how nonprofits can implement them.

Any organization that completes both sessions will be given access to a very brief version of a survey to compare how the organization functions in relation to the Standards. Then, we will offer a 1-hour follow-up session to review the findings and help organizations start thinking through how a full organizational review can help them deliver on their mission. Pre-registration for these introductory sessions is required.

Moving forward, UEDA and NAWi will also focus on serving agencies that receive CDBG grant funding from the City of Milwaukee, who will now have access to help with a variety of services including consulting and conducting an assessment of how your organization is functioning. Contact NAWi here or by calling 414-367-8209 if you are interested (must be a 2022 CDBG funding recipient).

Lastly, this program partnership will also leverage and support Nonprofit Lift, an initiative that began through a collaborative effort in 2021 with other intermediaries that support nonprofit organizations in the metropolitan Milwaukee region. Nonprofit Lift recently launched a resource website and consultant directory and we are excited to align our work with this important effort. Learn more here>>

Nonprofit Lift: A new resource now available

By: Kristi Luzar | News & Events

We are pleased to share a new resource, www.NonprofitLift.org, for nonprofits in the Greater Milwaukee Region is now available!

This resource went live on May 3rd and is the product of collaborative work UEDA has been engaged with other intermediaries that work to support the capacity of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit Lift’s website provides:

An easily searchable directory of 50+ consultants to nonprofits in the Greater Milwaukee Region (and beyond, in most cases)
Sources for nonprofit training and professional development
Resource lists for starting and for running a nonprofit
Resources for nonprofit sector data, research, and news

Many of these resources are also available to nonprofits throughout the state. Special thanks to the Nonprofit Management Fund for their financial and technical support, which helped create the platform for the website and consultant directory.

More About Nonprofit Lift

This collaboration of capacity-building intermediary and philanthropic organizations in Wisconsin formed last year in response to the challenges facing the nonprofit community in the Greater Milwaukee Region. In 2021 we held several town hall discussions with nonprofit and philanthropic leaders, after reviewing the results of the Understanding and Supporting Milwaukee Nonprofits study conducted by Project Pivot and the Helen Bader Institute for Nonprofit Management at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2019.

The study and town hall discussions helped identify areas of need and nonprofit resource limitations in the Greater Milwaukee Region, leading to the development of Nonprofit Lift and the resources you can now find on their new website. We are continuing to work in partnership on additional steps to make capacity-building services and resources more accessible to nonprofits in the Greater Milwaukee Region.

Nonprofit Lift is a collaboration of the Helen Bader Institute for Nonprofit Management at UW-Milwaukee, Jobs That Help, Project Pivot, the Nonprofit Academy of Wisconsin, Nonprofit Management Fund, Urban Economic Development Association of Wisconsin, and Create Wisconsin (formerly Arts Wisconsin).

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