e-Community 6/6/08

Join me in welcoming the new look of e-Community, Community Shares' monthly online newsletter to our giving community!

We will continue to feature Community Shares news and events to keep you up to date on our work connecting Coloradans to the charities and causes you care about most. However, we are adding more content via our new section below, which features links to articles, online videos, news, and blogs around a monthly topic related to philanthropy. You'll learn more about the Community Shares perspective on trends in giving, social venture, and the impact of the nonprofit sector. You'll also have access to more information and resources, as well as opportunities to share your thoughts on how to build a stronger community.

The theme of this month's newsletter is collaboration. With rising costs for fundraising, see this article in the Denver Post, and a high density of nonprofits in Colorado (Denver is ranked 9th in nonprofits per capita in the U.S.), more and more nonprofits are realizing that collaborating to decrease costs is just good business.

According to the authors of, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, the most effective nonprofits build a network to fulfill their mission.


"Although most nonprofits pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other groups as competition for scarce resources. But high-impact organizations help their peers succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their fields. They freely share wealth, expertise, talent, and power with other nonprofits not because they are saints, but because it's in their self-interest to do so."


Check out a summary from the authors at Stanford Social Innovation Review.

I believe Community Shares' foundation as a collaborative, cooperative giving fund run by and for nonprofit organizations has been key to our success in better serving donors.

We hope you use the new format of our newsletter to collaborate with us and get involved. Please voice your ideas for how we can increase our impact. Forces for Good states high-impact nonprofits,


"recognize that they are more powerful together than alone, and that
large-scale social change often requires collaborative, collective action."


We couldn't have said it better ourselves!

Best Regards,

Alyssa Kopf
CEO, Community Shares