Lessons from a leading CEO Lessons from a leading CEO

tech valley nonprofit business council
New day
dawns for
TVNBC
E. Kristen Frederick
President/CEO
The Community Foundation
for the Greater Capital Region
Tech Valley Nonprofit Business
Council Chair
“There is nothing new under the sun,” it is written in
the book of Ecclesiastes. While that feeling may be
true for some, the Tech Valley Nonprofit Business
Council begs to differ.
As the brainchild of two regional chambers of
commerce (Albany-Colonie and Schenectady County)
there are no other such nonprofit councils, to our
knowledge, in the U.S. As such, each program we
hold, each committee action that supports our mission
is truly inventing the wheel for others who will come
along and pattern themselves after us in some other
community.
For three years we’ve provided educational programs
to help the nonprofit sector think and act in
synch with the business sector. But this spring, as a
result of feedback from a record number of attendees
at our programs and overall growth in council members,
we noticed that we had outgrown our training
wheels and needed to redesign the bike.
The new vision, mission and objectives will help us
focus both internally and externally. They will include
creating a committee to help us plan peer-to-peer
gatherings, and combining some of our efforts with
other nonprofits, hopefully generating needed
research about our own sector and how it relates to
the Tech Valley economy. Lastly, while we will continue
to provide programs, we will look to partner with
larger Chamber businesses and even other councils, to
increase the overall visibility and impact of the nonprofit
sector within the region at large. Instead of asking
what businesses can do for us, we will turn that
around and seek to answer, “What can we do for businesses?”
So, yes, there is something new under the sun, and
it keeps on getting bigger and better. Lofty intents,
however, require warm bodies and people to aspire to
leadership. Many of us stood up to be counted when
the TVNBC was created. Now, as it expands, we need
the next generation of committed nonprofit leaders
to take us into 2009 and beyond. Who knows where
they will take us, but it will certainly be somewhere
new under the sun.
acchamber.org :: techvalley.org VISIONS 43