Marthas Vineyard Donors Collaborative Inc

Programs: In 2017 again, most of our efforts went into this program to increase collaboration between vineyard nonprofits as we continued to help lead and develop healthy aging martha's vineyard (hamv), formerly the healthy aging task force, which we created in 2013. Hamv has over 70 volunteer members representing more than 35 health, human service and municipal organizations that serve island elders. In 2017, hamv completed and published a community wide action plan with 4 different work groups developing collaborative programs to address the needs of our growing elder population. In 2017, mv donors collaborative (mvdc) spent less on this program than in 2016, and it was a smaller percent of our overall effort, however, our executive director continued to play a major leadership role on the hamv executive committee and was also asked the join the hamv board. Two mvdc board members also served on hamv's executive committee. In 2017 the donors collaborative continued as fiscal agent for hamv on several grants and our executive director continued to oversee the feasibility study for constructing a skilled nursing and or assisted living facility using the "greenhouse" model, which was concluded in 2017 and the results presented to the community and the hospital. Our executive director also chaired hamv's elder housing work group. Mvdc was also instrumental in helping hamv develop a sustainability strategy that will be implemented in 2018 and allow mvdc to significantly cut back its support of hamv after 5 years and allow it to put those resources into new collaborative efforts. The sustainability strategy includes a full time staff person funded by the towns of martha's vineyard, and the island's largest human services agency will provide fiscal sponsorship and back office support. In 2017, the mvdc executive director continued to chair the collaborative effort to address the island's affordable housing shortage, which completed housing production plans for each of the 6 island towns as well as an island wide plan. The group had an affordable housing committee and planning board representative from each town as well as the island's primary affordable housing nonprofit and the regional planning commission. Finally in 2017, the mvdc started a mentoring program for local entrepreneurs developing new businesses, including an annual pitch contest where the best ideas are awarded money to help develop their businesses further. This collaborative program includes the chamber of commerce, score and other local business and nonprofit leaders.

in 2017 mvdc redirected a significant part of its efforts and resources back into its nonprofit capacity building programs, which had been cut back during the last four years due to the emphasis on starting and building healthy aging and other collaborative programs (see accomplishment 1 above). We increased the number of trainings from 2 to 6 with the primary emphasis on improving governance and fundraising. We held a grant writing workshop attended by 27 people, a workshop on best practices in development planning attended by 30, and a workshop on annual giving campaigns also attended by 30. We held a governance workshop on the responsibilities of the board and best practices in board development attended by 78 people (mostly board members) from 19 nonprofits, which also received their results from a confidential board self assessment conducted online ahead of the workshop. The workshop also helped them evaluate the results and prepare a plan for addressing the governance areas their self assessment identified as needing improvement. We held a seminar for 30 board chairs to discuss best practices in board leadership and other topics of common interest. We also had a workshop on the importance of the working relationship between the board chairs and executive directors which was attended by the board chairs and executive directors of 13 nonprofits. The workshop included a session for them to evaluate their own working relationship and develop plans to improve it. All these workshops received high evaluations from those attending. In 2017 we held the second meeting of vineyard funders, a group of 15 people from 12 foundations that are major funders of island nonprofits, to discuss ways they could work together to help vineyard nonprofits do better. The funders agreed on the largest issues facing the island and on the greatest needs of nonprofits, one of which was capacity building. Out of this meeting came a plan to have the group partially fund a certificate program in nonprofit leadership from tufts university for executive directors, that would be held locally (on the cape and islands) to eliminate the costly and time consuming commuting to boston that effectively makes this type of leadership development program unavailable to vineyard nonprofits. Over 15 executives expressed interest in the program and which will start with a cohort of 8 executives in 2018. In 2017 mvdc also helped start the vineyard fund for board education and development, a collaborative effort of some local donors and the local community foundation, which grants local nonprofits funds to hire consultants to do important governance projects that many vineyard nonprofits can't otherwise afford (e. G. Strategic plans, board retreats and reorganizations, etc. ). In 2017, $41,000 was given to 8 nonprofits for such purposes. Mvdc continued to operate a free nonprofit resource center including foundation center grant research databases not available elsewhere on island. We also contribute books and reference materials on nonprofit management. To help accomplish the expansion of of nonprofit capacity building programs in 2017, we used professional trainers and a part time event specialist.

our program to increase philanthropy educates donors about local needs and provides services to facilitate philanthropy. Over 18,000 households received our annual newsletter. We provide an online directory of nonprofits, run op-eds in the newspapers and offer intermediary services to donors to facilitate donations to island nonprofits. In 2017, we facilitated the donation of $5,800 to the town of west tisbury for a historical monument to their mill pond and saved the group the cost of creating their own nonprofit by acting as their fiscal agent (the last thing the island needs is another nonprofit).