CNE Blog

Our United States: A Letter from our Executive Director

Dear friends,

We’ve got a lot of work to do. Here’s the good news: we in the nonprofit sector have hard work in our bones and, as we emerge from this fraught election season, we have real clarity about the…

Grow Connections Through Good Stories

I remember sneaking out of the house when I was a kid to hide under the orange tree in the backyard and read a book. Fiction always. Often mysteries, with a notebook on hand to track the clues. From…

Creating Brand Champions

Recently I went to a workshop CNE organized with our strategic partner, the PATH Resource Center, in Warrenton, VA. The trainer, Liz Johnson, of Mountain View Marketing, covered a lot of ground around branding,…

Embrace Ambiguity and Be More Adaptable

We can learn a lot about ambiguity from Keith Richards, who once said, “I look for ambiguity when I’m writing because life is ambiguous.”

Since the Industrial Revolution we in the western world have been led to…

Technology: Like it. . . or Not!

Technology. Most days I like it, but Wednesday was one of those “or not” days.

It started early last week when the Foundation Center computers would not connect to the internet. These computers are

An Agile Workspace?

I recently encountered this topic in a Forbes Leadership article – How Agile Working Has Impacted Our Workspace.

Although there were elements of the article that seemed beyond my work situation, I was intrigued by a…

We Retreat, and Renewed, We Move Forward

CNE had the great fortune to meet at our Executive Director, Cristine Nardi’s, beautiful farmhouse in Nelson County for our staff retreat.

Flanked by rolling hills, wildflower meadows, rambling trees, and a couple of red…

Got a Great Employee? Hold On to Them. . . Or Not!

As the Program Manager at CNE, I think a lot about why people should invest in professional development. A lot of my own professional development has recently focused on reading interviews and articles related to this topic. I’m also—along…

Don’t Quit: A Message from our Executive Director

Dear friends,

Enough. I’ve had enough. Of the tragedy and heartache all around me, the deep injustice, the systemic prejudice, the terrorism here and abroad, the senseless violence, the grief and suffering of the families who’ve lost their precious loved…