Nov
12
2013
A Toolkit for the Common Good
Written by Kim Klein
“Set aside politics. Set aside competitiveness. Imagine what it would be like if there was enough money to go around. Imagine the powerful force nonprofits can be for the Common Good” – Renee McGiven, host of the Nonprofit Spark podcast
In the nonprofit sector, we all care passionately about our particular issues. But what if we also spoke with one voice for the common good? Could we all do better if we all did better?
Kim Klein, a member of our Project Team and regular contributor to our work on the Commons, believes it’s possible. The Nonprofit Talking Taxes curriculum toolkit, which Kim developed with partners from CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, will help you being the first important step: starting a conversation that helps us realize our collective power.
Kim and Anne Ryan, a project coordinator at CompassPoint, recently appeared on Renee McGiven’s Nonprofit Spark podcast to talk about the toolkit and why having conversations about tax policy and commons values is important. Renee notes, “What if all types of nonprofits came together to educate ourselves about tax policy and discuss our values, and then relate them to how we think communities ought to work? And then what might happen if, armed with our newfound knowledge, we were able to speak persuasively and intelligently about why taxes are a good thing for the common good?” The Nonprofits Talking Taxes toolkit seeks to equip organizations with exercises and strategies that will enable them to have these productive conversations.
Kim and her collaborators developed the toolkit for others to take the simple, interactive popular education curriculum that was already being used in NPTT workshops across the country and use it with their own groups. The toolkit includes a full, updated workshop PowerPoint, easy-to-use trainer guide, and supplemental activities, materials, and videos so nonprofit groups can learn with each other about the common good, taxes, and collaborative conversations. It’s designed so groups can easily customize the workshop to their liking, or incorporate the concepts in their own curriculum. The toolkit is a powerful way to get your staff or volunteer group talking about the big picture so we can stop worrying about the day-to-day struggle for resources and more fully achieve our missions.