Nov 28, 2023
Groundworks New Mexico’s mission is to connect, strengthen, and advocate for New Mexico’s social sector while unleashing its full potential. Our core values are racial equity, collaboration, community, and impact. In short, we help our state’s social sector work together to tackle the big issues. The following are highlights from our 18-month business plan to lead New Mexico’s nonprofit sector to increased capacity, impactful collaboration, alignment of resources, and professional best practices while increasing and diversifying our revenue streams. With new leadership at the helm, Groundworks New Mexico will seize this moment to unite, strengthen, and educate New Mexico’s social sector.
Groundworks New Mexico is a capacity-building membership organization for New Mexico’s social sector. Our membership includes nonprofit service organizations, philanthropy and corporate funders, government, and private sector professionals serving the nonprofit community. We serve New Mexico’s social sector by providing a central voice for the sector, administrative backbone support, educational and networking convenings, opportunities for collaboration, professionalization of the social sector, and pathways for disseminating news and information across the sector. Groundworks connects, strengthens and advocates for the social sector through four core strategies:
Build Nonprofit Capacity:
We provide regular training and resources for nonprofits to strengthen their organizations and improve service provision. We enable members to connect, collaborate, and improve their impact and effectiveness on a statewide basis.
• Launch a robust Consultant Directory to help nonprofits find and access experts in key areas (strategic planning, board development, grant writing, etc.).
• Enhance Technical Assistance office hours by leveraging a pool of consultants with diverse expertise.
• Launch essential nonprofit skills workshops, trainings, and
webinars to deliver organizational best practices and improve the knowledge and skills of the sector’s workforce.
• Revise the “Principles & Practices Guidebook” (“PPG”) into a multi- part series to expand the breadth of information, while providing greater tools and resources for New Mexico nonprofits.
• Redesign the Groundworks New Mexico website, together with a membership portal, to add significant value to our members and the social sector at large, while adding new streams of revenue.
Membership benefits and membership experience:
As a membership organization, we offer our community: technical assistance support; access to meaningful networking, events, and programming; and an annual conference which is the keystone event to unite and further the impact of New Mexico’s social sector.
• Enhance current offerings of meaningful networking and relationship-building, as well as learning and programming
opportunities to help strengthen and connect our nonprofit and funder community.
• Grow our Annual Conference to bring together foundations, government, and nonprofits focused on critical issues in the social service sector. Assure the Groundworks Annual Conference remains the premier venue for critical sector discussion, networking among foundations and nonprofits, sharing of local knowledge and expertise.
• Continue to improve member benefits and value, including access to national networks and resources.
Promote Collaboration and Strategic Partnerships:
We provide infrastructure support and thought leadership to enable collaboration across the social sector on critical issues.
• Host regular funder, nonprofit, and member meetings to advance sector alignment on emerging opportunities and critical areas of need. Provide critical backbone support to funder and/or nonprofit tables seeking to learn and align resources to sectors.
• Continue incubation of collaborative projects, providing equitable and community-focused infrastructure design, facilitation, and backbone support for diverse stakeholders including government, funders, and nonprofits.
Improve Systems, Policies, and Investments in the Sector:
By providing access to research, reports, and data, as well as incubating innovative projects and facilitating key dialogues, we help the sector enhance systems and policies.
• Increasing member benefits such as access to greater data and research to help steer the sector towards more effective and impactful work by knowing which problems are most critical, where the greatest needs are, and more efficiently leveraging available resources.
• Position Groundworks to be a voice for the social sector to both state and federal entities to create systems change and channel funding and resources to the sector.
Achievements Post 2020 Reorganization Conclusion
• Supporting the Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table funder collaborative for opportunity youth in northern NM.
• Hosted over 100 Technical Assistance Office Hours for members and the public.
• Completed national racial equity cohort to revise organizational policies and procedures.
• Hosted a three-day, statewide conference with national and local speakers focused on racial equity, best practices, and legislative updates.
• Incubated the Broadband Collective to support a collaborative effort to compete for state and federal broadband dollars.
• Convened, coordinated, and managed the New Mexico Funder Census Initiative’s New Mexico Counts 2020 project, raising over $1.4 million to support turnout efforts in historically undercounted communities resulting in the most accurate census count in the nation.
• Supported the creation of and provided backbone support for the New Mexico Collaborative Zone Grant, providing for organizational collaboration and the leveraging of flexible funding for innovative responses to New Mexico’s challenges.
Implementing this 18-month business plan, Groundworks New Mexico will strengthen its position as the premier nonprofit capacity-building organization in the state. The organization will continue to serve as the primary convener uniting government, foundations, and nonprofit organizations to impact positive change in New Mexico. Groundworks will enhance the benefits to its members such as serving as a critical partner to Foundations seeking to build the capacity of the nonprofit sector. Groundworks will also achieve its objective of uniting the sector to help solve the toughest challenges in our state.