News

Our Founder, Barry Dym, shared his reflections on starting INP as well as handing over the organizational leadership to our current President and CEO, Yolanda Coentro.

“Earlier today, I listened to Dov Khenin, a left wing Israeli activist, insist that, in the midst of the current violence and conflict, there is opportunity.  He described his efforts to join Arabs and Israeli Jews who are equally troubled by poor or absent housing in their neighborhoods.  No matter how the local people differ on religious, cultural, and ideological issues, he argues, they can agree to fight gentrification together.  And he hopes that out of that common, local bond, a larger movement might be built.

I well know the near impossibility of leaping from small, local protests to large scale movements, but I couldn’t help but thrill to the effort to build on the sparks of common ground.

My parents passed onto me a faith and an enthusiasm in political movements and, to an extent, a contempt for small scale “charity,” which might take the edge off poverty but never comes close to changing the underlying conditions that lead to the oppression of the dispossessed.

To my detriment, I took them too literally—and somehow undervalued the many local organizations they joined and led.  For much of my life I have felt defeated by their insistence that nothing less than major economic and political change would make a difference.  My entire professional life has been dedicated to helping individuals, groups, and (nonprofit) organizations improve their lot, yet I’ve almost always felt that I’m not doing enough.  As a result, I have felt only moderately fulfilled in my work, no matter how well done.

Then, in 2006, came the Institute for Nonprofit Practice (INP), a set of leadership training programs that, over time, began to feel like a spear in the larger movement for diversity and social justice.  I’d like to describe how it grew and, with its growth, how I began to feel much more in the flow of redemptive social change.”

Read more: https://barrydym.wordpress.com/2021/06/18/my-parents-would-be-proud/