Last January I received a good bit of teasing for a blog post that I wrote entitled Could 2012 be the Best Year For Massachusetts CDCs Since 1982? Many of my colleagues thought that I was, at best, hopelessly optimistic or, at worst, strangely naive.  The truth is that I was shamelessly promoting both MACDC's 30th anniversary (we were created in 1982) and our campaign to pass the Community Development Partnership Act, which I suggested would be the most important piece of community dev

In the nine days since Governor Patrick signed the Community Development Partnership Act into law, a number of my members have asked me "what should I do now?" It's a good question.

In recent years, scale has become one of the hottest topics in the non-profit sector. Not a day goes by when I don’t see a report or an email, or a blog post, or at least a tweet talking about the importance of scale. Much of the discussion is about how the nonprofit sector is not very good at growing organizations to scale. Many people are looking for ways to replicate private sector models of equity investing to help bring nonprofit organizations to scale.

In March 2012, I had a wonderful opportunity to travel to Israel with a group of affordable housing professionals to meet with our counterparts in that country who are working to address many of the same housing challenges we face in this country. It was a facinating week of tours, lectures, meetings, debates, and bus rides. We learned a great deal and I believe we were also able to help our colleagues.

While I expected to learn about housing policy, I did not expect to learn - or should I say re-learn - a lesson about the importance of representative democracy.

Consider: