Quality of life key for nonprofit leader

Positive thinking isn't just a catch phrase for Ned Cooney.

Cooney, program director for the Flathead Nonprofit Development Partnership, is positive he can help edge his community toward a better quality of life.

It will just take a little help from his friends on the seven-member Flathead Partnership steering committee, the 77 local organizations it has worked with, and his colleagues in a statewide group that works with more than 6,000 nonprofits in Montana.

"For me, it's my real love for the nonprofit sector," Cooney said. "In my mind nonprofits are the best expression of the democratic spirit and our caring for each other."

He loves that they can stand on opposite sides of issues - favoring and opposing wolves in Yellowstone, for example - yet enjoy equal opportunity to advocate for their causes.

"It's a cross-section of small groups generally who care about an issue and come together in a structure and create a vehicle to address that issue," he said, then get funding and carry out initiatives.

"It's First Amendment things," he said - free speech, free press, freedom of religion, the right to assemble. "It's in the nonprofit sector that we see those ideals play out every day across our community."

Cooney also contracts as the project director for a new initiative announced in January by the Big Sky Institute for the Advancement of Nonprofits.

The Montana Nonprofit Connections Program, the brainchild of executive director Mike Schechtman and administered by Big Sky Institute, made its first-ever Assessment Awards. It will send six in-state consultants to work with the boards and staffs of six Montana nonprofits. The consultants will help each group take stock of its organizational capacities, needs and priorities for improvement.

In short, it will ramp up the strength and effectiveness of Big Sky Senior Services and Native American Development Corporation, both in Billings; Fort Peck Fine Arts Council in Glasgow; Human Resource Development Council of District IX, Inc., in Bozeman; Montana Shares in Helena; and Stafford Animal Shelter in Livingston.

Grants from eight foundations and a statewide nonprofit providing home-ownership services made it possible

This spring, the Project Award phase kicks in with grants of up to $5,000 each to help with consultants for the recipients. Any other nonprofit that has done an organizational assessment and set priorities may apply, too. Visit www.bigskyinstitute.org/prog_RPI.shtml

Cooney said they're considering asking the current award recipients to mentor future recipients, telling what they did and how the program helped.

"I think these kinds of benefits accrue to the wider community very often, because nonprofit executives and board members tend to look to each other" for identifying good practices and ways of doing business, he said.

Cooney's not just in nonprofits to make a living. They're his life.

He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology and sociology and a master's degree in social work in his native California.

After college he became program director, then executive director for The Volunteer Center of Riverside County, helping establish a homeless drop-in day center to fill the gaps left by too few shelter beds in the area.

After nine years there, he went on to The Resource Center, a spin-off nonprofit offering training, workshops, consulting and information for other nonprofits. He also established a wide-reaching annual conference for nonprofits there.

In October 2004 he and his wife, Cathy, moved to Bigfork. He started his own consulting business, Ascent Strategic Development, with a personalized twist.

"In my mind, a consultant comes in with answers and a way of doing things. I do play that role where appropriate," he explained.

"But the reason I emphasize facilitation is people tend to buy into the answers they come up with themselves Even with all the information in the world, at some point somebody in the organization has to make the decision, at we going left or are we going right?"

In his work with the Flathead Nonprofit Development Partnership, he's really rolled up his sleeves and gotten into the thick of the community.

Lex Blood, managing director for the Sustainability Fund, formed the kernel for the partnership in 2003 by pulling in the support of Kathy Hughes, then director of continuing education at Flathead Valley Community College.

Momentum grew as more community organizations signed on, and the full-blown partnership launched in 2005 to provide education and organizational training that builds nonprofits' effectiveness. Blood still serves as executive director.

Much of Cooney's volunteer time goes to the Montana Nonprofit Association formed in 2001 to support the state's disparate nonprofit organizations. Cooney has been on the board since 2006, guiding groups who advocate for and help each other.

"A lot of times there are a lot of great causes out there, but I see [this' as an umbrella and a voice for the nonprofit sector which is so important in Montana," he said. That's where I've hitched my wagon. That's where I feel I can have the most impact."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com