Engaging and Equipping Our Partners Through Education

The North Texas Food Bank completes its inaugural Network Engagement Services Cohort.

The inaugural Network Engagement Services Cohort kicked off in May 2023 and closed with its final in-person session in October. This new opportunity was available to select North Texas Food Bank agency partners that have plans to grow or expand their reach in the next one to five years.

As part of the cohort, leaders, board members and development staff (if they have any) from eight partners engaged in an intensive six-month program focused on strategic development planning. These organizations had robust objectives, including some with a need for expansion. Through collaboration, participants gained valuable insights into setting long-term strategic goals, crafting a second mission statement, donor segmentation, and other essential aspects of nonprofit management, all while maintaining stability and organization throughout.

Participating organizations included Community Lifeline Center, the MINT Foundation, Miles of Freedom, Irving Cares, Frisco Family Services, Manna House, Hunt County Shared Ministries and Masterkey Ministries.

In our final session, participants were provided a template to consolidate their work thus far and utilize their knowledge gained to create a strategic plan.

Partners told us there was a lot of information shared that was helpful to their future planning and fundraising. Some organizations went through the cohort with no development staff and little knowledge of fundraising and have goals of conducting a large campaign in the next few years. The classes gave them the opportunity to learn what is crucial for their organization to survive and continue growing so they can serve more neighbors in the future.

“It has already become a very vital component of my planning this year,” commented one participant. “I needed this structure to bring clarity to our direction.”

Said another participant, “This was a great process. It wasn’t ambiguous. The information learned, if applied, can help move the needle in helping our organizations to raise more money to support our missions.”

Partners will continue to develop their plans over time and have already put into practice many of the new strategies they learned during the cohort.

“We have implemented a few strategies – including creating donor portfolios with our executive director and director of development,” said one participant. “It has allowed us to focus on our development strategies, which has been critical to us continuing to grow our fundraising capacity.”

As part of NTFB’s Year of Sustainability, the cohort also provided crucial resources and support to our network through fundraising education and significant planning efforts.

NTFB staff will evaluate the data following this cohort in hopes that we can offer this annually to additional agency partners in an effort to foster sustainability and growth, all while creating partnerships, and furthering our reach across our service area.

Kennedy Bower is the Network Engagement Services Manager for the North Texas Food Bank.

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