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When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, it wasn’t the federal government that rushed to New Orleans’ Ninth Ward to feed hungry survivors and bail out those trapped by the floodwaters. Eventually, they showed up, but not before a hoard of “regular Joe” volunteers stepped in—many traveling hundreds of miles from several states away to hand out food and blankets.

America was built on the backs of these unpaid fighters—like the local militia (“minutemen”) who stood up to the British army during the Revolutionary War and who took responsibility to defend their own freedom and care for the needs of their fellow citizens.

Today, America’s citizens are still the front-runners in combating America’s most stubborn problems. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there were over 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States in 2009. That same year, public charities reported $1.41 trillion in total revenues and $1.40 trillion in total expenses. Over the past 25 years, the number of civil society organizations has more than doubled, growing at twice the rate of the business sector.

With such a hefty growth rate, nonprofits are fast becoming a powerhouse in America’s sector strata. But despite its immensity, many civil society groups still have a long way to go in moving beyond big hearts to becoming powerhouses of social change. According to the Taproot Foundation, 78 percent of nonprofits do not have strategic plans, leaving them vulnerable to “mission drift” and other nonprofessional tendencies.

A unique organization—a nonprofit itself—has stepped up to the plate to help other charitable organizations become more professional and business savvy. Since 2007, the Office Depot Foundation (ODF), the charitable arm of Office Depot—in partnership with Sagamore Institute, the SCORE Foundation, and the Business and Civic Leadership Center (BCLC)—has taken an interest in helping other non-profits grow their capacity.

White House Beginnings

This interest began in 2007 when Sagamore president Jay Hein, then the director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under George W. Bush, invited ODF president Mary Wong to a the White House for a roundtable discussion on corporate social responsibility. Office Depot had recently risen as a leader in disaster response, having been the first organization to contribute $1 million to the American Red Cross for Katrina Relief as well as providing more than 200 loans to Office Depot associates in the Gulf Coast and Florida. This notable commitment caught Hein's eye.

With the help of BCLC executive director Stephen Jordan, Hein and Wong hatched a plan to host a symposium in Boca Raton, Florida (ODF’s headquarters) to “help civil society organizations become more professional and productive" and to help them follow in ODF's footsteps of excellence in service.

In December 2007, the first ever “Weekend in Boca” (WIB) drew 50 attendees. Three years later, in December 2010, the conference drew 200 nonprofit, business, and government leaders. At these gatherings, leaders attended lectures and workshops on recruiting and retaining skilled volunteers for their organizations, fostering strategic partnerships with local government and businesses, setting clear and achievable goals and measurable performance indicators, and preparing for natural disasters.

Over the past two years, Sagamore has played a key role by providing thought leadership to these significant conversations. Playing the keynote for the first two symposiums, Hein also contributed thought leadership to the effort through two white papers: "The Business of the Civil Society Sector: Taking Care of Community" published in 2008, and “Rx for Recovery: Fostering a Spirit of Partnership to Help Each Other" published in 2009.

Additionally, Sagamore has co-hosted with ODF a series of midyear "Community Conversations"--hosted in Charlotte, Indianapolis, Elkhart, and Atlanta--that have addressed issues such as sports and community revitalization, rebounding from the recession, and child homelessness. As well, in September 2009, Sagamore led a discussion at the National Press Club on collaboration between nonprofits and corporate America.

Professionally Compassionate

“When I came to the Weekend in Boca, I was at a crossroads,” said Noah Manyika, president of NeXus Urban Serve, an outreach to at-risk youth in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I had worked in the community 15 years and I was asking myself, ‘What’s the point?’ ” In 2009, 48 percent of kids in Charlotte weren’t graduating from high school. NeXus was attempting to reverse the trend, but they weren’t charting measurable successes.

“At Weekend in Boca it became clear to me that we would need to cast a vision for a comprehensive community initiative that would require a lot of resources to implement. What we needed to do was to convince people that we had a disaster—a flood, albeit a dry one—in Charlotte in order to move them to action. My board members tell me I was totally transformed after Boca Raton.”

Two years later as a result of WIB, NeXus has fundamentally changed its approach to outreach. By engaging with entire families--instead of just a teenager in a family--they started to tackle the root issues of family dysfunction that led to high school dropout.

Meanwhile, another U.S. town was struggling from a different kind of blight. Elkhart, Indiana—known as the “RV Capital of the World”—was suffering an almost 20 percent unemployment rate in the fallout from the recession. Household incomes had shrunk significantly, forcing many families to cut back on everything but pure essentials. Rod Roberson, executive director at Church Community Services, a local faith-based service provider, noticed that many families were no longer able to provide back-to-school school supplies for their children. So Roberson organized a community-wide event—Back 2 School Elkhart—for struggling families, and rallied a crew of local businesses, non-profits, and individuals to help out. That first year, 5,500 individuals benefited from the event.

That same year, Roberson attended WIB.

“The dynamics in a small city lends itself to an individual—me against the world—paradigm,” he admitted. “Weekend in Boca has a way of minimizing that whole mindset and emerges you into a connected paradigm with others who are dealing with the challenges in their local areas. It gave us a very tangible way of saying, ‘We’re not alone and what we are doing is very special.’ ”

As Back 2 School Elkhart has continued to grow over the past three years, Roberson’s collaborative partnerships and best practices have increased. Through WIB, he connected with Wong, who contributed 1,800 backpacks—through ODF’s National Backpack Program—to children who came to Back 2 School. This past year, Roberson applied the lessons he learned at WIB to better recruiting and retaining the 300 volunteers who helped out with this year’s event.

“The ability to be able to reward, acknowledge, and prioritize the needs of our volunteers was very helpful,” said Roberson. “We gleaned that from our discussions at Weekend in Boca.”

Zoe S. Erler is the director of communications for Sagamore Institute.