I hope you have been enjoying a wonderful spring – wherever in the country you might call home. It’s been beautiful here in Washington, a time to savor before the heat, haze, and humidity settle in for the summer.
If your summer plans are not yet complete (and even if they are almost complete), we hope you might consider joining ARNOVA (Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action) and Independent Sector on July 29 for our co-hosted 2019 Public Policy Symposium. The session will be happening here, at the IS office in Washington.
The aim of this year’s symposium is to bring the research and the practitioner communities together to explore what our public policy agenda for the 2020 election cycle might look like. This is the time for us to be thinking critically about policy proposals that would best strengthen the nonprofit and philanthropic communities and strategically about how to get those proposals in front of presidential and congressional candidates.
Submissions are due by June 10, 2019, and authors selected will be invited to present their policy recommendations at the July symposium. Authors will receive a limited reimbursement to cover travel to Washington in July. A full Request for Proposal, including instructions on how to apply, are available at arnova.org/2019Symposium.
We are excited by, and grateful for, this growing partnership between Independent Sector and ARNOVA. Sector organizations – and their work – are stronger when informed by the best available research. And the research community is stronger when it is informed by practitioners in the field. The symposium is designed to bring these two pieces of our community together to do that important and practical thinking.
So, when your thoughts turn toward summer plans, take a quick leap forward and think about the policy conversations you’d like to be hearing as we step into the 2020 election cycle. Then think about how you might use your voice to shape that conversation – and submit a proposal for review. We’d very much like to see you here in DC come July!
Thanks, as always, for the work you do every day to drive your mission forward. Drop me an email if you have any thoughts you’d like to share – or questions you might want us to consider.
