Community Development Professionals helps nonprofits organize community projects and secure funding for those projects.
CDP has served nonprofits located in 23 different states, the majority of CDP’s efforts are felt in southwest Ohio. In 2010, CDP opened the Center for Community Revitalization converting the former Hamilton City school board building on Dayton Street into an incubator and training center for local nonprofits.
CDP’s annual nonprofit development conference is in October and the Journal-News will be writing about some of the nonprofits the agency deals with leading up to that conference in order to bring some attention to the nonprofit sector and the impact they make in communities in Butler County.
Since 2003, Community Development Professionals has been impacting the community. The impact often is subtle – not always the big, visible project, although there are some of those; most of CDP’s work is below the radar, in ways that matter but aren’t always noticeable.
CDP helps nonprofits organize community projects and secure funding for those projects. The organization has served nonprofits located in 23 different states, but the majority of its efforts are felt in southwest Ohio
Its mission is to partner with organizations to grow and nurture viable communities. The organization gets that done by using an outline of four priorities – the top priority being nonprofit organizational development.
“When you look at a community,” explains Mindy Muller, CDP’s president and chief executive officer, “there is a direct correlation between the health of that community and the health of its nonprofit sector. If we want to make our communities better places to live, work and raise our families, we have to strengthen the nonprofit sector in our communities.”
She doesn’t hesitate to let anyone know that nonprofits impact communities in many ways – from serving the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter to providing youth programming, senior services, education and other ways that add to the quality of life.
From its inception, CDP has been providing training, coaching and consulting services to nonprofits to help them get organized and get funded, which happens to be the organization’s signature tag-line.
In 2010, CDP opened the Center for Community Revitalization converting the former Hamilton City school board building on Dayton Street into an incubator and training center for local nonprofits.
“This was a turning point for us,” says Muller. “We were able to establish roots for our company and focus nonprofit efforts on a seven-county area.”
CDP offers several trainings and events each month for nonprofits at its building. Nonprofits attending these events largely come from Montgomery, Preble, Clinton, Clermont, Hamilton, Warren and Butler counties.
Linda Kimble, of Serve City, a homeless shelter and food pantry serving the Butler County area, said several of the shelter’s employees have found success attending CDP’s training sessions.
“It’s neat to me because they don’t have a background or college degree or skills or anything like that and they can walk into one of those trainings and they walk out energized and excited about how they can help our organization and ready to talk to our board of directors about what they should be doing that they’re not,” Kimble said. “They’re incredible trainings. I’ve gone through several of them and even though I’ve got the college experience I always learn things.”
The culminating event each year for CDP is its Nonprofit Development Conference. The conference, now in its fourth year provides two days of workshops and seminars to enable professionals serving in nonprofits to learn about organizational topics such as board governance, grant writing and how to secure donors.
This year’s event, will be held on Oct. 13-14 at Pyramid Hill, and will have a theme of Commitment to Excellence. The two-day event will culminate with an awards ceremony aimed at recognizing nonprofits who have demonstrated a desire to do their work with excellence.
“Nonprofit work is rewarding but often thankless,” Muller said. “We want to give opportunity for nonprofits that go above and beyond to be recognized for their commitment to excellence.”
Anthony Fairhead, executive director of the Cincinnati-based Childhood Food Solutions, which focuses on feeding food insecure children and dealing with poverty, feels CDP provided critical support to nonprofit agencies.
“Community Development Professionals has been a true partner, and we are blessed to have them working with us to tackle food insecurity in our community’s children,” Fairhead said.
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