The Nourish Office Blog

I write to you today to notify you of my resignation from Nourish International, effective November 20^th. I will step down as Executive Director of Nourish International, to be replaced by James Dillard. Below, I will explain the reasoning for the decision (and why I’m excited about it), what’s next for me, and what this means for Nourish.

The decision was based on two primary factors. First, my greatest skill is to lend traction to ideas when they are first born. I am happiest working on new programs and initiatives, and it is where I can be most helpful. My job was to build a team and give Nourish legs. With 23 universities and more than 300 active members, this job has been done. Second, small nonprofits are dangerously prone to a trap called Founder’s Syndrome, in which a company and its founder cling to each other. A company with Founder’s Syndrome struggles to embrace new ideas, and is less able to adapt in a rapidly changing world. I am proud that our organization is bucking this trend. Bringing in new leaders brings new ideas and innovation. And we have a lot of innovating to do! In particular, Nourish requires a hefty amount of thought around long term sustainability, international projects preparation, venture profitability and student voice.

These tasks will now be passed on to the very talented James Dillard, who has worked with Nourish since January 2007, and served as Assistant Director for the past six months. I am fully confident in James’ ability to mold Nourish into the movement we dreamed of in 2005. I cannot say enough good things about him, and I encourage you to read his letter below. His vision for the organization aligns with the one we formed when we founded Nourish in 2005, and I can’t wait to see him actualize it.

As for me, I plan to stay in the field of international development, and global poverty will be something I work on for the rest of my life. All of the job opportunities I am considering have a social purpose or international focus (hopefully I can find one with both!). After working for a year or two, I expect to enter business school either in 2009 or 2010 to continue my journey as a student of social entrepreneurship, leadership and international development.

Nourish has been the most wonderful, fiercely challenging, foundation-shaking force in my life, and that was only made possible by the people who got me involved and kept me involved. That means you. Together, we have supported 14 community development projects in 11 countries, sent 86 students abroad, created a world class training institute and have inspired 23 campuses in our shared vision. The outlook from here is bright.

Through our efforts, we have the potential to capture a generation, and in so doing produce a culture shift on a scale that will produce a connected global north and south. 23 campuses is a good start, but there is great distance to travel and we’ll need your help. Read what James has to say. He’s good. Really good.

Sincerely,

Joel

This year’s Chapter Founders Selection Process is complete! When the dust settled on April 11th, 67 students from 25 colleges and universities had applied to start Nourish Chapters on their campus. After a rigorous review process, we selected 31 of them from 19 different universities to found Chapters on their campus.

These students will receive $500 in seed money, professional training at the Summer Institute and support throughout the year as they found an organization on their campus capable of investing thousands of dollars a year in sustainable, anti-poverty projects.

We couldn’t be more excited to work with these students — even our team was impressed by their individual talents, enthusiasm and passion for supporting local poverty solutions. Check out the full list of Founders by institution after the jump and keep an eye out for those names this year — we expect great things!

Note: If you’re interested in supporting a team of energetic and talented students at one of the campuses below, please send an email to info@nourishinternaitonal.org.

Keep reading…

Funding and implementing a sustainable development project is no easy task.  Motivating your peers on a college campus to do it can be even harder.  Last year, we held a Leadership Development Conference to better prepare our Chapter Leaders for the challenges that lay ahead of them.  It was fun, so this year we decided to do it again — but not before we made some changes.

This years Summer Institute, which will run August 8-12, will be a souped up version of last year’s LDC.  With more time to work with, we’ll be going into even more detail about how to run a chapter and the history of global development - not to mention, more inspirational speakers and more time to network.

To get more information about the Summer Institute go to http://www.nourishinternational.org/institute.  For more information about how you help make the institute a success, send an email to info@nourishinternational.org.