What does a planning council do?
The Northside Planning Council (NPC) was the first planning council to be established in Madison in 1993 as a forum for resident-led community action, and is the largest and most developed of the city’s three planning councils. In the early days, much of our work was focused on community organizing — building neighborhood associations and coordinating collective action through grassroots leadership and advocacy — and we have come back to those tools frequently over the years.
We have also added community, economic and local food systems development tools to our kit, including building community identity through the Northside News, fostering commercial district revitalization through the Northside Economic Development Coalition, incubating new businesses through FEED Kitchens and MarketReady, providing job training through the FEED Bakery Training Program and recovering hundreds of thousands of pounds of food through Healthy Food For All.
But NPC does not provide direct service to residents. We collaborate with many strong, well run organizations that have developed expertise in meeting the needs of specific demographics: under-served youth, seniors, low-income parents, and residents facing housing and food insecurity. As NPC grows and evolves, we have done our best to avoid replicating services that can be delivered more efficiently by other agencies.
Our focus instead is on capacity-building at an organizational level: neighborhood/civic group support, social enterprise incubation, cooperative business development, cross-sector coalition building, and, now more than ever, services to support our partner nonprofit organizations.
Helping make good things happen on the Northside
We help organizations serving the Northside thrive by creating efficiencies through shared resources, convening working groups around common areas of focus, facilitating the flow of information between partner organizations and residents, and building expertise, relationships and capacity for startup initiatives.
In the last few years, NPC has worked to deepen its presence and offerings as a backbone organization for the Northside. We’ve always offered fiscal agency services (inviting grassroots groups without infrastructure to use our bank account to accept mini grants), but we’ve expanded that suite to include a variety of other services: budgeting and bookkeeping; financial reporting and management; grant administration; payroll services; technology tools; insurance and liability; communications tools, including social media and the Northside News; strategic planning; board development; organizational development; leadership training; meeting facilitation; and program staffing.
Along with this menu of services, NPC facilitates and convenes collaborative initiatives among service providers and stakeholders to help our community get things done more effectively with resident participation and leadership, such as with the Safe & Thriving initiative and the Northside Early Childhood Zone.
Most importantly, we are working to grow and adapt in a way that allows us to be more agile and responsive to whatever is needed at a particular moment in time. Is there a gap to be filled in something you’re working on? Let us know —maybe we can rise to the occasion.
Just as our community ties are at risk of fraying in these times, so are the organizational ties that keep us out of our silos. Our hope is that by weaving these threads together, we can foster a community that is supportive and responsive. So that when you need help, someone is here to notice.
The more you invest in us – your local planning council – through your volunteer time, leadership and monetary donations, the more we can invest in you.
Finally, if you find this work compelling and would like to be part of furthering NPC’s mission, we would love to talk with you about leadership roles in the organization, including serving on our board of directors — just get in touch!