"It's good to know where you're going and what your intentions are because it's easier to say no because you have a very deep yes." - Amanda Acosta, Executive Director, London Environmental Network
On the morning of her interview, Amanda Acosta had just come from a Pillar Nonprofit Network (Pillar) Impact Chat focused on resources for newcomers. It wasn't her sector. As executive director of London Environmental Network (LEN), she could easily have skipped it.
She went anyway. "We don't work in silos. That's not real," she says. Newcomers are part of the city LEN serves, and she left already thinking about how LEN's volunteer bank might welcome them once they're settled. "The work that we do should represent London as a whole."
For Amanda, that is what partnership looks like: showing up, listening, and looking for the places where one group's work meets another's.
"It's Only Three or Four of Us"
LEN was formed a little over 10 years ago as a voice and conduit for environmental groups in London. Today it has 43 members, from registered charities down to grassroots groups run by "very passionate people who don't have resources, but they have all the goodwill."
For those small groups, environmental problems can feel enormous. "We say, 'Well, what can my organization do?'" Amanda says. "It's only four of us or three of us."
LEN's answer is that they don't have to do it alone. With just seven staff, LEN can't take on every issue. "But I think we can facilitate a lot," she says. If five groups care about the same thing, LEN can bring them into the same room. "It's better for you all to come together and to divide the load rather than individually trying to address everything."
Along the way, LEN shares what it has, from workshops and a volunteer bank to a lending library where a group can borrow a pop-up tent for a community fair.
Choosing the Deep Yes
Amanda joined LEN a year ago, after a period of transition. The board waited for new leadership before starting its strategic plan, and now that plan is complete. It makes one clear commitment: bringing people back together.
"With COVID, we kind of all dissociated a little bit," Amanda says. Over the next five years, LEN will focus on relationship building, community building, and becoming visible to people who don't yet know it exists. That means more than an annual survey. "If you don't have a conscious meeting where you're in the room in the same place, you get a lot of the same answers."
It's easy for organizations to drift, she says, "because you get program specific, or you start looking at fundraising." Choosing the core took self-reflection from the whole organization. A friend's advice about a "very deep yes" now guides it.
Where One Network Hands Off to Another
LEN and Pillar work at different scales, but they pass groups to each other naturally. LEN helps grassroots members with the basics: bylaws, board meetings, first steps in fundraising. When a group is ready for more structure, LEN sends it to Pillar's training and resources, which some LEN board members have also taken. "We're very similar in the membership portion," Amanda says, "but I think the scale that you all work at is much larger."
The connection runs deep. Pillar provided LEN's early board training, LEN's past leaders joined Pillar's ED/CEO Support Network, and LEN once worked out of Innovation Works. When Amanda started in her role, a Pillar event was her first step into London's nonprofit community. "It's been a great base for me to learn."
Pillar also watches the bigger picture so smaller groups can focus. LEN staff recall a letter-writing campaign on changing nonprofit legislation that they might otherwise have found out about very late. Grassroots groups, Amanda notes, "might never know" about changes like that until they're affected. "If someone that you trust is keeping that in mind, you can kind of go, okay, I'll focus on my focus."
Looking ahead, she sees the next conversations with Pillar already forming, including succession planning, a need she's heard about again and again from members.
Islands Don't Get Work Done
Amanda's message to the sector starts with appreciation. Nonprofit workers go way above and beyond, often with tiny teams and friends and family pulled in to help. "There's huge value in that," she says, "but it's also exhausting." Pillar, she adds, needs to hear it's appreciated too.
She believes the next few years will be difficult, with economic uncertainty and strained relationships beyond our borders. Becoming "little islands," she says, hasn't helped anyone. Real progress requires trust and partnership.
"Passion is great, but you need to hone it and you need to move towards your impact," she says. "There's a great need for community... a great need for LENs and Pillars in the next few years."
Learn more about London Environmental Network: https://www.londonenvironment.net/