Ask affordable housing and community development professionals: How has NeighborWorks America impacted them? You’ll hear a variety of answers — from grants that made programs possible to technical assistance to helping residents share their voice.
One answer that comes up again and again? NeighborWorks taught me how to do my job better.
“What we do at NeighborWorks Training is not just to impart knowledge, but also to equip you with practical strategies and opportunities for peer-learning, ensuring you can directly apply what you learn to real-world situations,” explained Hui Min, vice president of Training.
When NeighborWorks was founded 45 years ago, the national nonprofit’s model itself was a means for teaching others how to set up a board of directors, how to engage residents and how to work alongside communities to overcome barriers and promote change. But in the decades since, NeighborWorks has developed an even more robust training program that now includes a broad catalog of courses online, in communities, and especially at the premiere NeighborWorks Training Institutes hosted in cities across the country twice each year.
NeighborWorks training and professional development – on everything from using tax credits to trauma-informed design to housing counseling – allows community-serving professionals, in housing, community development and other nonprofit organizations, to learn from expert faculty and from each other. Today, NeighborWorks offers more than 100 online courses and 250 live courses that help with not just skills and strategies but building capacity. The ripple effect of the people who take those courses can be felt country wide.
NeighborWorks Training Institutes inspire change
At any NeighborWorks Training Institute, you can walk down any hallway and hear people sharing, learning and innovating. At the institute held this past August in Pittsburgh, where NeighborWorks America has its roots, a climate boot camp in one room showed nonprofits how to navigate the funding available through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Downstairs and down the hall, the focus was on untangling heirs’ property. In a third classroom, students learned how to better partner with Native organizations in their regions. Everywhere, people traded business cards, handshakes and hugs.
“I feel so lucky,” said NeighborWorks Toledo’s Lily Roth, who was in Pittsburgh for her first institute. “Just for the chance to be here. I hope to bring back a lot I can use in community building and engagement.” Hearing from staff in other organizations was key for her, she said, because everyone was working hard and had the same community – and emotional – stakes. Their goals were the same, she said: “comprehensive efforts to inspire change.”
Meanwhile, Leslie Ann Stafford from Madison Park Development Corp., has been to 14 NeighborWorks trainings in the past seven or eight years. “I keep coming back,” she said. “Because of NeighborWorks, I’m able to build a larger community within the community.”
Chanda Richardson of TN Development Corp. was attending her third NTI. Her goal was to get the training she needed to bring her to the next level. “I will become a certified housing counselor,” she declared. NeighborWorks has a strong record of helping counselors pass the rigorous HUD housing counselor certification exam. Overall, 1,505 people reported certification as a housing counselor through NeighborWorks courses. In the last fiscal year, 41% of participants who took courses at the NTI and the Virtual Training Institute reported receiving a certification as a direct result of NeighborWorks training.
By training the current – and next – generation of housing professionals, NeighborWorks is equipping individuals with the skills they need to strengthen their communities.
A history of education
NeighborWorks held its first training institute in 1987 – sort of a mobile university. “We responded to what people needed,” explained Amy Grayson, senior director of curriculum and training. “We continually work to respond and focus on what community development practitioners need to serve their communities.
“Over the years, our organizations have increased the number of services they’re able to provide and
we’ve increased what we offer, too,” Grayson added. “They need to know a lot more. They need to have the ability to pivot quickly as market conditions change and the environment changes.”
In NeighborWorks training, that means creating new courses that reflect the changes. In response to the wave of resignations that followed the COVID-19 outbreak, for instance, NeighborWorks developed a course on staff retention. As NeighborWorks expanded its Native strategy, faculty offered a course on establishing Native partnerships.
“We need to make sure we’re keeping our ears to the ground and looking ahead about what is needed, what will help people do their jobs better,” Grayson said. “That’s our goal.” The innovations that arise from the work of NeighborWorks network organizations often informs the content of courses – amplifying the best community work across the U.S.
Another goal? “We want to make it easy,” said Grayson. The division has expanded online learning offerings and regularly makes more courses available online, to help people learn conveniently from their home or office.
The biggest change, she said, is that the breadth of what people need to know has increased. “Our organizations have become really sophisticated and very nimble in meeting the needs of their communities. We have to be nimble, too, to support them.”
Peg Barringer, one of NeighborWorks’ longest serving faculty members, has taught classes for the organization since the mid-1980s, starting with classes that were just for executive directors, and then expanding to the network and the field.
“It keeps me on my toes,” she’s said of teaching. “I like connecting to students who are working on the front lines of economic development issues in their communities.”
When people working in the field have professional experience and knowledge, said Grayson, it helps pave the way for not only better work, but better partnerships. And it gives the staff the tools to bring back to their communities, where the learning continues.
During fiscal year 2024, Training credentialed more than 14,500 professional learning engagements resulting from more than 17,500 enrollments from approximately 1,350 organizations both in the network and in the field. Primary areas for learning include homeownership creation, preservation and lending; financial capability and financial education, rental homeownership real estate development and preservation, and many, many more. There are also courses just for resident leaders, who enhance their own leadership skills and take them back to their communities.
What’s next?
“Our 45th anniversary is a great time to reflect on what we’ve done but even more importantly, to look to the future,” said Doug Sessions, senior vice president of Training. Along with reviewing and updating all its courses and adding new ones, the organization is making sure each course will be available in different formats, so that learners can choose which way they prefer to learn, be it in person or remote. “Converting virtually every course in NeighborWorks expansive catalog to be available both online as well as in person is one way we are ‘futureproofing’ the provision of professional learning,” Sessions said. “When it is all said and done, our greatest ambition is to advance the profession of community development and affordable housing in America. Our goal is to be the premier provider of professional learning for the county’s community-serving professionals”
NeighborWorks also provides training for executive-level leaders in conjunction with Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Known as the NeighborWorks Achieving Excellence Program, the training supports executive-level leaders through curriculum, coaching and peer exchange, allowing leaders to focus on goals unique to their organizations – and themselves. The challenge-based model of Achieving Excellence also forms the basis of two staff development offerings, Communities of Excellence, supporting peer groups of staff across organizations in a local area, and Culture of Excellence, supporting a staff team within a single organization.
As a whole, Sessions said, Training is making a lot of changes. “If you haven't been to NeighborWorks training lately, you haven't been to NeighborWorks training,” he said. “Come back and experience what's new."
NeighborWorks is accepting applications for the next round of Achieving Excellence. The next NTI will be held in Philadelphia in February. Learn more about NeighborWorks training opportunities.
