NeighborWorks® America and the National NeighborWorks Association presented four awards this month during the NeighborWorks Executive Symposium.
The symposium’s theme, Collective Leadership: Building Strength for Today & Tomorrow, was evident in each recipient.
NeighborWorks presented its 2026 NeighborWorks Founders Award to Marcia Erickson, co-CEO of GROW South Dakota. Erickson expanded the organization she has been devoted to for more than 35 years both in funding and in geographic scope. Her goal, she said, is to ensure future generations of South Dakotans are able to access the same quality, rural life she grew up with.
“I am so honored to receive the 2026 NeighborWorks Founders Award,” Erickson said during an awards dinner in Washington,
D.C. She turned the spotlight on her organization, which centers on community, housing and economic development. “I’ve had the privilege to work alongside colleagues, partners, board members and community members who believe where you live should not limit what you can achieve,” she said. “I have been surrounded by people who show up every day and have a passion for helping others.”
The work isn’t always easy, but it is rewarding, Erickson said. She expressed gratitude to her team and board of directors – along with the board members in the room. “You’re what makes our organizations stronger and more impactful.” The event brought together executive directors and – in person for the first time – board members.
Erickson accepted the award with a commitment to keep pushing forward. “There’s so much more work to be done and so many more opportunities to create,” she said.
Chelsie Evans received the award for emerging leader. Evans serves as CEO for Hawaiian Community Assets, one of the newer NeighborWorks affiliates, but she is already making a huge impact. The organization builds the capacity of low- and moderate-income communities to achieve and sustain economic self-sufficiency with a particular focus on Native Hawaiians. She acknowledged her grandmother as she accepted the award.
Her grandmother, Evans said, lived on a small island, and one of the bedrooms in her home was always filled with food. “It was a small house,” she said. “And I just thought that’s where her food pantry was.” But over the summer, people would knock on the door, and she would offer them food from her pantry. “It wasn’t until I was in high school that I realized my grandma was running a food bank out of her house, not funded, not organized, but because that’s what her community needed. And that was my first moment of understanding what a leader was.”
Leadership, she explained, is not about money or title; it’s about understanding what your community needs.
She also acknowledged other leaders who have inspired her, including her board chairman, leaders at Hawaii Homeownership Center, and her ancestors. “I’m constantly faced with the conversation of what it’s like to be a native Hawaiian, searching for a home to stay in on land that was your family’s to begin with,” she said. “It is only in the spirit of my ancestors who have worked so hard to care for that land that we’re able to step up and have these difficult conversations,” she said. “And I’m so grateful for them, every day, and their hard work.
NeighborWorks Housing Services of Baltimore received this year’s impact award from the NeighborWorks Network Association. The award is presented to…
Dan Ellis, executive director of NHS of Baltimore, accepted the award on behalf of the organization, which works to provide affordable homes and remove barriers to homeownership. 
“It truly takes a network to learn how to learn how to do things well, and you have all shared very graciously with us,” he said.
He told the story of walking through a long-neglected neighborhood in West Baltimore, where NHS had purchased a row home to rebuild. He spotted a man carrying groceries to his mother, who lived in an adjacent home. “If your house is attached to one that’s under construction, it is loud,” Ellis told the audience. “There are hammers hammering on your walls, the plaster can crack.” He apologized to the man for the inconvenience.
“If you have any issues, call us,” he said.
The man paused. “He said, ‘I grew up in this house. And nobody has ever made noise in this neighborhood. Keep making noise.’”
That noise, Ellis said, “is what each of you brings to neighborhoods around the country. We’re making noise where nobody’s ever made noise. Where bringing investment where it has never been made. Without us, it would be silent. Together, we’re making great noise.”
Mark Dahlquist, past executive director of NeighborWorks Pocatello, received the Richard H. Stallings Lifetime Achievement Award. Dahlquist left the helm of the Idaho organization when he became Pocatello’s 51st mayor. He took the role after a life in community service, dedicated to Pocatello residence.
Dahlquist started at the NeighborWorks organization when it was barely making payroll, but within a few years of his tenure, he was able to bring the organization to an exemplary rating.
He thanked colleagues and family members who had supported him his whole career. He said that Stallings, a congressman who
had also served as executive director of the NeighborWorks organization, had told him some of the skills he’d need as a leader of the nonprofit.
He also expressed gratitude to his father, “for showing e what integrity looked like and what persistence meant.” He needed that persistence in his job, he said, taking the programs from a state of disarray to a state of excellence. “I remember making a spreadsheet of all of the challenges that were there and the improvements that were needed,” he said. “And we just plucked away and plucked away.”
The NeighborWorks network is really valuable. “You’re learning to speak on your feet, to fundraise, to take care of personnel programs” and more, he said. His role in his NeighborWorks organization prepared him for the role of mayor, he said. “My peers, I’m grateful to all of you. We’re going through tough times right now, but you will persevere; you
This year, about 220 network leaders and 120 board members joined in the NeighborWorks Executive Symposium, which was held in Washington, D.C.
