Blog

Building a Truly Authentic City

By Kelly Nichols | | 0 Comments

I am participating in the 2016 Leadership Austin Essentials class (#bestclassever!) and recently contributed a blog post about our first class day. I thought it would be relevant to share here as well.   I was drawn to Austin in the late 70’s because there was no ‘landed gentry’… there was a sense you could […]

Coffee with Colleagues: Q&A with Sandy Battise

By Kelly Nichols | | 0 Comments

One of WNA’s business goals is to create opportunities and platforms to connect with other skilled professionals through formal and informal partnerships. What’s really fun about this is that we get to connect with other like-minded professionals whose work aligns with our vision to create, grow and sustain initiatives that result in positive social outcomes. […]

Why Strategic Planning is Especially Important When You’re Swimming Upstream

By Kate Moore | | 0 Comments

We recently completed a Needs Assessment for the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department Community Services Block Grant Program. The report highlights what many social sector leaders in the region are experiencing first-hand:

Don’t Leaf for Summer Vacation Without Making Plans for the Fall!

By Andrea Torres | | 0 Comments

With the summer heat starting to bear down on us, it is hard to remember what it was like to put on a sweater or turn on the heater. But before we know it, fall will be here with its cooler temperatures and falling leaves. For many organizations and collaborations, fall means the beginning of […]

Meet our New Team Members (and a Love Letter to Bennu Coffee)

By Kelly Nichols | | 0 Comments

Here at WNA, we like coffee. We spend a significant amount of time at Austin coffee shops (our favorite is Bennu on E. MLK). In fact, if you’re reading this in Central Texas, it’s likely that you’ve had coffee with us at one time or another. Coffee fuels our work. Bennu also serves as a […]

What's a Backbone, Anyway?

By Kelly Nichols | | 0 Comments

I attended the Collective Impact Forum‘s Champions for Change workshop last month, and it got me thinking about how we structure collaborative social sector initiatives, especially here in Texas. Wait, buzzword alert. Surely you’ve heard this term, collective impact, right? Everyone’s throwing it around lately. John Kania and Mark Kramer with FSG wrote a landmark […]

The Zen of Creating a Common Agenda

By Kelly Nichols | | 0 Comments

We recently concluded a 9-month community planning process focusing on children’s mental health in Travis County in partnership with Austin Travis County Integral Care. It was quite a journey and truly a collective impact effort, and my hope is that it will serve as a case study for future community planning initiatives. Like the search […]

Happy Birthday to Us… But the Gifts are For You!

By Kelly Nichols | | 0 Comments

It’s been one year since Woollard Nichols & Associates officially launched, and we’ve been reflecting on the work that we’ve done over the last year. It was a great year – we supported almost twenty clients including coalitions and collaborations, membership associations, non-profit organizations, city departments and divisions of school districts. We facilitated community planning […]

Reflections on a Grant Rejection Letter

By Kelly Nichols | | 0 Comments

A while back, I got an email informing me that we didn’t get a grant that I had convened a team of consultants to apply for. A dozen lines in response to an application that required well over 100 combined hours of unpaid work to submit – no question that it was a downer to […]

Sometimes it's Just about Sitting Down to Talk

By Lily Wein | | 0 Comments

We are supporting an effort led by Austin-Travis County Integral Care to coordinate community mental health services for children and create a community plan to improve the mental health of youth throughout the county. As part of this, we participated in planning and facilitating the Austin Community Conversation on Teen and Young Adult Mental Health […]