Community of Practice - Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership & Management

sponsored by the Center for Community-Based & Nonprofit Organizations at Austin Community College
& the Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations (TANO)

A key goal of "the Certificate Experience" is to create a Community of Practice

of all Certificate participants and session leaders through time.

Community of Practice Social Gatherings and receptions are scheduled to afford Certificate participants and special guests to network and evolve mutually beneficial relationships. Participation is voluntary but highly encouraged as the expected outcomes of these experiences are among the top priorities of "the Certificate Experience"

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Communities of practice are "groups of people who share a passion for something that they know how to do and to interact regularly to learn how to do it better." (Etienne Wenger)

"The future belongs to organizations that learned to truly unleash the creative powers of self-organizing project communities, knowledge networks, open source teams, and other new ways of work and learning, based on free associations of people who are passionate about what they do together. Communities of practice are in the center of this widening innovation movement. The challenging task of leadership is to encourage a fundamental re-organization of work so that it can be truly inspiring to people to invest their attention in it."

"Communities come in different shades and play different roles in value creation. Using the Wenger-McDermott-Snyder classification, communities can be characterized by more than one functions outlined below, but they tend to gravitate around one of the following areas of activity:

Peer-to-peer help in problem solving
Developing and verifying best practices
Upgrading and distributing knowledge in daily use
Fostering unexpected ideas and innovation"