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CRE Success Stories
Photo credit: Cyndi Shattuck Photography

Our Team
At CRE, our staff is our greatest asset - an intellectually and culturally diverse team able to offer an array of services with a commitment to results.

"CRE's goal is to enable client organizations to build what we consider the "three-legged stool" for high-performing organizations: solid, visionary leadership, strong and efficient organizational systems, and effective programming that links strategy, planning and outcomes."

- Holly Delany Cole
CRE Deputy Director

Become a Client
"CRE has leveraged the funding they have received from the Office of Minority Health through providing technical assistance to agencies that have gone on to receive exponentially more money because they’ve used the support of CRE to improve their grant writing and fundraising activities."

- Evaluator, Office of Minority Health Project

Our Services: Case Studies: Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy

Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy

Services Provided:  Board Reorganization, Board Elections, Board Development, Established a 2-Chair Model


Our Successes:

  • Helped Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy establish board elections for the first time, conducted full board training, taught proper procedures in how to conduct board elections going forward.
  • Increased the number of board members bringing new energy and ideas
  • Recommended and aided in implementing 2-chair model to alleviate some of work load placed on original chairperson.


It’s not that there were any major problems with Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy’s board. They were a very hard-working, dedicated group that fully believed in the Brooklyn-based nonprofit’s mission; the creative, educational and vocational development of youth and families of African descent through programs in cultural awareness and performing and visual arts.
But there was no movement on the board; no new members, no new energy, few new ideas. That can be a problem.

Kwayera Archer-Cunningham, the organization’s executive director, says even though the board members readily admitted the board was in need of a shakeup, no one within the organization knew how to go about accomplishing that. So they called Community Resource Exchange (CRE).

Archer-Cunningham says that CRE’s Deputy Director Holly Delany Cole sat down with all the board members and groups and key Ifetayo executives and started to talk it out.
“What I really liked about the quality that she brought was the fact that she really listened to us and brought the best of what research there was out there and what literature was available but tailored it our specific and special needs as an organization,” Archer-Cunningham says.

What resulted, Archer-Cunningham says, was that CRE “moved us from being in a somewhat stagnant although productive level as a board to actually having movement.” This came in the form of elections, she said, which increased the size of the board by five slots so it now has 18 members, many of whom are new to the board.

In addition, CRE recommended that since the growth of Ifetayo left the previous board chairwoman inundated with work that it would be best to establish a two-chair model. And to ensure that everything was running smoothly the duel chairs meet with Archer-Cunningham at regularly, weekly meetings, as opposed to the old willy-nilly system of calling only when an emergency or problem arose.

“It has just propelled the organization forward,” says Archer-Cunningham, who founded Ifetayo 20 years ago. “It wasn’t personal it’s a policy process. We need to keep the energy flowing. It’s good for the organization and Holly was able to get everyone to buy into it.”

Not only that but in an internal assessment Archer-Cunningham conducted on Ifetayo the board members rated themselves “pretty low,” she said.

“They felt like they needed more direction,” Archer-Cunningham said of the board members’ self-assessments. “They were willing and committed but really didn’t have a sense that they knew what they should be doing.”

So Holly Delany Cole provided the board with “full board training” on their “roles and responsibilities,” touching on such issues as fundraising specifics, fiduciary responsibilities, overall organizational planning and legal responsibilities.
Archer-Cunningham says that her board was by no means naïve but had settled into a “a kind of rhythm for quite a while, “ not exactly a rut but not doing as much as they could be. And when the board finally realized it, no one knew how to change things. Luckily, she said, CRE did.

“I think this is a position that many organizations find themselves in, it’s a cycle,” she says. “And I think it was very important to have an external consultant, who was objective and comes in and hears the facts as they are. It levels the playing field for everyone.”
Now because of CRE’s help the board runs its own elections, staggering half of them every other year to avoid having the entire board up for re-election at once.

“I think that they (CRE) are extremely competent at what they do,” Archer-Cunningham says, “They’re just very competent and skillful. But before they’re skillful and competent they’re really thoughtful. It’s across the board. They know their job they really sit and listen.”

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