BoardSource created the Stand for Your Mission Awards to recognize nonprofit boards that have established advocacy as an expectation for engaged and effective board leadership, and, by doing so, are helping their organizations realize their missions.

The winner of the 2018 award will receive $5,000 to support its advocacy efforts and will be announced in late March 2018. Today, we are excited to announce the ten finalists for the award. We encourage you to read their stories below to learn more about how advocacy accelerated their efforts to achieve their missions, and join us in congratulating them for their success. Here a few of the finalist organizations and what they do:

ArtsFund, Seattle, WA
While advocacy has always been a pillar of its mission, ArtsFund was spurred to action in 2015 when the Washington State Legislature passed a bill allowing cities and counties to levy a tax in support of access to nonprofit arts, science, and heritage organizations. ArtsFund supported the bill’s passage for nearly a decade, and with its long-awaited approval came the opportunity to substantially increase funding for cultural organizations in its county should voters approve it by ballot initiative.

Abode Communities, Los Angeles, CA
The housing affordability crisis is very real in Los Angeles County, as the need for affordable housing has outpaced the production of new affordable homes for more than a decade. By 2012, there was a shortfall of almost 500,000 homes available to the county’s very low- and extremely low-income households. That is when Abode Communities, a nonprofit focused on affordable housing, decided it must commit more of its resources to policy and advocacy efforts to increase awareness of and bring much needed resources to the work of producing and preserving housing for low-income Angelinos.

Read about the rest of the finalists of the Stand For Your Mission awards at BoardSource.