August 15, 2016 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Updated August 15, 5:35 p.m.
In his first visible significant move as chief executive of Independent Sector, Dan Cardinali has named Victor Reinoso to serve as the organization’s chief operating officer.
Mr. Reinoso will support Independent Sector’s “new vision” of using technology to better collaborate with members to contribute to the “common good,” according to the organization’s announcement. That emphasis on technology and collaboration square with descriptions of Mr. Cardinali by nonprofit leaders when he was named chief executive of Independent Sector in February and hint at Mr. Cardinali’s priorities as chief executive.
Technology is not a “silver bullet to change,” Mr. Reinoso cautioned in an interview Monday. But he does believe that analyzing data can help build “efficiency in the use of the resources that organizations have at their disposal” and that technology can help nonprofits share data-driven solutions.
Founded in 1980, the Washington-based nonprofit-advocacy group has more than 500 member organizations and convenes an annual nonprofit conference that is one of the nonprofit world’s biggest.
Diverse Experience
The son of Peruvian immigrants, Mr. Reinoso said he took the job because of the opportunity it offers to have “broad-scale national impact.” He brings to the role experience working in education in the public, private, and nonprofit spheres. He founded Hopscotch Ventures, which invests in education technology start-ups, and is a senior adviser at Bellwether Education Partners, an education consulting nonprofit.
Previously, he served as the deputy mayor for education for Washington, D.C., and was elected to the D.C. Board of Education. Mr. Reinoso also has worked as entrepreneur-in-residence at the NewSchools Venture Fund and co-founded Decision Science Labs, an education-technology company that creates budgeting software for schools.
“The vitality of communities is dependent on all sectors working at full potential. That’s more attainable when they work together rather than in silos,” he said.
Race and a Changing Economy
Mr. Cardinali and Mr. Reinoso have their work cut out for them, according to some. As she prepared to leave Independent Sector to take the top job at Feeding America, Diana Aviv, Mr. Cardinali’s predecessor, said that nonprofits need to adapt more rapidly to the demographic and technological shifts spanning the country.
“Those organizations that lean in and change are the ones that will make it and succeed, and those that don’t will find themselves on the ash heap of history,” she told The Chronicle in an interview. “We have no choice but to jump on those winds of change.”
Mr. Cardinali’s his three priorities for Independent Sector: using technology to help build communities, working with policy makers, and strengthening the nonprofit world according to the recommendations derived from an organization report called “Threads.”
So far he says he’s been “overwhelmed at the extraordinary work going on” in the nonprofit world, but he also feels nonprofits must answer the “clarion call” to deal with issues of race, class, and the changing economy.
Traditionally we’ve been healers, and there’s a real need for us to step up into that role,” he said.
