Cargo honored with meritorious service award from ODK and invited to speak at celebration of newly named Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation at ASU

Russ Cargo, director of the Nonprofit and Civil Society Program in the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance (IPG), National Capital Region, has garnered recognition among his peers in the field of philanthropy and nonprofit leadership both through his work at Virginia Tech and his role as president of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council (NACC).

Cargo was recently awarded the Eldridge W. Roark, Jr., Meritorious Service Award at the 2008 Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK) Society, Inc., National Leadership Summit and Convention held in Atlanta. The honor recognizes his work as director of the organization’s signature leadership development program, Campus Leaders Today, Community Leaders Tomorrow (CLT2) since its inception in 2004. The CLT2 program brings together forty bright college leaders and is designed to prepare them for service as board members for nonprofit organizations. According to John D. Morgan, executive director of Omicron Delta Kappa Society, Inc., participants in the program as well as other faculty members have praised Cargo’s leadership of the program and it is his careful planning that continues to make the program so successful and popular. Cargo was initiated into ODK as a faculty member in 2006.

Cargo was also invited to speak last month, representing the 47 members of the NACC, at an event in Phoenix to announce and celebrate the landmark $5 million gift awarded by the Lodestar Foundation to Arizona State University (ASU) and the subsequent renaming of the ASU Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management to the Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation.

In his remarks, Cargo praised the Center for having “set high standards for the rest of us.” He said, “We have the most elegant system of government, businesses, and nonprofit organizations, that working together, make this country so rich with opportunity and promise for a better future…We must constantly work to ensure that all of our citizens are encouraged to actively participate in our system to guarantee checks and balances, equal representation, and participation in the pursuit of happiness. Otherwise, we risk the possibility that our democracy will unravel under the enormous pressures on our political, economic, and social sectors. And that is where research, education, community involvement and convening play such important roles. The Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation exists to support this system, by generating knowledge, educating our citizens, strengthening our voluntary organizations and associations, and promoting ethical leadership.”

Posted March 31, 2008