The Nashville Neighborhood Alliance was created as an organization of organizations - a place where the leadership of individual neighborhood-based organizations selects a delegate that is sent to the NNA. This larger group of delegates, sent by their respective neighborhood organizations, work together like any elected body.

This is where the collection of a wide variety of interests can work to identify the broad overarching issues that most of the neighborhoods need to be addressed. Research is done, interviews with informed parties are made and the NNA deliberates on if a position is to be taken, what that position will be if needed, and create an advocacy strategy to address the matter.

That being said, we had to have a more formal list of areas within which we would be allowed to spend our time and resources - that was done in 1990.

If you have ever been a part of incorporating an organization you know that one of the most interesting and mind-numbing exercises that an organization has to do when incorporating itself, is the creation of the verbiage that represents all of the group's potential activities. This is not for the mild-hearted as it requires the input of all the incorporators which is then drafted into one sound and survivable expression of the organization's current and future activities.

So this is what the incorporators came up with for the Nashville Neighborhood Alliance, Inc.'s petition for state recognition.

"The purpose of the corporation shall be: activities including, but not limited to, preserving the quality of, and promoting the betterment and improvement of the quality of residential life in the greater metropolitan Nashville area, and assisting neighborhood groups and associations in achieving that goal; and promoting communication and coordination among and between neighborhood groups and associations within that area concerning issues affecting or relating to residential neighborhoods; and serving as a forum for discussion of such issues by and between entities including, by way of example, but not limitation, neighborhood groups or associations, area civic organizations, the metropolitan government and the development community, which activities constitute social welfare purposes within the meaning of Section 501 (e) (4) of the Internal Revenue Code."