Two nationally recognized leaders in the nonprofit sector yesterday attempted to inspire a crowd of several hundred people affiliated with nonprofits in the Pittsburgh area by urging them to stay focused and committed despite current roadblocks to funding, such as a stalled state budget and a sour economy.

"We have to move beyond the idea that business and government are the only ones that make decisions and that what we do is just charity," said Robert Egger, founder of DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C., and founder of V3, an effort to educate politicians about the hefty contribution the non-profit sector makes to the U.S. economy.

Mr. Egger was one of the keynote speakers at the 2009 Nonprofit Summit, a daylong event at the Westin Convention Center Pittsburgh that was hosted by the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership and Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania.

"We won't thrive until we reject the division of dot-com and dot-org," Mr. Egger said with a nod to how nonprofits are identified on the Internet as "organizations."

"I want access to capital just like any business. I don't want to have to beg for money when I can stimulate the economy."

Mr. Egger didn't start out with a vision to run a nonprofit. "As a young man I saw the movie, 'Casablanca' and wanted to be a night club owner."

He managed clubs for a decade but after working as a volunteer with a church group to feed Washington's needy and "watching the men and women appear on steam grates" throughout the city, he founded DC Central Kitchen to teach jobless people culinary skills and to distribute donated food as balanced meals.

Majora Carter, president of her own consulting company that focuses on environmental justice -- how issues in the environment impact people as well as places -- made her mark battling city government while overseeing redevelopment projects in the South Bronx of New York City.

She advised the audience to "recognize and acknowledge everybody's self interest and be the smarter one. ... Understand they have an agenda and understand what yours is."

Ms. Carter was raised in the Bronx where she started as a volunteer in community development after earning film and fine arts degrees from Wesleyan and New York universities.

She eventually founded a nonprofit, Sustainable South Bronx, that fought efforts by New York officials to build a waste transfer station in the neighborhood.

Under her direction, the nonprofit turned urban blight into riverfront greenery and launched a work training program that focused on green jobs.

Her awareness of the problems in her own neighborhood was heightened after a walk with her dog, Xena, "who pulled me into an illegal, nasty dumping ground" near the Bronx River that she had never seen before.

After the site was revitalized into Hunts Point Riverside Park with millions of dollar raised with assistance from her nonprofit, she was married there with Xena serving as flower girl.

"The Bronx was so decidedly un-green" before Sustainable South Bronx helped transform it, she said.

Last year, she founded the for-profit Majora Carter Group, which is working on redevelopment projects in Detroit, New Orleans and a rural area of North Carolina.

During the summit, one organization and an individual were recognized for their achievements.

The Pace School, Churchill, received the Alfred W. Wishart Jr. Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management, which includes a $10,000 grant from the Forbes Funds; and Al Condeluci, chief executive of United Cerebral Palsy/Community Living and Support Services, received the Frieda Shapira Medal for nonprofit leadership, which includes a cash prize of $5,000 from the Forbes Funds and Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

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