Thursday, 30 Jan 2003
BOISE, Idaho
Leaving the office last night, I passed under a "Welcome Volunteers" sign; Rachel (our outreach coordinator) was in the conference room training a new cadre of conservationists. From newly recruited activists to long-time board members, volunteers fuel our engines. It's a fuel we can never afford to waste.
Selkirk Mountains in the Idaho Panhandle by the Canadian border.
Photo: Jerry Pavia.
Other fuels can consume us. This week I was expecting to have plenty of mellow catch-up time and no travel; instead, I found myself reaching terminal velocity. The piles on my desk are growing and dirty mugs mark the busy days. I like a fast pace, but too much is too much. Time to slow down. I walked to work; even biking felt too fast today. There was snow within view in the mountains, but walking through Boise's North End, I saw my first spring crocus blossoms. Can't beat that.
As I approach the office, thoughts of work build like grid-locked traffic, and a yellow caution sign suddenly appears: "Board meeting in one week!" Uh oh. Board packets need to go out now. Idaho is a big state and our volunteer board comes from the Panhandle by the Canadian border on down to the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, through Sun Valley and back into Boise. Board members take considerable time from their lives to gather and help direct our rapidly evolving organization, and I owe it to them to get them good prep materials for this meeting.
They are going to get hit with a lot in this packet. We are reviewing our program plans for 2003 and setting the stage for work on a new multi-year strategic plan. This includes all our issues and our fundraising efforts to support them, as well as outreach and training. The board is about to get our first-ever attempt to capture a detailed organizational year on paper.
At first, developing the organization plan felt like creating order out of handfuls of cooked spaghetti. We do a lot of work, and a lot of the work overlaps. We also have to react, practicing environmental triage as new issues roll in. It's actually a lot easier just to react, and when we were smaller, that's most of what we did. But it is through planned work that our mission substantively advanced. Thoughtfully planning engages all the gears of the machine; reacting too often just spins one. Still, this is a lot, and capturing it all on paper was daunting. But after a lot of work, I sense order from orzo.
Grays Lake in eastern Idaho.
Photo: Jay Krajic
We work on everything from industrial dairy issues to timber sales to wilderness to endangered species to clean air to mining to -- well, you get the picture. In a few hours, Justin (our program director) and I need to make sure the whole organization plan is readable and somehow doable given the number of staff we actually have. Right now, you'd think we have a staff of 50 based on the amount of work we're trying to do. We don't, and last I checked, 2003 only has 52 weeks. We're creating new planning tools at the same time we're creating the content; neither will be perfect by the time the board gets it, but it's a big step forward and it will keep getting better.
Our organization has changed. We've grown, and in so doing, we've lost a bit of the family-like culture we once had. But we get a lot more done, and a lot more people are looking to us for leadership. Christine Letts with the Harvard Business School has written of high-performance nonprofits, and the Brainerd Foundation provided me an opportunity to talk with her about lessons we can -- and have -- learned. Training Resources for the Environmental Community has taught us a lot, and as Dyan Oldenburg says when I tell her of a challenge before me: "This is great, Rick, you have another opportunity for growth."
And I have grown. Each day, we make some progress toward taking our work to a new level. For me, this keeps the work fresh and exciting. We're just a small, grassroots-based conservation group in the Pacific Northwest. But we're working real hard to be a really good one.
I've got a meeting this morning to go over the first draft of a science-based conservation assessment created for us by Conservation Geography to help guide our work. I'll follow that with a call to the Campaign for America's Wilderness. This is a new partner of ours, and it's great to work with them. I'm both a collaborator and a board member, and I'm excited about what we are going to do together.
And I've got to get this hefty board packet out.
Comments
View as Flat