Former Trustee Guides Community Foundation's National Certification

Lindsay West, the founding president of the Community Foundation of the New River Valley (CFNRV), received flowers and accolades from the board for guiding the foundation through the Council on Foundations National Standards certification process. West, a member of the CFNV's Council of Former Directors, engaged board members, staff, and university interns in the rigorous process of documenting compliance with national standards for U. S. community foundations. The review process required the Community Foundation to demonstrate compliance with standards in policy, operation, procedures, organization and systems management. Fewer than a third of American community foundations have passed the National Standards process.

Top, board members toast Lindsay with sparkling cider during the monthly October meeting of the trustees.

Bottom, Lindsay with board colleagues and foundation staff.

Appreciation v. Launching an Endeavor

For the Global Gathering, Elisa and Kabir introduced the insight that we are here committing to a long-term process, not just planning an event. What we are about is cultivating an environment of appreciation for the quality of life we have experienced with the people convening in the global gathering. We are not launching something, not planning an event. Dana observed that we are engaging in practices and ways of being. How, he asked, does something come into being? Our usual experiences, he said, are in pulling together things not well formulated; and, then, learning from that. In the global gathering, we are invited to allow the wisdom that resides within to emerge, to practice wisdom. To let the dream dream us.

Top, Kabir Kadre, l. and Elisa Sabatini, r.
Above, a session at the February 2007 intensive of the Generating Transformation Change in Human Systems course. Dana Carman is at right. Geoff Fitch is at left.

Dancing Across Borders at the Floyd Country Store

At the Floyd Country Story, in Floyd, Virginia,the community comes to dance, to play music in the street outside the store, to watch and to hang out. Six-year olds dance with old grand dads, college students, high school kids, me, you name em they are there. Some folks drive four hours every Friday to be there from Richmond, from Greensboro, from Washington DC. It's the most amazing gathering, a couple of miles off the Blue Ridge Parkway, in this tiny mountain town tucked away, a haven for community spirit. When I'm there, I do so by crossing the borders of my preconceptions, my biases, my inclinations and druthers and know betters, cross over into the magic of a community that likes and enjoys itself for what it is, that invites all to come on in the house and just dance.

Preparing for the Global Gathering

The US-Mexico border runs into the sea at San Diego-Tijuana. The Global Gathering seeks to bridge the worlds of iron fences and deadly competition by convening some of the most able global leaders of social change. Together how might they advance a shared vision of global change informed by local vision and experience? These men and women come from experiences and communities that span continents and cultures, from Mexico to Bangladesh, from Costa Rica to the American Appalachians, from Guatemala to India, Sri Lanka to Ethiopia. In the next several months, a small core group of colleagues from business, nonprofit, government and university sectors will begin shaping this historic gathering that will convene in the San Diego-Tijuana metroplex. Stay tuned.

Preliminary information available: Global Gathering Enrollment

Current conversants: Dana Carman, Kabir Kadre, Andy Morikawa, Elisa Sabatini,

Mission Statement of Trustees Without Borders

The mission of Trustees Without Borders: To serve the advancement of an international network of nonprofit leaders as global trustees. To do so by developing, enacting and sharing information, practices, and approaches that free and enable trustee bodies to engage fully as leadership communities entrusted with the well-being of the earth.

At right above: Rebekah Carswell presents "Communication, Conflict Resolution, and Community Building" to the Third Thursday Society, an informal association that meets monthly, a gathering of nonprofit sector leaders, staff and trustees, to share, learn, and promote civil sector capacity in Virginia's New River Valley. The group is self-organizing. It has no officers nor by laws.

Christiansburg Institute: A Vision of Community

Standing empty now, the last buildings awaiting renovation on what remains of the expansive land holdings and farmlands that once were the proud home of Christiansburg Institute. CI was the center of a vibrant African American community that flourished for decades. Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver knew Christiansburg Institute. Today, the trustees of Christiansburg Institute, Inc. have undertaken to build a state of the art vocational training center here, renovating the Edgar A. Long Building and constructing new facilities. Committed leadership is about creating a community place to gather, to teach, to learn, to share a sense of proud unity to enable the entire community, a community waiting for this message of hope and reconcilation.

Transatlantic Trustees: Peer Exchange April 2007

Andy Beeforth of the U.K. Cumbria Community Foundation presents to colleagues from the Transatlantic Community Foundation Network (TCFN). This peer exchange, funded by the Bertelsmann Foundation, was held at Mountain Lake Hotel, Pembroke VA. The Community Foundation of the New River Valley and the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy & Governance co-hosted the event. Foundation trustees and executives from England, Scotland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the US explored governance as community leadership. Participants identified practices, policies, and next steps to enhance trustee effectiveness.

On Trustee Accountability

The Blue Ridge rises through the Jefferson National Forest. This weekend our family celebrated Fall by spending several hours walking forest trails, being together in nature, taking time to be old and young, parents and children, grandchildren and cousins together, three generations. Our family grew closer and stronger for the few hours we spent as family in this forest land: a miracle of place. This is public land, national forest. As citizens, we are its trustees. As trustees, what are we accountable for? What is our responsibility? Susan said, "We show our accountability by using the forest lands, by walking the trails. We make the land valuable by spending time in it appreciatively, joyfully." Khalil Gibran said, “And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” Today we were responsible trustees.

Community Group Shares Its Story

The Community Group formed to engage African Americans in Montgomery County, Virginia in their own history and culture. Only if we engage together, they said, will we be able to contribute fully. Only if we know our own story fully will we be able to make sure the wider community values and respects African Americans for the great legacy that we are.

The group, this day in August, met at historic Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church to reflect on the state of Black America. The group invites African Americans to convene like this regularly to develop and deepen a shared understanding of Black culture and history.

The Community Group has started its own philanthropy, the New Mountain Climbers Endowment. The fund has made grants to support African American community work such as child tutorial programs and a captial campaign for Christiansburg Institute which was established in 1866 by the Federal Freedmen's Bureau (The Quakers) to bring education to previously enslaved African Americans.

The New Mountain Climbers is one of nearly a dozen African American philanthropies forming a network of community- based, grassroots change organizations. Through support from the Ford Foundation, The Community Investment Network and Hindsight Consulting this pioneering group is linked to colleague organizations from Louisiana to Maryland. It is the first black philanthropy in southwest Virginia.

GTC Cohort and Community Nonprofits Work Together

The Generating Transformational Change in Human Systems (GTC) course includes engaging with local nonprofits to serve their undertaking of system change and development. GTC cohort members organized as support teams. These teams undertook to help the local NGO trustees assess their current situations. The teams, through their engagement process, provided a rich environment supportive of self-discovery for the NGO trustees to determine how they would undertake their own change process. On May 31, 2007 the GTC cohorts and NGO trustees completed their engagement. We learned that lasting change comes from the inside, from a deep desire to achieve a vision that is about changing the world and creating a positive future.

Office Planning Center

Home office with storyboard on wall to right. The "board" is actually a piece of ripstop nylon 72" L x 58" W. The surface of the storyboard is a sprayed coating of 3M™ Photo Mount™ Spray Adhesive. The cards are 4" x 6" index cards that adhere to the sticky surface and can be removed, re-positioned and rearranged easily. Since the cards themselves are not sprayed with the adhesive, the bond to the sticky sheet is temporary. I learned storyboarding from Jim Norman in Phoenix AZ. I learned about sticky sheets from Holly Lesko and Lesley Howard , two very capable facilitator-leaders from Blacksburg VA. The sticky sheet is sort of like a great big Post-it® Note placed sticky side out on a wall. Paper, cards, photos, pictures flipchart pages all easily stick to the surface and are as easily removed. I use mine in this installation to do planning for projects, events, and presentations.

Special Note: when spraying the adhesive onto the nylon, I always do it outdoors. Before using the product, read the precautionary information. The 3M™ Photo Mount™ Spray Adhesive needs to be resprayed occasionally to keep the surface tacky. Be sure to do the respraying outdoors. This may be inconvenient. You'll not regret taking this precaution. Update: I re-sprayed my sticky sheet this morning. Took it outside, laid it on the deck, sprayed it, let the nylon sheet sit for the 10 minute flash time, then re-mounted it on the wall. Even still, I can smell the adhesive in my office. Technical Note: this product is not considered a repositionable adhesive. Probably, the residual tack of the dried adhesive allows us to "stick" the cards to the nylon. All that aside, it works.

Knowing Ourselves: Nonprofits as Integrated Wholes

The storyboard in the photo provides a perspective that might be useful as we think about nonprofit organizations. Selected attributes or characteristics appear in a quadrant format. The four quadrants in the table are each a different dimension or aspect of a nonprofit. This presentation uses the Community Foundation of the New River Valley as an example. The overview provides a way to talk about an organization as an integrated whole. The model derives from the work of Ken Wilber that I learned from the Generating Transformational Change in Human Systems (GTC) course taught by Pacific Integral, a Seattle-based consulting and systems development organization.

Purpose Statement of Trustees Without Borders

The purpose of Trustees Without Borders is to promote understanding and shared purpose among NGO nonprofit trustees (individuals and governing bodies) serving across borders of place and race and class, an international network of community-based organizations "intent on changing the world and creating a positive future." (from "Using Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale" by Margaret Wheatley and Debora Frieze, Copyright 2006.)

Above: The Distribution Committee of the Community Foundation of the New River Valley (CFNRV) engaged in its collaborative grant making process. The CFNRV Board has learned that governance is a leadership of trusted relationships formed through active engagement and participation.