Getting Ready for the Foundation Retreat

Colleague friends from Ethiopia, Seattle, San Diego and New York came to the New River Valley. The team came from Pacific Integral and GTC (a systems development course created by Pacific Integral).

Seeing from the Future

Looking Inward, Looking Outward

Elements of the Work

The Community Foundation Board Works on Itself

The Community Foundation of the New River Valley convened its board, former board members and community advisors to envision and plan its next five years. The foundation spent a day in retreat with consultant colleagues reframing the conversation about serving the New River Valley community.

How Does a Board Work on Itself?

If a foundation's governance has a leadership impact on community, does it not stand to reason that a foundation board might undertake a concerted and ongoing program of development for and about itself?

What about grantees? What about boards of education? If we assess the resilience and leadership capacity of nonprofit boards, what do we find?

Some would suggest that it is in local governance, particularly as practiced in the nonprofit and civil sectors, that democracy in its truest, grassroots sense will either flourish and sustain the American experience or keep fading into the unrest of cynicism and despair that so many Americans feel about government and society today.

Are we willing to gamble that someone will respond effectively in time to climate change? Are we willing to live in hope that someone else will respond to this global change impacting us all, regardless borders, beliefs or bank accounts? Or shallwe perhaps stand fast that this too shall pass?

Above: The Community Group, an African American leadership group, regularly convenes community to educate itself about needs and emerging issues, not to teach or tell, but to listen so that the Group can better serve. The Community Group's board is all the members. The Community Group is the board. The board is the Community Group.

Expectations

If a community foundation has expectations about its grantees, about the organizations to which it gives money/makes grants, would it not be reasonable that the foundation itself meet those same expectations? And what expectations then do we have for ourselves as foundation trustees? How high do we set the bar? Recently, I learned of grantmakers who were requiring that their grantees (a) meet regularly; and, (b) fulfill quorum requuirements at least three out of four times a year.

I had two reactions to hearing about this: (1) that the governance bar was certainly set pretty low; and (2) wondered what the grantmakers' governance standards were for themselves.

Above: At one of its monthly meetings, the board of the Community Foundation of the New River Valley, does small group work to practice and deepen its understanding of enrollment and the trustees' part in development.