Archive for October, 2008

I Heart Pittsburgh!

Published
by
Hildy
on October 31, 2008
in Community-Driven Tour
. 3 Comments

(Part 3: Community-Driven Tour 2008.  To read these posts from the beginning of this 2+ month tour, click here.)

I know this post will be long, so I will be breaking it up over the next several days. It is a story within a story, with other stories woven throughout. But I must share the extreme high that has been our week in Pittsburgh.

It will be hard to tell this story without first explaining why we have loved being in Pittsburgh, long before this trip. And that is the story of our relationship with Duquesne University.

Here is that story, as told by Michael Kumer, dean of Duquesne’s Masters in Community Leadership program. Years ago, when Duquesne’s School of Leadership decided to develop its Nonprofit Leadership Institute and asked Michael to head that entity, he went searching for “nonprofit wisdom.” He found Charity Channel, which is where he found me.

The story as told by Michael’s staff is that shortly after Michael’s encounters with my work the staff began referring to me as Michael’s “girlfriend,” as he was so often quoting me, reading my work aloud to them, sharing it with everyone he knew.

The story Michael told me when we finally met by phone was that my writings had “electrified” their program.

And finally, as Michael shared when he introduced me to a group of 80 community leaders last week, “If you have been curious about the different approaches we have always taken here at the NLI, the woman you are about to meet is the cause of every one of those approaches. Everything we have done at the NLI is modeled after her work.”

How does one live up to the expectations of such a long-time, devoted fan? Michael makes it easy. He is the most gracious and generous spirit I have ever encountered.

Our official work with Duquesne has evolved over time. Going on 2 years ago, we facilitated the School of Leadership staff through a Community Impact Plan, providing the strategic framework for transforming their Masters degree program in Community Leadership. Since that planning, the program is indeed different from what it looked like before we arrived, as they have begun aiming all their courses at the values and vision they articulated during that intensive week of work back in 2007. It has been fun to watch the change, down to their adoption of Community-Driven language into their course catalog!

Since that time, Dimitri and I have joined the faculty of the School of Leadership, teaching a course titled “Creating the Future of Your Community.” This is the distance learning course some of you have heard us crow about - students who included the most amazing people doing amazing work, dispersed all across the country.

Following that extraordinary experience, Michael joined the group that assembled in Tucson last June, to help us craft the Consultant Curriculum for the Community-Driven Institute. Through this confluence of working relationships, Michael has become one of our most energetic and passionate compadres in building strong programs to make visionary community change practical. Every conversation we have with Michael is enlivening, pushing the edges of what is possible.

Given all this as background, when Michael knew we were going to be journeying across the country, he invited us to spend time in Pittsburgh. And now, we are excited to see not just Michael, but the whole School of Leadership and Nonprofit Leadership Institute team, who have become our colleagues, clients, true co-conspirators in the Community-Driven journey, and best of all, friends.

It is late in the day Tuesday when we leave for Pittsburgh, directly after our workshop in Monroe, Michigan (another wonderful stop in a beautiful place with a fabulous sposor - the River Raisin Institute. Oh if only I had time to blog about everywhere we have been!!!).  It is 11pm as we are finally arriving in Pittsburgh. In just 12 hours, we will be having lunch with Michael and two of his staff - Allison Jones and Carmen Rios…

Click here for Part 2 of I Heart Pittsburgh!

Thanks to Pittsburgh Citizens for Better Libraries for the great photo of Michael in action!

Friendship, Community Engagement and the Inukshuk

Published
by
Hildy
on October 18, 2008
in Community Engagement, Community-Driven Tour and Travel Stories
. 2 Comments

Part 2: Community-Driven Tour 2008
(For Part 1, head here)
If there is anything that has stood out about this tour, it has been the spirit of connection, friendship, warmth, love that has infused every step along the way.

The line between friends and family blurred years ago for me. These days, the line between clients and friends has blurred equally. And this trip has joyfully blurred all of it.

Along the route from Tucson to our first “official” stop, we visited Jeane Vogel - friend, colleague, incredible artist. We had planned on spending a whole day just playing with Jeane, seeing St. Louis, her hometown. And after dinner the night we arrived, I got the stomach flu, rendering me useless to anything but the bathroom the whole of our “day off.”

Jeane made me soup, and brought Dimitri a supper that included local beer. She hung out in our hotel suite, and let me moan on the couch. That’s what friends do.

(On the way back to Tucson, we will stop in St. Louis and try again. I want to see Jeane’s studio. I want to be surrounded by the beauty of her work. I want time to play with my friend who always makes me find something to laugh about, even in the worst of life’s tragedies.)

In Danbury, CT, we got to spend time with my best friend from childhood, Debbie, and her husband, whom I have known since we were all 18 together. And for the first time since our kids were born (Lizzie is almost 23), Deb and I took a whole day together to just do nothing. We did some shopping. We picked apples. We drove to pretty places.

It was great to visit with her sister (and their new puppy!), and her mom and dad (who were my 2nd family when we were growing up), and Deb’s own kids. But having Debbie all to myself for a whole day - a day where we could just “be” together - was total and complete heaven.

From there, we headed into western NY, where I got to see two friends I have not seen in 22 years. Roz and Paula and I were dorm-mates when I first left home for college in Binghamton, NY. And after 22 years apart, we picked up as if nothing had happened. Spending time with real friends is like that.

We are in Canada now. This part of the tour has been a million stories in one short week.

A fabulous day in Toronto with Dimitri’s family, surrounding him with the love and language and food that brought comfort to his mourning soul. I watched him relax and simply dwell in it - watched as his aged uncle and aunts showered him with love in the language of his birth - a language I do not understand, but knew every word they said. Even in the sadness of mourning,  love is its own language.

We connected with our friend and colleague, Jane Garthson, who drove the 90 minutes from Toronto to Guelph to help out with our workshop there.

Jane registered attendees. She sat at the book table while Dimitri took care of all the other workshop details. She helped us pack up as we prepared to leave. It was a wonderful gift. But then, friendship is always a wonderful gift.

As we prepare to leave Canada for Michigan, we are in London. Our dear friend Nathan Garber helped arrange for a workshop here, and we have spent the day with Nathan and his wife, Margaret, as they showed us the London they love.

In the late afternoon, we headed to Gibbons Park, where Sunny, the sweetest dog in the world, takes Nathan and Margaret for a walk each day. They showed us the park bench that Nathan and his sister and brother dedicated to the memory of their mother. We marveled at the work of the river beavers, as Margaret lamented the loss of tree after tree after tree.

In the sun’s last light, we walked the wooded trail along the Thames, looped across the almost-done-flowering meadow of the floodplain. As night fell, we meandered back across manicured park lawns, blanketed with fallen red maple leaves. Back at their home, we shared dinner and conversation curtailed only by the late hour.

Friendship. Love. Family. Connection. What else is there?

Several years ago, a colleague (who has since become a friend) had left the business world to work at a foundation in the next phase of his life. He was facilitating a group of consultants from the Community Benefit world, and as a warm-up, asked the group to tell of their favorite client. Consultant after consultant either said, “Well, they are all favorites,” or “I guess it would be the one I’m working with now.”

Finally Jon interrupted. “Are you guys all kidding?” he asked. “I just left the world of corporate marketing, and if I loved a client every 5 years, I considered myself lucky. Do you guys really love all your clients?” And we all smiled. In the world of community work, the answer is almost always, “Yes.”

And that has been the rest of this trip. Jane Kreha from the Dorothy Johnson Center for Philanthropy in Grand Rapids, who merely had to call and ask, “Can you keynote for us?” and I was ready to change my schedule to do so, just to be able to work with Jane again.

June Renzulli, whom I will sorely miss working with at Danbury’s United Way as she ventures into the land she is tentatively calling “retirement.” For the past four years, I just need to hear June’s voice on the phone and I am smiling.

Jenny Hansell, at the Northeast Community Center in the small town of Millerton, NY, whom I have known for years from Charity Channel and have now had the opportunity to meet twice in person.

Elaine Mintz, who, along with a cast of dedicated community members, is creating in record time one of the most dynamic management support organizations we have seen - the Greater Danbury Nonprofit Resource Center.

Karen Chase from the The Brasher-Northrop Museum in tiny, picturesque Kent, CT; Dana Treacy at Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Institute for Non-Profits in Rockland County, N.Y.; Sara Anderson at the Albany Chapter of AAGP; Suzanne Smith Jablonski, at Ithaca’s Tompkins County Public Library Foundation; and Michelle Baldwin at Pillar Nonprofit Network in London, Ontario - who all spent hours on the phone with me, preparing for the sessions we did in their communities. Each of them is becoming a friend - isn’t that a great feeling? When you know just from those few encounters that friendship is beginning to happen?

And then there is Gayle Valeriote, at the Volunteer Centre of Guelph / Wellington, who instantly became a friend and then single-handedly made our trip to Canada possible. After reading my books, and after sharing our work with the Volunteer Centre’s Executive Director, Cathy Taylor, the two of them began putting wheels in motion. Gayle gathered funders from across the county to meet with us and to sponsor our visit. She called Nathan and then Michelle Baldwin in London, to be sure our reach would extend beyond Guelph. At every point where something was possible, Gayle made it happen.

And the result in Guelph was the largest crowd we have addressed so far during this journey - 75 enthusiastic people showed up for a 90 minute workshop first thing in the morning, in a town of just over 100,000 people. They came from as far as Niagara Falls - 125 km away.

And that brings me to the Inukshuk. At the end of my talk in Guelph, Gayle and Cathy presented me and Dimitri with one of the most meaningful gifts we have received from anyone, ever. It was a glass figure, connoting a man made of rocks. An Inukshuk.

Here is the story they told us:

“In northern Canada, these stone figures can be seen across the landscape. The figures would mark hunting grounds, connecting people in their journey from place to place. Throughout the north, the Inukshuk has become a symbol of connectedness, of friendship and cooperation. That is what you have done for us today. That is the gift you have given us.”

I hear their words in my head as I type this, and tears well up.

And so to you, my friends who are reading of our journey, that is what I want to share with you in this post. The joys of this trip have already been far too numerous to describe in one post (or even a dozen posts). Amazing work, connecting the dots between individuals who are creating amazing community benefit. Amazing scenery (autumn in the northeast US and southern Canada - red and gold and breathtaking). Amazing terrain. Niagara Falls. The gorges and waterfalls of Ithaca and the Finger Lakes. The vast, almost endless corn and sunflower fields of Kansas on the trip across.

But the most amazing thing of all, without question, has been that sense of connection - connection of spirit, of purpose. Friendship, love, warmth.

As I have taught in every workshop I have done so far and will continue to share throughout this tour, that is what sustains us, as organizations and as individuals. Friendship and FriendRaising are not about asking people for money. They are about asking for that connection, and the joy that comes from that engaged sense that we are far more effective together than apart.

There is nothing better in the whole world. That connection is, quite simply, all there is.

Photo Credit -  Inukshuk at top of page: On Campus News, University of Saskatchewan

For the next post in this series, just follow the link.

Community-Driven Tour 2008

Published
by
Hildy
on October 11, 2008
in Community-Driven Tour, Diaper Bank and Travel Stories
. 0 Comments

Well, it’s been a month that we have been on the road with the Community-Driven Tour 2008. And we finally have a moment where I can begin to share what an adventure this has been and continues to be!

We are driving right now, heading west on I-90 from Ithaca, NY to Toronto. It is 7:30 - the sky is almost dark. We will likely arrive at our hotel around midnight, as we intend to stop to see Niagara Falls. Life is good.

It has been an amazing journey so far. It is far too much to share all in one post, so I will promise to be better about posting more often. It has not been easy to do so - there has been so much going on, every hour of every day. One thing is for certain, as we schlep our bags and files and computers from hotel to car, from car to hotel - we need Roadies!!!!

We started the trip on September 12. We drove from Tucson to Albuquerque, from Albuquerque to Colorado Springs, from Colorado Springs across the breadth of Kansas to St. Louis, from St. Louis to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We left surrounded by summer monsoon clouds. Four days later, we were surrounded by autumn in the midwest.

From there, it is hard to fathom all we have done, and all that has transpired.

I keynoted the annual Governance conference for the Dorothy Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University.

We presented a workshop on Governing for What Matters in Danbury, Connecticut, for the Greater Danbury Nonprofit Resource Center and the United Way of Western Connnecticut.

We facilitated a Community Engagement Plan for the United Way’s Stamford, Connecticut office, focused on Family Financial Stability.

We presented workshops titled Building Engaged Support for Your Mission in Kent (CT) and in Millerton, Albany and Ithaca (NY). In Nyack, NY, we presented two workshops - Building Engaged Support for Your Mission and Building an Energized Board.

In every community, we tell audiences that we left Tucson on September 12, and we will be home the last week of November.  And then we tell the assembled group that we are sharing one message as we travel from community to community across the U.S. and Canada, regardless of whether we are teaching governance or sustainability. That message is simple:

Creating visionary change in our communities is not only possible, it is practical and doable.

In the remainder of the workshops and keynotes, we show how practical it is to do that work - whether we are teaching boards to hold themselves accountable for creating visionary community change, or teaching  practical strategies for generating resources by linking arms rather than by competing.

In every community, audiences walk in skeptical. And in every community, they leave inspired, energized, excited to get back to work and begin making a more significant difference in their communities.

We are having a blast!

Add to that blast that it is autumn, and we are traveling in the most beautiful countryside, watching the leaves change. We have been through the most picturesque villages, driven along hours of winding roads filled with old barn after old barn. And we have had the privilege of spending 5 days in Ithaca, NY, where the Finger Lakes meet gorges and waterfalls, and there is something extraordinarily beautiful at every turn.

The highs of the work have been balanced, unfortunately, by the lows of - well - just life. Some of you know that Dimitri has been his dad’s primary caregiver for the past five years, as his dad has become more and more infirmed. Just a few days after we arrived in Connecticut, Papou was hospitalized for the umpteenth time. Only this time, after almost a week, his body just gave out.

It has been difficult for Dimitri, knowing that after all this time, visiting Papou 3 - 4 times a week and often more, accompanying him to doctor’s appointments, advocating on his behalf - it has been hard to know that in Papou’s last hours, Dimitri was not with him.

The rest of Dimitri’s family was there, however. And in the 24 hours before he passed, old friends from far away came to visit as well. Papou left this earth knowing that he was loved.

So it has been a mixed trip, for certain. The work has been incredible, as has the scenery. The ability to spend time with people we love and do not often get to see - oh that has been a treat! And yet it is all bittersweet, as Dimitri feels the absence of his dad, who had become so very very present in all our lives these past few years.

Tonight we are heading into Canada. We will visit with friends, and Dimitri will get to spend Thanksgiving weekend with his family, most of whom live in Toronto. This is where we were supposed to be, for certain - who could have known? We have workshops scheduled in Guelph and London, where we will get to spend time with friends both new and old. And then we are back on the road, to the city of Monroe, just south of Detroit, and the journey continues from there.

That’s it for this post. I promise to share more about the work, the scenery, the visiting with friends and the rest of this incredible journey in the coming days and weeks. With one very glaring, important and saddening exception, this has been a more extraordinary month than even we could have imagined.

For those who have asked what they can do to support Dimitri and his family during this time, he has asked that you make a donation to the Southern Arizona Community Diaper Bank. There was not a week that went by, in Papou’s last years, that Dimitri’s family was not thankful that he could afford the incontinence supplies he needed. In his memory, we ask that you help the Diaper Bank help someone who is not as fortunate.

Interested in following the 2+ month Community-Driven Tour 2008?  Just follow the link!