Pressing on and Moving forward
The last few months have represented some growing up for our organizations. Since Blake’s departure, we’ve really had to dig deep within our team and restructure ourselves to move forward. First we were faced with the question:
Do we need to find a new executive director?
If so, how will we afford to do so? Or would hiring a director be with the caveat that he or she would be required to raise their pay?
If not, how do we finish phase 1 and move forward into phase 2 without someone to spearhead our efforts and connect with all of the parts of our organization?
We have monthly 1-2 hr board meetings and quarterly 4 hr meetings; it was in our long 2nd quarter meeting that we wrested with this question. We decided first and foremost, we need to commit all our time and efforts into pressing on to finish Phase 1 construction and then at the beginning of 2013, we can reevaluate how to we need to move into Phase 2.
So, we restructured. We took our current board and divided ourselves up into 5 committees, each led by a Board Member. Our hope is that by decentralizing our responsibilities from a single point of control, we will encourage greater group ownership and grow a bigger base of volunteers and advisors within each of the teams. Each month, the teams will populate our Board Agenda and update the entire Board on their progress. The 5 committees are as follows:
- Project Team – Michael Kuany & Jill Kurtz
- Financials & Accounting – Josh Lauman & Stephane Del La Rosa
- Fundraising – Katie Rivers, Kevin Knox, Zoe Mullery
- Communication – Jill Kurtz
- Internal Operations – Jeremy Sequoias
Last month’s meeting was the first test of these groups and it was great to see it start to work! Each team had movement to report and input to the discussion. I can’t wait to see how we continue to evolve these groups and look forward to you joining with us!
We welcome your help with fundraising and communication. If you have any background in either of these and would be wiling to help advise us on how to better communicate with our donors, host a fundraising event, or help us think of new ideas we haven’t though of yet, we WELCOME your hands. This school is not built by one person, one group, or one village; it’s built by all of us… together.
(one of our 9 person skype calls for our long Q1 meeting… I promise, we’re way more excited than we look :] )
