Nineteen Board members and five management staff spent last Friday evening and Saturday morning looking out into the future for our Community and our Foundation. On Friday we spent time describing the current status of Foundation finances and efforts and then looked ahead a few years to forecast the impact of the Recession on operations and grantmaking. Small groups spent the remainder of Friday evening discussing some hypothetical situations in the year 2013 and how the Foundation might react.
On Saturday morning our Governance Chair, led Board Committees through an exercise to begin the process of crafting a Foundation Diversity and Inclusion strategy. The remainder of the Retreat was spent comparing our community leadership strengths and capacity to a Leadership Framework created by CFLeads and then applying those strengths to some current work with our Community Development Corporations. My reaction – the retreat affirmed both the direction we are headed and our desire for continuous improvement. We also have some great new ideas to explore.
The level of engagement, depth of understanding and commitment, and certainly the creativity of ideas from our Board and staff continue to inspire me. Plus it speaks volumes that we had such as strong turnout on a summer weekend (out of 20 board members and 5 mgmt staff) . I sometimes have colleagues who lament that their boards “don’t really get” their community foundation beyond taking in contributions and making grants. This weekend certainly proved that is NOT the case in Lorain County and we are a stronger community and foundation because of it. The CFLC is a tribute to the commitment of current and past board members and staff.
