5th Anniversary Outreach: Results and Challenges

Even young organizations need to use milestones as vehicles to consider and assess progress.  That’s just what the Board and staff of the Endowment did with the achievement of five years as an organization.  At its November 2011 meeting, the Board approved an intentional plan to “reach out to interested publics” to share the Endowment’s progress and to seek input as we move into the next five years.

Organizational Input
Among the primary tools the staff developed to enhance awareness and solicit input was a special program that provided an overview of the Endowment’s progress and programmatic investments over its first five years.  We used that presentation to speak to and solicit input from nearly a dozen organizations ranging from the California Board of Registered Foresters to the Professional Agricultural Workers Conference.  Each presentation was designed to provide a high-level Endowment overview followed by an open discussion/input session.

Knowing that there were significant limits to our ability to share this opportunity with anywhere near all of the groups and organizations we desired to reach, we augmented the outreach/input tool to include an on-line survey open to anyone.

Findings
Perhaps we fell prey to hearing what we wanted to hear.  We hope not.  In short, when each group better understood the Endowment’s mission – to advance healthy working forests and family-supporting jobs in rural forest-reliant communities – and that we had to do so only using interest and earnings from the endowment corpus, we found strong support and alignment with our approach.  There were strong kudos for choosing to “do what others can’t or won’t” and to “focus on a few big ideas; rather than being lured by trying to be all things to all people.”

Yes, there were some criticisms and suggestions that we weren’t focusing where the commenter thought we should.  While this list was far shorter than the accolades, we do not discount its importance.  Among the more frequent comments were:  the Endowment should focus on educating the public about the importance of forests and the need for their protection/management; target family forest owners to ensure that they are giving proper attention to long-term stewardship; and do more to address America’s forest health crisis with special attention to sustainable management of the public lands.


To everyone at each of our public sessions or who took the time to provide an online response, you have our appreciation.  We know that we – the Endowment Board and staff – have been given a rare opportunity and even bigger responsibility.  As the largest public charity in America working to advance the cause of forest sustainability and rural-forest health, the challenges are indeed large.  Our funds, while large by historical perspective, pale by any comparison with foundations working on other issues to see the billions of dollars and thousands of staff members allocated to the challenge.

We have a choice.  We can bemoan the fact that we don’t have enough funds to do all that we know we should/wish we could be doing, or, we can do the very best with what we have.  We’ve chosen the latter course.  We look forward to your continued input as we make the journey and as we adjust the tools and course headings along the way.

Written by: Carlton Owen