Dear Friend,
Immediately after the Board of Trustees hired me to lead the Community Foundation Boulder County, I began to hear some version of the question: “What is your vision for the foundation?”
My first response is the foundation belongs to all of us – everyone who calls Boulder County home. Therefore, to begin, I’m listening to you. And it’s my privilege and responsibility to continue the foundation’s work: we catalyze our community by responding to immediate needs, anticipating future challenges, and helping us all make informed decisions.
I also understand that “What’s your vision?” is another way of asking, “Who are you?”, “What can we expect from you?”, and “How will your leadership influence the work of our community foundation?”
In reply – having completed my first 100 days as CEO of the foundation – I’d like to share with you what I’ve heard and learned so far, and what I’m still learning:
I inherited a great trust from the Community Foundation to uphold our core values. Specifically, especially at moments that call for courage and leadership, our foundation:
- stands with the marginalized and most vulnerable;
- upholds diversity and inclusiveness as it works to achieve equity – that state where it is not possible to predict a person’s well-being by race, economic status, sexual orientation, and other designations we assign to ourselves; and
- advances resident leadership – that is, the people most affected by our most prevalent community concerns are the very people who must lead the way to resolve them.
These lived values of your community foundation are also my vision for our foundation. They are the same values to which I aspire. These essential values express the soul of the foundation and my vision as its leader.
What then is the role of our community foundation in these times?
In our community, the heat has turned up on longstanding priorities such as the well-being of immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ rights, women’s issues, care of our environment, and the importance of the arts. These aren’t new priorities for us. In fact, these are the very issues and partnerships in which we’ve invested since Day 1. We recognize, too, the structural inequities of poverty and race that are the root of many of our challenges.
These unpredictable times only strengthen our resolve to embody the literal meaning of philanthropy – love of humanity – now and for the future.
In the coming days, you’ll see messages that uplift the issues and investments of your community foundation, and that invite you to get involved.
What about the role of a community foundation as a neutral convener?
I respectfully suggest a different way of approaching that question: namely, the Community Foundation Boulder County – as it strives to demonstrate its values of standing with the most vulnerable, advancing equity, and championing resident leadership – is not neutral.
At the same time, I believe “we the people” must find in our community’s foundation a nonpartisan and honest broker of our collective concerns and shared solutions. In a conversation with a local leader about the challenges we’re facing in our nation and community, he mused, “We’ll survive these times, but will we survive each other?”
I was immediately reminded of Dr. Vincent Harding, the late freedom rights pioneer, who observed:
“We are absolutely amateurs at this matter of building a democratic nation made up of many, many peoples, of many kinds, from many connections and convictions and from many experiences. And to know how, after all the pain that we have caused each other, how to carry on a democratic conversation that, in a sense, invites us to hear each other’s best arguments and best contributions so that we can then figure out, ‘How do we put these things together to create a more perfect union?’”
We’re answering this call together – through the programs and initiatives of our community foundation.
How can your community foundation help advance the common good?
This year, the foundation will publish its biennial TRENDS Report, which combines quantitative data on prevailing issues in Boulder County with original qualitative research. The Community Foundation is also embarking on a listening tour in which people from various communities across our county will have the opportunity to openly discuss their concerns and ideas during more than fifty sharing sessions.
To this end, Parker Palmer – in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy – offers “Five Habits of the Heart”:
- An understanding that we are all in this together.
- An appreciation of the value of “otherness.”
- An ability to hold tension in life-giving ways.
- A sense of personal voice and agency.
- A capacity to create community.
Palmer wrote:
“For those of us who want to see democracy survive and thrive – and we are legion – the heart is where everything begins: that grounded place in each of us where we can overcome fear, rediscover that we are members of one another, and embrace the conflicts that threaten democracy as openings to new life for us and for our nation.”
The community foundation is an American invention, now more than 100 years old. Through your community foundation, you inspire ideas and ignite action to improve our quality of life in Boulder County. During our upcoming listening tour, “we the people” will take part in a shared conversation based on the conviction that we can accomplish more together than alone.
I thank you for the privilege of serving you, and walking boldly together into a compassionate and hopeful future.
Yours in community,
Jeff Hirota, CEO
Highlights from your Community Foundation’s first 100 days of 2017:
- Reached a total of $75M granted by the Community Foundation since inception in 1991.
- Granted $332,935 from the Community Trust, which through local nonprofit partners, addresses pressing issues in health and human services, basic needs, children and youth, education, civic engagement, arts and culture, and animals and the environment.
- Developed timely Communication Guidelines for Public Policy and Political Issues that have been shared among community foundation leaders.
- Exceeded our $1M endowment goal for the Open Door Fund to support organizations addressing LGBTQ priorities.
- Hired a new director of Pledge 1% Colorado to expand and support Colorado’s network of entrepreneurs who share a commitment to giving back to their communities.
- Implementing a $300K grant to improve access to specialty care for Medicaid and uninsured patients countywide via the Boulder County Health Improvement Collaborative.
- Working with youth through 15 Forever, a grant cycle that will announce its newest grantees in May.
- Continuing to strengthen school readiness, including launching the ELPASO program as an independent nonprofit organization.
- Continuing to advance community conversations through our monthly radio show on KGNU—as well as catalyzing community through our reporting and countywide convenings.
Sources:
Interview of Dr. Vincent Harding
On Being with Krista Tippett
November 10, 2016
Healing the Heart of Democracy
Parker J. Palmer
See also: Statement of Affirmation by the Community Foundation Boulder County
The Community Foundation Boulder County is committed to being a community catalyst for good, alongside donors and partners like you. We believe our community is stronger when all people – women and men, children, older adults, immigrants, people of color, GLBTQ individuals, those with varying abilities and from all faiths – are respected, welcomed, and invited to share their assets and contributions in community building.
We stand with others, in Boulder County and beyond, who courageously strive to build more inclusive communities rather than walls of division. We remain wholeheartedly committed to social justice for our most marginalized and vulnerable people and for the care of threatened environments. We believe in the power of art and music to improve our lives and community. Now, more than ever, we seek opportunities for local action and invite you to join us in our ongoing leadership work that includes grant-making, outreach, and advocacy. We accomplish more together than we do alone.
