Ekstrom Alley Clontz & Associates
  • Home
  • About Us
    • The Team
  • Our Services
    • Field Leadership
  • Clients
    • What our clients say
    • Our projects
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
  • Blog

Best Laid Plans - Part 2 of 2 – What Are We Learning?

9/25/2015

Comments

 
As I wrote in Part 1 of this blog, my family faced a myriad of health issues this summer and our lives got turned completely upside down.  There was no room for any semblance of a normal existence.  My mother’s passing in particular threw our entire family onto a different path.  It was a path my siblings and I knew would come someday, but it still sent us into a whirlwind of emotion and activity. 

We were fortunate that our mom had made her wishes known to us both in numerous conversations and in her estate plan.  While action is still required on many elements of the plan, its “vision” has become our guide.  As part of this process, we are constantly learning new things about ourselves and our family. There always seems to be some new wrinkle or challenge that forces us to rethink how to remain on course toward her vision.

It has struck me often during this summer that our journey as a family parallels the work we do with our clients.  We help each design a vision and a plan to reach that vision (whether this is for the organization as a whole or for a particular portion of its work).  We do this with an understanding that what the foundation learns from each action should help inform its next steps.  It is our belief that community foundations must be “learning organizations” in order to meet the challenges created by the constantly changing landscape they operate in.  Perpetuity doesn’t mean you do the same things forever, but rather it requires that you shift – sometimes subtly, other times more forcefully, but always with purpose.

Take for example, the case of a community foundation that has a vision to become more of a leader in its community.  It must begin to act on this vision and build the capacity and underlying business model to support this leadership role.  There are countless examples where this path has been accelerated or shifted because of some community event (9/11, Katrina, and the Oklahoma City Courthouse bombing come to mind).  At other times, it’s the receipt of a major gift that pushes the foundation’s work into a new or underserved area, but in each case, the foundation has to take what it has learned (and is learning) to build its leadership footprint.

Every grant, grantee, gift, donor, volunteer and staff member changes the nature of what the community foundation is and what it is becoming.  In essence, each event and person helps reshape the foundation’s path.  What the foundation learns about itself through its work is key to reaching its vision and becoming the kind of community foundation its community needs it to be.

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

This blog is dedicated to my mother, Dr. Reene Ann (Shue) Alley, April 1, 1935-July 5, 2015.  For more on this remarkable woman’s life, Click here.
Comments

Best Laid Plans - Part 1 of 2 – Why The Plan Matters

9/18/2015

Comments

 
This has been one of the most challenging times of my life as our family has dealt with a myriad of health issues. From the death of my mother to providing care for other elderly family members, our plans for the past few months were torn up before they could ever really happen.  I realize now that sometimes there is nothing you can do. You have to let life come at you and then sort it all out later, and that's what I'm writing about today.

My mom always had plans, even to the very end.  When she passed in July after a 6-year battle with lung cancer, she still planned on finishing a number of writing and history projects she was working on, but unfortunately, her health wouldn’t allow it.

My mom’s estate isn’t large or all that complicated in the grand scheme of things, but she thankfully she began planning for it in earnest several years ago.  She hired an attorney and developed a very good estate plan that had a number of elements, including several charitable gifts.  What we didn’t know was her failing health prevented her from completing some of the legwork that was needed to completely enact the plan.  While it is still doable, it is now taking a lot more work on our part to make sure we can complete it.

I am writing this as I begin to head out on the road again in earnest for the fall.  My first stop is to work with a community foundation on its strategic plan. You might ask, “What does one have to do with the other?”  Our experience this summer has reinforced my belief not only in the importance of planning, but in working the plan once it's developed. The work used to create a plan is in itself a valuable exercise.  At the organizational level, it gives us a chance to get everyone on the same page and begin (or continue) to move forward together. It is also our view - and my personal experience these last few months has born this out – that acting on the plan is just as important as its development.

Just as it was for me this summer, community foundations have “life” thrown at them every day in the form of new challenges and opportunities.  It can certainly get in the way of even the best laid plans, but if you’re going to accomplish what the community needs you to do, you can’t allow it to derail you completely.  That’s why having a vision (or target) to aim at and carefully selected strategic actions are so important.  Having these make it easier for the organization to make decisions on what matters most and therefore, what actions must be taken today. 

We know that maintaining focus in the face of changing priorities is hard, but a quality strategic plan can help lessen this burden.  In the second and final part of this series, we’ll examine the other important question that must be answered - What are we learning from our work?

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

This blog is dedicated to my mother, Dr. Reene Ann (Shue) Alley, April 1, 1935-July 5, 2015.  For more on this remarkable woman’s life, Click here.
Comments

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    August 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    September 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    September 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    February 2014
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Home      |      About Us      |      Who We Are      |      Our Services      |      Clients      |      What Our Clients Say      |      Our Projects
 Resources      |       Contact Us   
© Ekstrom Alley Clontz & Associates