Posted for Lucy Keshavarz, committee member from Palm Beach County FNPS Chapter.
Good morning all,
I would also like to add a few questions and suggestions. Answering Karina's questions is very important, because I have become very confused as well. That said, given the information that was sent by Devon yesterday, I am reminded how important Process is in Creating! And that's what we are doing, we are creating the donation policy for a statewide non-profit from scratch.
I like the set of questions that Devon has listed for the agenda. I appreciate this holistic "step" approach of research, thoughtfulness and group reflection in order to have us somewhat on the same page as we move forward. In reading the agenda, #1 is review the economic development plan adopted by the board. That's great, but I can't find it! Could someone tell me where to find this- I didn't see it on the forum.
For those of you that don't know me, my perspective comes from the art world (lots of non-profits) and the development world (engineers, builders, landowners). While I'm relatively new to FNPS having been a member for 5 years or so, my intensity has been nearly a 90degree learning curve. Native plants have become a huge part of my art practice and I personally need this organization to thrive on top of knowing how important FNPS is to the larger community (even if they don't know it!).
I believe FNPS is in the growing pain stage: starting as a grass roots organization and now given all the environment needs, called to have a larger presence. And in order to answer this call, we need more money in order to have the ability to hire professional leadership so that we can take our mission to higher levels (both qualitatively & quantitatively) while still keeping our grassroots feel....quite the challenge! Our ruling documents are the foundation of this happening in a good way or not!
I really do like Devon's holistic approach and believe we should peruse this! However, I don't see how we will be able to give Anne and the board a document by the 15th going this way. We need this policy in place, luckily, all organizational documents are meant to be "living" documents and therefore evolve as needed and all should Reconcile. In trying to find things on the website, I see that there is no Governance Committee! We really need this!
Here (finally) is my suggestion:
-we take the heavily edited donor/sponsorship document that has been passed around - finish cleaning up and present that to the BOD. With the knowledge that it like all documents, need to be reviewed and tweaked as we go forward.
- this ad hoc committee becomes the Governance Committee that continues to meet and discuss on a regular basis. We are at a critical stage right now as an organization and this is greatly needed! As FNPS is in our growing stage, I believe we can take a lot of the pain part of it out by using Devon's holistic step approach to get ahead and stay on top of things! I recall that there was some issues between the Council of Chapters and the by-law changes. The approach I am suggesting would prevent this from happening - part of the governance committees job would be reaching out and discussing governance with members.
Look forward to speaking with all,of you this afternoon!!
Lucy M. F. Keshavarz
Art & Culture Group, Inc.
