Curt Detjen

During 2021, your Community Foundation’s board and staff members have been deeply involved in two consultant-led planning efforts including the creation of a new strategic direction that will guide our work into the future and a diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism assessment. Here are some insights into what we learned, what we envision, and actions we have and will take in the years ahead:

FIVE-YEAR STRATEGIC DIRECTION

Strategic planning includes both a careful review of what is working and not working and determining what we will do to improve on mission delivery. To help us gain important, helpful insight, feedback was gathered from donors, nonprofits, community partners, board volunteers and staff members through surveys, group discussions, individual conversations, and extensive research conducted in conjunction with our recent rebranding.

What we heard:

• Our region places high value in the professional service we provide to help a generous community maximize the impact of its giving – for today and forever.
• The Community Foundation is looked to as a source of knowledge about important community issues, giving trends and opportunities to help our region to flourish.

Strategic Priorities

This graphic depicts the four, board-approved strategic priorities that have been established, building upon our strengths and commitment to philanthropic service and support to advance our mission for a flourishing region.

ACTIONS WE’VE TAKEN

Mission Statement

We made a subtle but important change in our mission statement, replacing ‘others’ with ‘all’ to express our conviction that the role we play is inclusive and builds an improved quality of life here for everyone, and all should feel they’re a part of this mission:

Core Values

A strong organizational culture and commitment to one another is essential in a caring mission like ours. We’ve expanded our core values of Integrity, Respect and Teamwork to include Stewardship and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Antiracism (DEIAR). Stewardship has been an important but unnamed core value, and we are including it now to be more obvious about its importance. Adding DEIAR reflects that we are a community foundation for all, as described above.

DEIAR Assessment and Plans

We established a task force of board and staff members to assess DEIAR in our organization and to determine what we will do next to continue to improve as a community foundation for all. The assessment was conducted objectively through the expertise of The People Company, helping us to better understand this is an area where we already have many strengths yet many opportunities to improve. Our next steps through 2022 will focus on improvements in human resources policies and practices, ongoing learning through training and development, and revisiting our many grant policies. Our internally focused approach is deliberate, to ensure we are at our best for the roles we play and the service we provide for all in our region.

FUTURE ACTIONS

You can count on your Community Foundation to keep its focus on the mission that helps to create the flourishing region we aspire to be. We will pursue our strategic directions with that in mind and commit to continuing to provide top-notch service and providing you with an improved technology infrastructure to make giving in partnership with us as easy and helpful as possible. Further, you can expect we will continue to share what we are learning and that we will invite you into meaningful conversations about what we can do together.