Well, we were warned but we refused to believe. We were warned that at the six month mark of this new position, we would need to stop for a minute, look around, clear our heads and then look around once more. In other words, we would wake up from that place of being a brand new Executive Director to being the ongoing Executive Director. It’s like that moment where you begin to see enough pieces of a puzzle to get a sense of how the whole thing fits together. And the “ah-ha” moments that go along with that are part of why we have been silent in the PFund blogosphere for the last month. But while we have been quiet, we have also been active:
- Cheering a lot as we welcomed Kayva Yang as the new PFund Program Officer. Kayva’s incredible skills and insight in the area of grant programming and community capacity building has already begun to build on PFund’s past work. It’s truly been amazing.
- Cheering a lot more as we welcomed a range of new members to our Board of Directors. We are lucky to begin working with Lois Carlson, Max Gries, Jennifer Houston, Alex Iantaffi, Curtis Brock and Lindsay Kruh.
- Talking with a range of community members and fellow funders about the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment in 2012 and continuing to think about our role in this work and, in particular, how we can continue to work in partnership to build the strength of the LGBT community for the long term.
- Listening to grantee partners share stories of how the state shutdown impacted them and their communities and sharing these stories with our peers in philanthropy
- Finishing our fiscal year 2011 in a strong place, ending on budget and exceeding our expectations for our end-of-year June fundraising campaign thanks to our generous PFund donor community!
- Continuing through our strategic planning which includes looking more deeply at our history as well as our projected future. We have been busy gathering data and crafting questions, and now we are entering the time of interviewing stakeholders and crafting the nuts and bolts of our plan.
Among staff, we’ve talked about coming to the end of a year of transition; a period that began when the outgoing ED, Greg Grinley, left PFund a little less than a year ago. Kayva’s hire represents the last part of this period of transition. It has been fabulous to welcome Board members and strategic planning steering committee members who reflect PFund’s 25 years of history even as we are in the process of forming a brand new staff team. Our guesstimate is that we have about six more months before this “newness” feels like old hat – and we are excited to launch into our new fiscal year with a strong and complete Board and staff team.
As we launch forward into fiscal year 2012, you are going to be the best reflection on how well we are putting together the pieces of the puzzle. As we continue to check in with our founders, with people who have been involved with PFund across our almost-25 year span, and with people who are brand new to the PFund community, we continue to look for ways to bring the future and the past together. So consider this a standing invitation to pick up the phone and let us know how we’re doing, ok?
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