You know what they say, most major changes come in threes. Well, that’s as true for PFund as for anything else.
The first change was the start date of the two of us as Executive Director in January of this year. The second change was the wonderful Susan Cogger deciding to leave PFund for new horizons. And now we are on change number three: the promotion of Alfonso Wenker and Ryan Kroening to new positions within PFund and the announcement of an open position, Program Officer.
There’s a lovely logic to this shifting and rearranging. While organizations are not technically living things, they are living systems. What that means is that the people who work there, the visions they share, and the ongoing culture they create is part of a system that, over time, establishes habits and routine expectations just like any other system. Any change affects the whole thing, not just a single part.
With this in mind, staff have spent the last two months looking at the whole thing, otherwise known as the organization, and asking the question: what is the best way to operate PFund? In order to answer this, we put big pieces of paper up on lots of walls, wrote words and ideas on post-it notes, and then moved and rearranged those post-it notes from one meeting to the next. We read some articles about how other community foundations are run. And we listened to our Board and past staff talk about what works and what could still be improved. And then we arrived someplace, pretty much exactly where we began.
In other words, we ended up with what we already know: that PFund operates really well. It’s not broken so there’s no need to fix it. And yes, we knew that as we began the conversations, but just like spring cleaning, sometimes it’s good to just shake out all of the sheets and see how they want to be folded back into place.
Any changes we made were minor: all staff positions now include some community and relationship responsibilities, as well as some fundraising goals. How those are met will be based on the person and the flavor of the job they are doing. As a community foundation, our role is to listen as broadly as possible to how you reflect on the conditions affecting your lives and the lives of your families. It only expands our capacity if more of us are listening.
You might be wondering, what is so interesting about a blog posting on job changes at PFund? Well, the specific details depend on how enamored you are of organizational development. But the bigger part of it is this: accountability. We take seriously the role of stewarding community dollars to meet community needs. At moments of transition or change, we want to take a minute to explain what’s going on and why. It feels like the responsible thing to do. After all, how else can we be worthy of your ongoing trust?
And by the way, if you are interested in learning more about the Program Officer position, the job description is at www.PFundOnline.org. The deadline is April 22. Pass the news along to your friends. And you can tell them we sent you.
- Kate and Susan
The first change was the start date of the two of us as Executive Director in January of this year. The second change was the wonderful Susan Cogger deciding to leave PFund for new horizons. And now we are on change number three: the promotion of Alfonso Wenker and Ryan Kroening to new positions within PFund and the announcement of an open position, Program Officer.
There’s a lovely logic to this shifting and rearranging. While organizations are not technically living things, they are living systems. What that means is that the people who work there, the visions they share, and the ongoing culture they create is part of a system that, over time, establishes habits and routine expectations just like any other system. Any change affects the whole thing, not just a single part.
With this in mind, staff have spent the last two months looking at the whole thing, otherwise known as the organization, and asking the question: what is the best way to operate PFund? In order to answer this, we put big pieces of paper up on lots of walls, wrote words and ideas on post-it notes, and then moved and rearranged those post-it notes from one meeting to the next. We read some articles about how other community foundations are run. And we listened to our Board and past staff talk about what works and what could still be improved. And then we arrived someplace, pretty much exactly where we began.
In other words, we ended up with what we already know: that PFund operates really well. It’s not broken so there’s no need to fix it. And yes, we knew that as we began the conversations, but just like spring cleaning, sometimes it’s good to just shake out all of the sheets and see how they want to be folded back into place.
Any changes we made were minor: all staff positions now include some community and relationship responsibilities, as well as some fundraising goals. How those are met will be based on the person and the flavor of the job they are doing. As a community foundation, our role is to listen as broadly as possible to how you reflect on the conditions affecting your lives and the lives of your families. It only expands our capacity if more of us are listening.
You might be wondering, what is so interesting about a blog posting on job changes at PFund? Well, the specific details depend on how enamored you are of organizational development. But the bigger part of it is this: accountability. We take seriously the role of stewarding community dollars to meet community needs. At moments of transition or change, we want to take a minute to explain what’s going on and why. It feels like the responsible thing to do. After all, how else can we be worthy of your ongoing trust?
And by the way, if you are interested in learning more about the Program Officer position, the job description is at www.PFundOnline.org. The deadline is April 22. Pass the news along to your friends. And you can tell them we sent you.
- Kate and Susan
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