Yesterday, my organization convened a meeting of our Arts Funders Affinity Group. We were really fortunate to hear a fascinating, fact-filled presentation from Robert Morrison, founder of Quadrant Arts Education Research. There were two points he made that I can’t stop thinking about. The first is research that has come out of Florida tracking student outcomes. For the first time, there is longitudinal data illustrating the profound impact that access to the arts in school has on student performance. Included in this research is a subset considering just the outcomes for students receiving free or reduced lunches. The results are significant and profound. Considering the cumulative GPA, for students receiving 4 or more credits in the arts it was over 3.1. If they were receiving 2.5 to 3 credits, the GPA was 2.9. Looking at dropout rates, for students with 4 or more credits the rate is less than 6%. For those with no arts credits, it climbs to over 25%. Overall student performance improves dramatically when the arts are incorporated into the curriculum.

The second bit of research I found really interesting was that Arizona, which overall comes in quite low in providing access to arts education, scored the highest in dance education. This was fascinating to me. For a state whose overall arts education programming in elementary and secondary schools is so weak, it was surprising that its strongest showing is in the dance curriculum. I would have assumed music or visual art was where they focused what limited resources they have. It turns out that the focus on dance is due to a strategic partnership between three universities in the state to promote dance in the schools. This seems like a model that could be shared successfully.

These two points – the research on improved student performance and the substantive dance curriculum – prompted me to start connecting the dots for the members of CNJG. For instance, my first question was whether there was any research into how this infusion of dance might affect obesity rates for the children.

The Arts Funders affinity group is one of eight affinity groups that CNJG manages for the grantmaking community. Others groups are centered on Camden, Education, Environment, Issues in Aging, Newark, Strong & Thriving Communities, and Finance & Investment. In addition, we have a subgroup of our Newark Funders focused on just education in the city. And there is an emerging group of Early Childhood Education funders coming together. I also fully expect that in the next few months we’ll see the launch of a funders group centered on health.

Foundations are probably the most independent institutions in our country. While this independence enables a great many things – including the freedom to support the causes they care about in flexible, strategic ways – it can also leave foundation staff and trustees quite isolated. We have so little time (or brain space) to look out beyond our immediate priorities these days that professional development or networking with colleagues can seem like a luxury. For a grantmaker focused on health or education or the environment, it can be a hard choice to give up a morning for a meeting with arts funders. This is where CNJG comes in…our sweet spot. Helping grantmakers get out of their silos is one of the central roles we play at the Council. Our affinity groups are a key resource.

When our grantmakers come together through the affinity groups, we see foundations and corporations collaborating and leveraging more and more. When we can cross fertilize, say for example, sharing research done on arts education that speaks to all education, it can feel like the ultimate win-win.

Nina Stack is the President of Council of New Jersey Grantmakers, the statewide association for corporate, family, independent, and community foundations. She is a regular contributor to the Dodge blog.

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Read Part 1 (Defining Farm to School in New Jersey) here.

Part 2: Understanding the National School Lunch Program

By Deb Bentzel
Farm to Institution Program Manager
Fair Food

For the first time in 15 years, the US Department of Agriculture has updated nutritional guidelines for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve heard befuddling things about tomato paste, potatoes, and how kids will never eat kale. But what “farm to school” advocates and school food professionals need to hear is how great these new guidelines are for kids, how it is more cost-effective than originally proposed for schools, and how the process of public commenting really did influence decisions and make better guidelines.

(Click image to see full size)

First, it’s important to understand how school meal programs operate in general, in order to appreciate the new USDA guidelines. It’s a complicated system with complex supply chains, oversight and administration. Open dialogue is essential in order to dispel myths about school food; celebrate these impressive and progressive new guidelines; and exchange ideas and best practices and share thoughts on what comes next. How can advocates and food service professionals open up that dialogue?

Hold a meeting.

The School District of Philadelphia’s Division of Food Services recently invited a group of about 70 stakeholders, district staff, and partners to gather together for “Tray Talk: Getting to Know School Food Services.” Creating space for communication is equally important for district staff as well as advocates; both are interested in building a better school food environment for students. In addition, district staff need the opportunity to share their success, challenges, and new initiatives was also a priority for the agenda.

On January 27th, in Philadelphia, a group of anti-hunger, school food, food systems, nutrition, and child wellness advocates gathered for a multi-faceted presentation on the state of school food in the city’s public schools. In addition to multiple presentations from district staff, The Food Trust, the coordinating organization for Mid-Atlantic Farm to School programs, gave a brief tutorial on the newly-released nutritional guidelines. Active Farm to School partners had the opportunity to share their work, progress, and challenges. Collectively, these groups shared their visions for healthy schoolchildren, healthy school food environments, and a healthier local economy.

The January meeting underscored, once again, how vital collaborations are in understanding complicated topics, such as federal nutrition guidelines and meal reimbursement rates; and how important open discourse among both advocates and administrators is to making progress towards a healthier future for our schoolchildren.

For more information on healthy school lunches, check out these links: the National Farm to School Network, the NJ Farm to School Network, The Food Trust‘s Farm to School program, the USDA‘s Farm to School Initiative, Fair Food‘s Farm to Institution program, and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission‘s Food System Planning resources.

DVRPC and their partners are regular contributors to the Dodge blog on issues of food policy and regional food systems.

Please join the conversation with Dodge Foundation staff, grantees and friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Part 1: Defining Farm to School in New Jersey

By Beth Feehan, Director
NJ Farm to School Network

“Farm to School” is a term that requires explanation.

It speaks to bringing locally grown foods into schools, enriching the freshness of school meals and introducing real food to students used to processed food. At NJ Farm to School Network, we say that Farm to School is a three-legged stool of: operations, education and policy. Local procurement and food service need to contract with an eye toward accountability (operations). School gardens provide educational opportunities, which can lead to positive long-term health outcomes as children change their eating habits (education). And schools—educators, administrators, parents, and students—take a more active role in creating polices at the federal, state and district level (policy). All of these efforts require collaboration, coordination, and understanding to succeed.

Stakeholders in the Farm to School movement include schools, farmers, policy makers, food service companies, produce distributors, food manufacturers and good food advocates. Across the Garden State, grassroots efforts to start school gardens have created a burgeoning network of school garden educators and advocates who are finding ways to fund and sustain school gardens and encourage teachers to use school gardens for all aspects of required curricula. Produce distributors are finding ways to source locally grown produce from farms, creating new markets for farmers in this densely populated state. Food service professionals are working to train their employees to rethink what they serve to students and to learn more about fresh produce and how to use it in the cafeteria. State agencies are working together to promote these efforts and show that collaboration from top to bottom can make a difference in how we nourish our children. And higher education is training the next batch of teachers and advocates who embrace using food to bring about changes in the American diet.

But progress and collaboration haven’t happened overnight. New Jersey is made up of more than 600 independent school districts, each running their own food service program. The variability of each district and thus, each school, is determined by unique economic, demographic and administrative structures. Anyone looking to change what a school is serving for lunch must, at minimum, do the due diligence to see how food is served, who runs the food service and what is available.

Improving school food is not something that can be accomplished without the buy-in from administrators, school boards, principals, teachers, parents and students. However, we cannot stand back and put the onus, once more, on schools to fix what is “wrong” with students today. Food businesses and service providers must be held accountable for the quality of food. Policymakers need to become informed about the unintended consequences of national food policy that has enabled unhealthy foods to be produced cheaply. Parents must take responsibility for cultivating lifelong healthy behaviors in themselves – knowing that children often learn from their parents first. And yes, schools must look outside the schoolroom…possibly finding solutions in the school garden or cafeteria.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow: Understanding the National School Lunch Program

DVRPC and their partners are regular contributors to the Dodge blog on issues of food policy and regional food systems.

Dodge Poetry Program Staff

Whether it’s the metaphorical wings of freedom and expression, or a bowl of Buffalo wings with blue cheese and celery, poets and poetry lovers love wings, too.  But if watching the Super Bowl is not your thing, we have some ideas about how to spend Sunday afternoon that might bring you more inspiration than the halftime show.

• Invite your friends over for a literary salon, or reading circle, or poetry party.  Call it whatever you want. You can serve all the typical Super Bowl fare, but spend your time reading newly discovered or favorite poems to each other.  For millennia, long before the invention of wide-screen televisions, or football for that matter, the only “instant replay” was to ask the bard to repeat a favorite poem or passage.  It’s easy to imagine one of our ancestors seated before a fire calling out, “Do that bit about Beowulf tearing off the monster’s arm again!”  Salons, where friends gathered to read to each other, predate the Elizabethan era.  Being read aloud to (or listening to bards, balladeers and storytellers before written language was invented), is a basic pleasure as old as human consciousness.  Yet for most of us, it is one largely abandoned after childhood.  Dedicate one afternoon to sharing and listening to poems, and you might discover you want this to be a regular part of your life.  And mid-winter is a great time to check in with friends to find out what they’ve been reading, and to get ideas about what to read next.

• Super Bowl Sunday is a great day to go to the theater or visit a museum.  Many cities and states have organizations that sell reduced and even half-price day-of tickets for local theaters.  New York has its famous TKTS booth, and New Jersey has its NJ Theater Alliance.  Because so many people are home watching the game or out at parties, there are usually plenty of good seats for sale at very reasonable prices in your local theaters and for concerts and dance performances.  For the same reason, museums and galleries will be quiet, allowing you to wander freely and take the time to linger where you will without having to worry about crowds or noise.  One way to find out what’s happening in New Jersey is to check out Discover Jersey Arts for a searchable listing of events.

• Sunday is supposed to be a mild day across the Northeast and much of the nation.  If being in nature is one of the ways you feed your inner life, take a walk in one of our National or State Parks, or in your own county park system.  Live near a sea coast, lake or river?  Don’t wait until summer vacation to visit them.  New Jersey’s beaches, for example, take on an entirely different feeling during the quiet winter months, and are the perfect place for a meditative, rejuvenating stroll.

• If you’re like the Dodge Poetry Staff, you probably have a constantly growing stack of books that you haven’t found time to get to.  Protect those books from an inevitable tumble by putting this Sunday aside for reading.  There is nothing like dedicating time to sit quietly and read with a cup of tea or, to continue the Super Bowl theme, a frosty mug of your favorite brew.  Can’t get away from the game in your home?  Bring a satchel of books to your local tea or coffee shop, or even the local diner.  They’ll likely be empty enough for you to find a quiet corner where the wait staff will be happy to leave you alone.  (And if they do, and you stay long, be sure to  tip generously.)

Whatever you decide to do, we hope you have a revitalizing day. We’d love to hear about it.

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For more information about the Dodge Poetry Festival and programs, visit www.dodgepoetry.org

Be our friend on Facebook,  and follow us on Twitter @DodgePoetryFest

If there’s one thing nonprofits hear repeatedly about the importance of social media, it’s the potential to use these tools for fundraising in new and exciting ways. And while none of them will magically deliver large sums of money to your organization, we think Kickstarter is revolutionizing fundraising, and that if you don’t already know about them, you should.

Kickstarter is crowd-sourced fundraising – it’s a website where anyone with an idea can ask for donations for their project. If someone likes your idea, he can donate a little or he can donate a lot. And there is no shortage of creative, fun, practical, exciting and incredibly smart projects to back. In fact, in 2011, Kickstarter reached some astonishing milestones. Since launching the website in April 2009, 17,000 projects have been successfully funded with $130 million in pledges and 1.25 million backers. Pretty compelling numbers for non-profits who have been looking for ways to fund their most creative ideas.

One of the keys to Kickstarter’s success is its clever all-or-nothing model: projects must be fully funded before any money exchanges hands, which helps minimize the risk to donors. This model also helps you, the creator, test your idea in the marketplace without risk: if you don’t get fully funded, you don’t have to spend the money or effort to follow through, which frees you to refine your idea or try something new.

Dodge recently partnered with Kickstarter to curate our favorite projects. While we don’t actually fund these projects, we choose ones that reflect the kinds of grants we make here in New Jersey in the Arts, Education, Environment and Media. As Kickstarter continues to grow, we hope to see our grantees launch campaigns of their own, which we can feature on our page. In fact, we hope to see as many New Jersey-focused projects as possible – all toward a better New Jersey.

Coming soon: Kickstarter will be offering a workshop for Dodge grantees with tips for launching a successful Kickstarter campaign. Details to come!

Visit the Dodge Foundation’s curated Kickstarter page

photo by Annie Taggart

By Dr. Emile DeVito
Manager of Science & Stewardship
New Jersey Conservation Foundation

Volunteering can be as simple as carefully putting one foot in front of the other!

About 80 hikers gathered at the Apshawa Preserve in West Milford on Dec. 11. They weren’t there to simply enjoy the crisp air and gorgeous scenery, but to help New Jersey Conservation Foundation restore a struggling forest.

The mission of the “Volun-Deer Hike” was to form a human walking chain that would gently encourage as many white-tailed deer as possible to leave the 300-acre “exclosure,” or deer exclusion area, built one year earlier at this Passaic County preserve.

The fenced exclosure is designed to allow native plants to regenerate and thrive, and is the largest fenced forest restoration area in New Jersey!

The hikers at Apshawa that chilly Sunday morning were a hardy, experienced bunch. As they registered, they wondered how we could possibly fan out across 300 acres (half a square mile) and convince deer to exit through temporary openings in the fence. They got their answer as soon as they stepped into some of New Jersey’s most rugged Highlands terrain, which includes steep hillsides, rocky outcrops, stream crossings and wetlands.

The deer drive actually consisted of two separate sweeps, both of which started along a central axis. Volunteers spread out, each about 20 yards apart, walking slowly but deliberately toward openings at the far corners of the fence. The idea was not to cause deer to panic, but to slowly herd them toward the openings.

photos by Sandy Stuart Perry

The marchers were guided by GPS maps and markers set by expert geo-cachers using satellite images and data! The going was slow, but our Volun-Deer hikers succeeded in ushering six of nine deer out into the wilds on the other half of the preserve.

It might not sound like a lot, but having only three (instead of nine) voracious deer browsing on these 300 acres will significantly lessen the damage to young woody trees and shrubs during the cold winter months.

For most New Jersey Highlands forests to be able to recover their native plant understory, the deer populations must be less than 10 per square mile (640 acres), or about 15 percent of current levels. Until our human society decides to confront the forest threat posed by deer, and fund a serious deer reduction initiative, for now we must experiment with recovering pieces of the ecosystem.

The Volun-Deer Hike was New Jersey Conservation Foundation’s second deer drive. In December 2010, our inaugural effort pushed about 11 of 19 deer out of the newly-built exclosure. It was a good start, but we still need to improve the fence operation and get more volunteer monitors to watch for downed trees or open gates. If you would like to volunteer to help monitor the fence, please let us know!

A few months ago we were able to quickly repair “blowdowns” from Hurricane Irene; luckily it takes a while for deer to discover fence holes. Overall, the local deer herd seems to be learning to avoid the fenced area, perhaps because they don’t like walking along its perimeter, and perhaps because it is easier to hang out in unfenced areas.

photos by Annie Taggart

By the way, the fence is built with small gaps for turtles and other small animals, and tree crossings and tunnels for bears and bobcats. We’re continually experimenting with ways to make the fence less pervious to deer, and more pervious to non-hoofed animals.

The fence was installed in the summer of 2010 using a $125,000 grant from the National Forest Foundation. The grant paid for the installation of 3.2 linear miles of fence, removal of invasive plants like Japanese barberry and Oriental bittersweet, and the re-introduction of common native plants like seedling spicebush, viburnum, hazel, and many wildflowers.

The project also included the installation of eleven pedestrian gates along the perimeter of the fence, to encourage public access to the preserve’s trails. The preserve is jointly owned and managed by New Jersey Conservation Foundation and the Passaic County Park System.

Deciduous forests like the one at Apshawa are under dual attack from overabundant white-tailed deer and invasive alien plants. It becomes a cascading effect: The deer overbrowse the native plants, allowing the invasives to gain a foothold. Then, because deer eat the invasives less, the invasives thrive while the natives become increasingly scarce. The food chain then crumbles, and animal populations dwindle.

Small deer exclosures have been shown to rapidly reverse the trend of forest degradation and regain plant species diversity, but few are large enough to aid in the increase of animal diversity. Ambitious projects that include fences and/or deer herd culling are underway in many other county park systems, including Essex, Morris, Union, and Monmouth.

photo by Sandy Stuart Perry

The Apshawa project should demonstrate that finding a statewide solution to lower the deer herd to an ecologically tolerable statewide level, within closed-canopy, maturing forests, will help to recover our declining wildlife.

Within a few years, visitors to Apshawa should see a marked improvement in the density of shade- tolerant and shade-loving species in the forest understory – the internal core of a healthy forest. Without excessive deer browse, hundreds of native plant, insect, amphibian, reptile and bird species will be able to thrive as the natural food chain is restored beneath the shade of the forest canopy.

For more information about the New Jersey Conservation Foundation:

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“The best audience for a poetry reading that I have ever experienced is the audience during the Dodge Poetry Festival’s High School Student Day. Busloads and busloads of students from surrounding towns, counties, and states came to Newark to listen to poets read and talk about poetry.”

–Oliver de la Paz

Since 1986, over 45,000 students and 10,000 teachers from as far away as Florida, Wisconsin, Maine and California have participated in High School Student Day, the largest poetry event for high school students in North America.

Pre-registered high school students and their pre-registered teachers are admitted at no charge to all High School Student Day events, described below:

·POETS ON POETRY: Festival Poets read and discuss some of the poems and poets that have mattered to them. Time is set aside for Q & A.

·CONVERSATIONS: Intimate groups of Festival Poets discuss the enduring themes evoked by poetry, including Going Public with Private Feelings, When Politics is Personal, and Saying the Unsayable.

·FESTIVAL POET READINGS feature a dynamic and diverse group of poets.

·POETS FOR TEACHERS (preferred seating for teachers): Festival Poets explore how to bring poetry to life inside and outside the classroom.

·STORYTELLING, poetry’s closest relative, is performed throughout the day.

·OPEN READING: Time and space is set aside for young writers to read their work to their peers.

·Pre-registered schools have the option of remaining for THE EVENING MAIN STAGE PROGRAM of readings and music at no charge.

High school teachers can CONTACT US at studentday@grdodge.org with questions, but more information will be available as the Festival approaches.

To read the rest of Oliver’s blog on his experience at the 2010 Festival, click here.

“I held a Poets on Poetry discussion with a group of fun-loving high school students at Peddie Baptist Church. I read a few poems, but mostly I talked about what it was like to be a writer and what it was like to do what I do. I treated the talk as if I were talking to my younger self.”

–Oliver de la Paz

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The best way to get up to the minute announcements as the Festival approaches is to join our mailing list. If you are a teacher, make sure to join the Teacher Mailing List to receive updates related to the 2012 High School Student Day.

For more information about the Dodge Poetry Festival and programs, visit www.dodgepoetry.org

Be our friend on Facebook,  and follow us on Twitter @DodgePoetryFest

By Elizabeth Murphy

The creative industries’ ability to innovate new economic opportunities continues to make headlines. Our colleagues at the National Creativity Network (NCN) offer inspiring examples of how the creative sector is driving innovation, job creation, and economic sustainability. Did you know that the State of Massachusetts employs a Creative Economy Director and that Vermont’s Department of Economic, Housing and Community Development has recently announced the establishment of the Office of the Creative Economy?

Over the past two decades, international governments (notably Ireland and the United Kingdom) have recognized the sizeable contribution the creative industries have made to their overall economies and have instituted policies and funding schemes designed to enhance this growing sector. In the United States, the terms “creative economy” and “creative industries” are beginning to take hold and are increasingly recognized as a powerful strategy for economic and community revitalization. As this field continues to develop, we are faced with the challenge of defining the creative industries, but nationally and internationally, this definition remains a moving target. Generally speaking, the sector has been described as a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge, intellectual property and information. It is widely accepted that the activities which comprise the creative industries include architecture, design, arts, research & development, publishing, software, computer programming, scientific research, film, tv and radio. However, definitions are, by nature, limiting, and if there’s one thing we’re learning, it’s that the creative industries have an inherent capability to expand in unforeseen and innovative ways.

Recently, we have been invited to serve on the newly-established Creative Economy Coalition – a creative industries working group of the National Creativity Network. We join other thought-leaders around the country dedicated to: linking the creative industries to commerce, education, science, technology, and government; to advocating for the creative industries as an economic stimulus that grows jobs; and to stimulating innovation and imagination throughout our communities.

We are also interested in defining metrics for measuring the impact of the creative economy throughout the nation. Last week, members of the Creative Economy Coalition presented a very engaging NCN webinar on Growing the Creative Economy (Note: this webinar archive will be posted by the end of the week.) and you can also find previous webinars including one where New Jersey’s own Leo Vasquez from Arts Build Communities presented on the topic of Creative Placemaking.

While we all get our heads wrapped around the impact of the creative economy in our own state’s and communities, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (produced jointly with the United Nations Developing Programme) has published extensive research on the global creative economy. Their recent 2010 report provides evidence that the creative industries are among the most dynamic emerging sectors in world trade. The report defines the creative industries as “the crossroads of the arts, culture, business and technology…composing the cycle of creation, production, and distribution of goods and services that use intellectual property as their primary input.”

The rate of growth in world trade of creative goods rose from $7.8 billion in 2002 to $21 billion in 2008 (a growth rate of 14%). And despite the decline in the world economy brought about by the Great Recession, the creative industries have remained relatively robust. The report states, “The emerging creative economy has become a leading component of economic growth, employment, trade and innovation, and social cohesion in most advanced economies…It also shows that the interface among creativity, culture, economics and technology, as expressed in the ability to create and circulate intellectual capital, has the potential to generate income, jobs and export earnings while at the same time contributing to social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development.”

At Creative New Jersey, we are working to bridge the gap between our sectors, fostering connections between commerce, education, culture, government and philanthropy, in order to drive innovation and revitalize our state. We are currently developing a series of Community Creativity Convenings which will bring cross-sector leaders together to explore how creativity and innovation can transform their communities. We are working with a wide variety of partners in Essex, Monmouth, Mercer, Morris and Camden counties which include urban regeneration nonprofits and economic development councils, county arts councils and arts organizations, universities and educational associations, mayoral associations, sustainability and environmental nonprofits, and philanthropic leaders.

Together, county by county, we will begin to transform our Garden State through spirited, ground-breaking discussions which challenge the status-quo and encourage new partnerships and strategies that have the potential for reinvigorating the local and statewide economy while strengthening the fabric of our communities. In the coming weeks, we will announce the schedule for the upcoming Community Creativity Convenings, and we will keep you informed as new convenings are announced.

The power of this transformation lies in the infinite capabilities of each and every New Jerseyan as we meet at the intersection of our sectors. So, join us at the crossroads, and let us know if you are interested in working with Creative New Jersey in hosting a Community Creativity Convening in your town.

Inquiries regarding joining the Creative New Jersey movement and/or hosting a Community Creativity Convening should be sent to Elizabeth Murphy at emurphy[at]creativenj[dot]org.

Creative New Jersey’s leaders and partners are regular contributors to the Dodge blog

Laura Otten, Executive Director of the LaSalle University Nonprofit Center, has been the lead consultant working with the Dodge Foundation to design a comprehensive board training series, now in its fourth successful year. If you have missed a workshop or would like to share some of the key “take-aways” with your colleagues, check out the Dodge Foundation’s Board Leadership Training Video Series. There are interviews with each of the workshop trainers on key board development issues including: the most critical issues facing boards today; the importance of understanding organizational lifecycles; implementing assessment practices that measure what matters; strategic planning tips; and how to recruit and keep strong board members.

A sample video from our most recent Care and Feeding of Board Members workshop is below. However, if you are interested in the topic of improving your board engagement through the creation of more productive board meetings, we suggest you read the complete blog post…it just might be what you need to transform your board.

Want to rachet up your board’s performance? Change your agenda.

By Laura Otten

My 23-year old son has his first board meeting for a nonprofit coming up. He is so excited, so thrilled at the opportunity to help, a bit nervous that they view him as a finance “expert” but his joy at the prospects of this board service is palpable. I hope he’s equally excited after the meeting.

This fear is not just a mother’s fear; it is a fear I have for the vast majority of board members attending their first meetings. Though I’ve no scientific information to bear this out, my anecdotal information is overwhelming: nonprofits lose more board members through boredom at meetings than they do through fear of fundraising! Think about that. And funny thing about this is that you can turn a boring meeting into an engaging meeting in far shorter course than you can turn a reluctant fundraiser into a confident one.

Oddly, what makes board meetings so boring is the fact that the vast majority of boards do not do board work at board meetings! It is really that simple. If you look at a typical meeting agenda for most boards, it looks something like this:

XYZ Center Board Meeting: 20 January 2012

8:00am-9:30am

Approval of the minutes of the last board meeting

Reports

• Executive Director Report

• Finance Committee Report

• Committee A Report

• Committee B Report

• Committee C Report

• Committee D Report

New Business

Adjourn

This process, start to finish, can take anywhere from 1.5 hours to three hours, or even five or six (as I hear far more often than I should). Assuming a board is meeting every month or every other month, a typical board meeting should last no more than two hours, with 1.5 hours being an ideal. Obviously, grappling with a large or particularly contentious issue might force a board meeting, on occasion, to go beyond that time frame, but that absolutely should be the exception rather than the rule.

In following this agenda, however, a board is not doing board work; it is merely collecting data, albeit data that it needs to do good board work. But when board meetings focus on learning about things that have already happened, things over which board members have no control—as they have already happened—boards are not doing their work. They are being sponges, soaking up important data, but data they should be using to move an organization forward, not simply absorbing; they are learning about what happened instead of thinking about what could and/or should be. This data should be shared and absorbed in advance of a meeting, so that board members are equipped to use that data productively at board meetings. (Compounding the boredom factor is that far too often these reports are simply read aloud at meetings, taking away from board members any initiative they might have.)

I can guarantee you that no board member joins a board because s/he wants to be a sponge. Rather, they, as you might expect, want to make a difference, make a contribution, give back, help others, etc. In order for any of these to happen, we must engage people’s brains; droning on about what has passed just doesn’t do that.

So, what do you? There are multiple options, none of them scary in and of themselves; they are only scary in that each signals change. All, however, must address both form—or content—and function.

Flipping the agenda

Beginning with form, the easiest, and least radical, is to simply flip the order of your agenda. Start off meetings by discussing new business. The very name of this agenda item tells you it hasn’t already passed and suggests that this is about exploring things going forward. Reversing your agenda immediately shakes things up and starts meetings off in a vibrant manner, engaging people and their brains. You should expect to see people showing up on time, eager to participate and help influence the future. Board members may even start to see the difference between being engaged and being a sponge.

Strategic Question Agenda

If you want to try something more radical, then frame your agenda as a series of strategic questions, rather than as reports. Questions which require answers yield board engagement and discussion. So, rather than listing “Executive Director’s Report,” have the Board President and Executive Director, when putting the agenda together, pull from the executive director’s report one key strategic question that flows from the report. It could be about declining participation of clients or staff turnover or responding to common pushbacks the organization is getting from funders or how to translate success in one key area of the mission work into another. The goal here is twofold: one, engage board members and let them do what it is they are supposed to do—and want to do—as a board and, two, help propel the organization forward by playing to strengths and correcting weaknesses. It is a huge mistake to think that the only time an organization and, therefore, a board engage in strategic thinking is during its triennial strategic planning process.

Using a strategic question agenda model, your agenda might look like this:

XYZ Center Board Meeting: 20 January 2012

8:00am-9:30am

Approval of the minutes of the last meeting

Executive Director: What strategies might we enlist to stem declining enrollment/attendance?

Finance Committee:

• Contributed income has continued to decline over the past 12 months; what are potential earned income sources that we should explore?
• How shall we fund the 7% shortfall projected for this current fiscal year?

Program Committee: What is the gap—50%, 33%, none– we are willing to tolerate for programs that have high mission fit but do not cover their costs?

Development Committee: Our tweeting campaign has brought in 30 new contributors in the two months; how should we design a program that will maximize the conversion of these new contributors into long-term contributors?

Governance Committee: We are having trouble finding candidates matching demographic A and D and having expertise in area X; where might we look/what might we try that we haven’t yet done?

New Business

Adjourn

Reports have to go out in advance of the board meeting so that board members have the opportunity to read them and each strategic question would come directly out of the content of each of those reports. Should board members have other elements of a committee report they wish to bring up, they could, but the focus is on addressing the big picture items that the data contained in reports reveal.

The Consent Agenda

Moving up the radical scale of agenda change, next would come a consent agenda. The rationale behind a consent agenda is not, as the suspicious folk on a board think, to hide or gloss over information, but rather to provide the information that is crucial for doing real board work to be distributed and absorbed in advance of the meeting so that at the meeting the board maximizes its meeting time to do the real work of the board.

To be successful in implementing a consent agenda, first must come a clear understanding of why a board would want to move to a consent agenda and a full board commitment to make that move. Then, second, must come an agreement as to what will be included in that consent agenda—generally, anything that is merely providing information and status updates, such as committee reports (but never the finance committee), executive director report, etc. What is put under the consent agenda does not vary meeting to meeting, but is constant. Third, as part of this agreement, board members must understand that they are agreeing to read those reports in advance of when the board meeting agenda is set so that, should they have something they want pulled from the consent agenda and added to the discussion portion of the agenda, they have time to notify the board president and request that the item be pulled. And fourth, the board must agree to the time line: when is the agenda set and how much in advance of that do they need to receive the reports so that they can read them and, if necessary, request something be pulled.

With a consent agenda, your agenda would look like:

XYZ Center Board Meeting: 20 January 2012

8:00am-9:30am

• Approval of the Consent Agenda
• Executive Director’s Report, item 3
• Development Committee’s Report, item 4
• Review and discussion of finance report
• Insert here: key strategic question(s) that needs the board’s input

New Business

Adjourn

The first three items on the sample agenda, above, should take, on average, no more than 15 minutes, leaving 1.25 to 1.75 hours for the finance report and solid, deliberate discussions on matters of key importance to the future of the organization and its ability to deliver on its mission promises. At the meeting, it is imperative, and this cannot be stressed enough, that the Board Chair/President control this portion of the agenda tightly. S/he simply says, “Do I have a motion to accept the consent agenda?” There is a first, and a second but there is no discussion. This is where tight control must happen. If any person says, “I am just reading the Executive Director’s report now and I want to discuss item 2 now,” the Chair must say, “Sorry; you needed to read the Report ahead of time and call/email your request ahead of planning the agenda.” The Chair cannot waiver on this protocol, or make exceptions.

The Strategic Agenda

The last agenda option, equally as “radical” as a consent agenda is a strategic agenda. Here, the agenda mirrors your strategic priorities. It would like this:

XYZ Center Board Meeting: 20 January 2012

8:00am-9:30am

I. Expand Educational Program into East Side: Documentation of need (Program Committee), Analysis of program profitability (Finance), Potential board member from East Side (Board Development)

II. Increase profitability: Analysis of overall agency profitability (Finance); Proposed change in insurance agency (Finance)

III. Development of Information Systems: Discussion of new technology plan (Executive Director); Consideration of capital investment needs (Finance); Report on staff needs (Personnel)

IV. Finance Report

V. Approve minutes of last meeting

VI. Adjourn

Items I-III, above, are the three strategic priorities in current play. Each committee or individual working on some aspect of helping to implement this priority reports his/her/its work to date. In this process, several things happen:

1. The strategic plan remains a living document that is guiding the organization;
2. The plan is monitored on a regular basis, thereby allowing adjustments to happen, if needed, then and there, not months later after things have stalled; and
3. The board meeting is interactive and being used to move the organization forward along a structured course.

There is no generic right or wrong among these options. Each and all of these different agenda add more interaction, engagement and strategic thinking into a board meeting than the traditional agenda pointed out at the start of this blog. The right one is the one that will help propel the board and, therefore, the organization forward. For organizations feeling “bold”, carpe momento, grab a new, stretch agenda and ratchet up your board’s performance. Allow board members to do what they signed on to do: build a strong organizational future and mission delivery to the community.

Stayed tuned: next month Laura Otten talks about how to run an effective board meeting.

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

In his 1991 essay, “Slow Down for Poetry,” former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand wrote that poetry invites us to step out of the pace of our everyday lives and slow down.  It requires we change the speed at which we usually absorb information.  We can’t skim over a poem the way we do newspaper or website pages.  With poetry, we pause to meditate over a line, phrase or image, rereading passages, stanzas, whole poems many times.  We don’t so much slow down for poetry as allow poetry to slow us down.

Speaking to students at the 2006 Dodge Festival, current U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine said that everyone needs to find their poetry.  Poetry, for him, was the one thing that engaged all the many aspects of himself, that made him feel most fulfilled, most true to his truest self.  He said that everyone needs to find something like this in their lives.  For some people, like Levine, it’s poetry, but it could be any art, or work, or hobby.

We’ve all had the experience of being so deeply absorbed in something—creative work, meditation, conversation—that we lose all sense of time.  We look at the clock and are shocked by how much later it is than we’d thought, or, we complete a challenging task and discover with focused attention it took a fraction of the time anticipated.

Perhaps we don’t need to slow down for poetry so much as to allow ourselves to make the time to forget time.  There is no better way to do this than to make time for our poetry, whatever that is: gardening, wood working, playing or listening to music, dancing, yoga, reading or writing.  It is particularly important to do this when we are certain we have no time.  During periods of my life when adding anything extra to my schedule seemed impossible if not downright insane, I would set the alarm a little earlier to create time for silent reading in the early morning.  I’m certain that’s how I got through those stressful times.

And let us not make “resolutions” to do this, as if to do what brings us joy requires resolve.  Instead, let’s make gifts, little gifts to ourselves of an evening here or there, or even fifteen minutes in the morning, to do something we find fulfilling.  You might discover it is poetry.  But whatever it is, allowing ourselves time for it is not a selfish act.  Doing what brings us fulfillment makes us less impatient, less frustrated, calmer and more centered.  It makes us easier to be around, which makes us better friends, partners, citizens, parents and co-workers.  Of course, we already know this.  Perhaps the first gift is to allow ourselves to act on what we know about ourselves.

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For more information about the Dodge Poetry Festival and programs, visit www.dodgepoetry.org
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