Planning for the Future

As CANI's Executive Director, there are a lot of great activities that I get to participate in. But one of my favorite events took place last week - our Board of Directors' strategic planning retreat.(No, I'm serious!) And since my blog actually came up in conversation during the retreat a couple of times, I thought it perfect to talk about it here.

The strategic planning retreat is one of my favorite events because it is the major step of a long and detailed process that sets CANI’s direction for the subsequent three years. Before the retreat we spend time and resources studying the needs of our clients and community and gathering input from those we serve. And after the retreat, we spend time fleshing out ideas and developing steps that will put our ideas into action. But it is at the retreat that our board discusses in detail what our broad strategies for the next three years will be.

It is exciting to me to bring together our group of dedicated, volunteer leaders to determine ways to better meet our mission. Our board already dedicates a great deal of time to CANI throughout the year, and yet they carve out a large chunk of time for this very important retreat. I was really proud to be among this group of people.

I can’t get into any specifics yet, as there is more work to be done over the next three months before we formally adopt a new strategic plan. But I can tell you a few things about the retreat. For one, the consensus of the group was greater than I would have normally expected. Most of the ideas that were put forth were universally agreed upon as key strategies for us to pursue. While every retreat inevitably leads to consensus to a degree, this retreat generated more than I have seen in the past. This level of support for our goals and objectives will invariably help us down the road as we work on implementation.

I can also say with pretty strong confidence that when our new strategic plan is released, you will see CANI continuing to work on goals and objectives that we have initiated in the past, as well as some brand new items that will enhance the work that we do. This has me particularly excited, because for one, we have more work to do on initiatives that we have started, despite making great strides on many of them. And I am also excited about the prospect of exploring new things as we work to become an even more effective organization at accomplishing our mission.

The new plan will be complete in January, 2013. I look forward to sharing it with you then. Now, back to work!

CANI's Mission or Why I Work at CANI

As I sit here contemplating what my first blog topic should be my mind keeps going back to our mission. After all, our mission is where it all starts. It’s what we’re all about. It dictates what every person in this organization does every day and how we do it.

And – while I love working at this place and love working with the people here – our mission is why I love this job so much.

CANI’s mission is to help communities, families, and individuals remove the causes and conditions of poverty. Sometimes, when we’re in a hurry to tell our story, we abbreviate that statement, and just say our mission is “to eliminate poverty.” While I think that is fine at times, our full mission statement is important because it conveys the full scope of what it will take to actually eliminate poverty in our community.

The first part of the statement talks about helping communities, families, and individuals. This is an important distinction. I usually describe this part of the mission as “macro” and “micro” level efforts.

Definitely, a very huge part of what we do every day is helping people on the “micro” level, with families and individuals themselves. Our basic philosophy is to reach every family and individual who lives in poverty and provide services in a timely, coordinated manner, so that they can leave poverty behind forever. (I will cover this more in my next post.)

But poverty is also impacted by bigger, “macro” types of issues like the systems and policies that affect people and the economic conditions in which they live. Tackling these issues requires work in advocacy, system-building, capacity-building, and economic development.

The second half of our mission statement is just as important as the first: “remove the causes and conditions of poverty.”

Obviously, our greatest hope is to get to the root causes of poverty, because ultimately that’s where true, lasting change will occur. We would much rather “teach someone how to fish” rather than “give fish away.” In fact, the bulk of what we do is developing programs and designing systems that help families get at the root causes of the issues they face.

However, to comprehensively fight poverty, we cannot ignore the conditions of poverty.

This is where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies in our world – people need to have their basic needs met before they can concentrate on higher needs. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to focus on things like getting an education or building assets when you must be focused on things like how you’re going to eat today or where you will be sleeping tonight.

Can we ever eliminate poverty?

In my 12 years at CANI I’ve had many, many people tell me that we can’t. But I believe emphatically that we can! It’s a huge job – and it might take longer than I’ll be around – but here’s the very simple reason why I know we can do it…

I see families we serve leave poverty behind all the time.

Why do we presume that not everyone can do it, when we have proof that so many can? It’s CANI’s challenge, and privilege, to help all families and individuals in our community leave poverty behind forever.