Tools, Rules, and Schools for Volunteer Leaders

On Tuesday, March 17, Tom Libby and Scott Elkins, co-leads of the Chapter & Leader Support Team will host a conference call to talk about the various support teams they're coordinating and how they might help you.

March 17  --  8 pm Eastern  |  7 pm Central  |  6 pm Mountain  |  5 pm Pacific

1-866-501-6174 -- 1892-005

Here's what Tom calls his "elevator speech" --

I'm the volunteer co lead of the Chapter and Leader Support implementation team of the Sierra Club. We are the team of tools, rules, and schools for our volunteer leaders; the basic organizational functions that leaders in the club use to carry out the Club's mission. 

Our areas of focus include

• Providing training for specific Club roles
• Providing coordination of communications and new technologies
• Providing a foundation for developing fundraising programs
• Providing coaching for increasing leadership and organizing
• Providing the counsel of trained mediators for conflict resolution
• Providing guidance for by laws, standing rules and elections

Our leaders are the backbone of the environmental movement. Their ability to be effective and efficient in their work is critical to restoring the planet. 

Join Tom and Scott on Tuesday, March 17. Once again, here's the call-in number and times.

And March 24, Robin Mann and Mary Wells will host a discussion about Campaigns & Programs. See the full schedule here.

We need people with skills in each of these areas to help us develop
programs and procedures to support our leaders.

What kinds of skills might you have you could share?

Transitioning to Climate Recovery Partnership Campaign Leadership

Here's a note to volunteer leaders from Robin Mann and Mary Wells, the coordinating pair for Campaigns & Programs.

Already, 2009 is shaping up to be a year of great change for the country.  As Allison Chin noted recently in a Club-wide message, “we find ourselves in a transformed landscape -- having to be proactive, not defensive, and working at a much faster pace and with greater flexibility than at any other time in our 116-year history.”

In the past two years, we have taken the reorganizational steps necessary to position the Sierra Club as a leader of a nimble and powerful movement. Through the Climate Recovery Partnership, we have identified and are designing and implementing six national campaigns to reduce carbon emissions; change how we build our cars, buildings and communities; and ensure that the wildlife and wild places we have worked so hard to protect for more than a century will survive global warming.

Since we began to design the Climate Recovery Partnership, there has been dramatic change in the context of our work. To an even greater extent than we anticipated, the new political climate, together with the economic crisis, call on us to meld our proven effectiveness in slowing down and stopping bad things with proactive strategies to advance solutions.

This memo is intended to provide clarity about transitioning to new leadership entities for our national priority conservation work as we proceed towards the launch of the Climate Recovery Partnership campaigns.  The arrangement we are putting in place is intended to ensure continuity in the volunteer leadership of our national policy work, and consistency with Project Renewal principles and structures.

The Move Beyond Coal Campaign is launched and in full operation, however the other campaigns are still in the design phase.  Nevertheless, federal policy work initiated under the leadership of the Conservation Initiative Committees -- and of high priority for the coming campaigns -- must be continued, even as we shift to new leadership entities.  As a result, the leadership of the 5 additional campaigns is being asked to assume interim responsibility from the now-sunsetted Conservation Initiative Committees for oversight of ongoing federal policy work while, at the same time, the planning and fundraising for the campaigns proceeds. 

The staff and volunteer leads for the 6 Climate Recovery Partnership campaigns are listed below.  As Coordinating Pair for the Campaigns, we are recruiting the remaining volunteer members for the teams, in consultation with the Campaign Team leads. Appointments will be completed by early February.

Move Beyond Coal

• Campaign Director: Bruce Nilles (staff)
• Campaign Chair: Verena Owen (volunteer)

Curbing Carbon

• Campaign Director:  Dave Hamilton (staff)
• Campaign Chair:  Fred Heutte (volunteer)

Clean Energy Solutions

• Campaign Director: Alex Levinson (staff)
• Campaign Chair:  Dick Fiddler (volunteer)

Green Cars, Fuels and Transportation

• Campaign Director: Ann Mesnikoff (staff)
• Campaign Chair:  John Holtzclaw (volunteer)

Resilient Habitats

• Campaign Director: Bruce Hamilton (staff)
•   Campaign Chair:  Don Parks (volunteer)

Safeguarding Communities

• Campaign Director:  TBA
• Campaign Chair:  Doris Cellarius (volunteer)

[You can find this leadership roster and more here in Clubhouse.]

The Climate Recovery Partnership Campaign Teams will play the leading role in setting the goals and strategies for the Club’s work in their focus areas. Their leadership teams will be responsible for developing collaborative efforts with chapters and building broad engagement among the Club’s activists in the work of the campaign. The Campaigns will also provide direction setting for additional work aligned with the campaigns that will be initiated and led by national issue teams.

The national issue teams/committees, which lead national conservation policy implementation work outside of or augmenting the work led by the Climate Recovery Campaigns, are networked in the Activist Network and conduct project-based work funded by the Activist Network Support Team.

In some cases, an Activist Network Team's work will overlap with the focus of a Climate Recovery Partnership Campaign, and in those instances coordination with the Campaign Leadership Team will be important to avoid conflict and confusion. Climate Recovery Campaign Leadership Teams will need to set the strategy, tactics, and messaging around campaign-related issues, and we will ask the relevant Activist Network Team to align its efforts with the direction set by the Campaign Leadership Team. We need to make sure that we speak with one voice in communicating about these issues to the public, or to elected officials. 

We will provide additional, more detailed guidance on this coordination soon, and as the Coordinating Pair for the Campaigns, we will provide ongoing consultation to help avoid conflicts and address them if they arise.

Building engagement of the chapters in the work of the national campaigns will be critical to their success, and as a result, state-level objectives will be identified for the campaigns in consultation with chapter staff and volunteer representatives, in order to build opportunities for state-level and national collaboration into the campaigns. 

Ensuring coordination among the Climate Recovery Partnership Campaign Leadership Teams will also be essential.  We will be working with the Teams to identify the best ways to ensure regular opportunities to share information, coordinate activity and consult each other.

We look forward to working with all of the teams to launch their campaigns and bring their important work to full speed!

Breaking the Acronym Habit

[A suggestion from Allison Chin and Carl Pope to make the Club more user-friendly.] 

The Sierra Club has a long cultural tradition, which we both acknowledge, of developing acronyms. We want to suggest that we try to break this habit, because it is one of the things -- perhaps only a small one, but something we can do something about -- that divides our organization into insiders and outsiders, and makes it less friendly to new folks.

We have just completed Project Renewal. Two of our new Advisory Committees -- Visibility and Mission Strategy -- seem, thus far, to stand on their own. But we already have both FARM for the Finance and Risk Management Committee, and VLAC for the Volunteer Leadership Advisory Committee.

The two of us would like to suggest that each committee pick a one or two word short version of its title, one that will convey to the newcomer what the main focus of the committee is -- and then use that one or two word short version consistently instead of the acronym. Among our other acronyms, "excom" is in wide public use, so we don't think it confuses many folks. But CCL (Council of Club Leaders) is very confusing and actually takes longer to say than "Council." Nomcom is in somewhat broad public use, but we'd like to replace it with Nominating Committee to avoid confusion.

The culture of acronyms comes, originally, from the military. We generally try to avoid excessive copying of military culture in the Sierra Club. Could we all agree to stop aping acro-mania? Maybe make the Club an acronym-free zone? (Would that be an AFZ?)

Highlights from the Annual Meeting

Here's a note from Club President Allison Chin.

Where to start with highlights from the Annual Meeting? It must be with the Awards Dinner because it is always so, so inspiring.

The room was abuzz with good conversation, new and old friends, and topped off by Dr. Wayburn who joined us at age 102. For me as the Club's new president, it was the first time I had the honor of introducing our award winners. And what an honor! They are testament to the depth and breadth of talent working today on behalf of the environment.

Equally inspiring:

 
• We had a great discussion on Saturday afternoon about the political scene, and the ways that Sierra Club leaders are already making a difference in this pivotal election. I particularly want to direct you to the Club's Road to Victory web site developed to connect Club members in every state with our work and members in the highest priority electoral states. These states are critical to victory for our endorsed presidential candidate, Barack Obama, and to expanding the environmental majorities in the U.S. House, Senate and state legislatures.     
 
• There is also important news to report about our Climate Recovery work, which we're now calling the Climate Recovery Partnership. The Board approved a new, sixth campaign, Curbing Carbon, to focus on key federal policy and international treaties. You can find the draft "strategic briefs" for this campaign and three others now on Clubhouse. I urge you to review these briefs, and participate in the accompanying grassroots survey, which addresses important strategic questions and options. The deadline for the survey is September 30th so don't delay!      
  
  
  
 
• Finally, we had some of the best discussion ever between the Board and Council of Club Leaders (CCL). I'm going to save this news for outgoing CCL chair Lane Boldman, and a later email. As a quick preview, we discussed trends and changes to the Club's revenue that create new budget challenges, as well as how the Club could approach "business partnerships" and "chapter funding allocations." We're just getting this information up on Clubhouse now, along with information about changes and transitions resulting from Project Renewal.  

Stay tuned. There's more information and highlights to come in the days ahead.

Project Renewal Transition Team Memo from Robbie Cox

Date: 23 March 2008

To: Sierra Club Leaders

From: Robbie Cox

The Project Renewal Transition Team was approved on the Board’s March 21st conference call. Directors unanimously approved Robbie’s appointments and Carl reported on the staff assignments.

President Robbie Cox on Project Renewal

February 25, 2008

Dear Sierra Club Leaders:

This weekend, the Sierra Club Board adopted "Project Renewal: A Proposal to the Sierra Club Board of Directors." This will restructure our national volunteer governance to make it more responsive to the tremendous challenges -- and tremendous opportunities -- we will face in the coming years, with increased support for grassroots, chapters, and priority conservation campaigns.

The Board also charged me, as President, and the Executive Director to move immediately to establish a transition team that will plan the implementation of the approved structure. We will have this team in place for Board approval by mid-March. Our recommendation at that time will be to move expeditiously to establish a transition plan that will allow us to move our central operational and activist functions into the new structure as quickly as possible with minimal disruption of the good work that our national volunteers and staff are doing.

I want to assure you that we will make this process as transparent as possible, and will reach out as widely as possible to volunteers and activists as we make the transition to our new structure. Principles strongly endorsed by the Board are that existing committees will continue to operate until their essential functions have found a place in the new system, that volunteer budget allocations for 2008 will be honored for all funds committed by May 1, and that 2008 work will move forward during the transition process. Both Executive Director Carl Pope and I pledge that we will continue the practice of open communication that has guided this process through its evolution.

Finally, I would like to thank all the national and local leaders who have taken the time to ask questions, pose challenges and share opinions with the Project Renewal team as they developed this plan. Without this input, the final product would not be nearly as strong as it is. I now encourage all of you to turn this same energy and attention to helping us build a new national structure that will enable us to respond to the dramatic changes in America and throughout the world, and, in particular, to the unprecedented challenges facing all environmental issues due to global climate change.

Sincerely,

Robbie Cox, President

Project Renewal Proposal Ready for Board Vote

Hundreds of Club leaders have offered feedback and suggestions on Project Renewal -- primarily by posting comments in the Clubhouse Forum or participating in one or more of the six Club-wide conference calls.

The Organizational Change Steering Committee has revised the proposal in light of this input and has now forwarded this new proposal to the Board of Directors, which will vote on it at its meeting in Atlanta February 21-22.

You can read the proposal here: (doc) (pdf)

And here's a chart showing the proposed structure:

Board Candidate Forum Now Online

Each of the 11 board candidate answers 16 questions posed by the Organizational Effectiveness govcom. See it all here.

Seeking New Nominating Committee Members

Suggestions for Nominating Committee for 2009 Board Election Sought

Four two-year appointments are open on the Nominating Committee, which will be proposing candidates for the 2009 Board Election. The appointments are made by the President and confirmed by the Executive Committee. The open positions need to be filled by March 2008.

NomCom members must be: