OCB Update from the Preservation Trust

Hello all! In my last post (November), the Trust was encouraging the City of Spartanburg to pursue a city-wide historic survey grant to identify properties and structures. We were not sure if they would support this idea; however, after some great meetings with the Planning Department, the grant application for a city-wide survey was approved. The Trust wrote a majority of the survey and the City is finalizing it and submitting it to the SC Department of Archives and History this month.

The Trust also had a wonderful opportunity to tour the Beaumont Mill neighborhood and the Pacolet area, both historically significant communities with passionate people behind them.

I attended my final OCB meeting on January 4th and will be missing our February meeting due to the upcoming birth of my son! I want to thank Amy Page and the Mary Black Foundation for leading our OCB group through this great process and encouraging meetings and blogs. The blogs have been a great way to organize my thoughts and our grant process AND it encouraged me to create my own personal blog. Thank you for introducing this form of communication!

Update from the Preservation Trust

In our monthly update, I wanted to bring my fellow OCB grantees up to speed on our progress:

We continue to run our board meetings with streamlined measures and have recently adopted updated by-laws, attendance policy, and a board member responsibility policy. Our Governance Committee has been hard at work to complete and present all of these policies and subsequent documents.

Our consultant is currently working on specific documents to streamline some of our daily operations; these will help us implement an organizational plan he is preparing and assist our small staff in prioritizing our work for the future.

I mentioned in the last post that we are encouraging the City of Spartanburg to apply for grant funding from the State Department of Archives and History for a city-wide survey of historic resources (neighborhoods, buildings, etc). This is moving forward and we are looking forward to the outcome!

Also, we recently created and implemented a customer satisfaction survey for those we serve. This includes people who use us as a resource (for example, our owner-occupied rehabilitation grant receipients) and our homebuyers. This step was long overdue in our organization, and we had a great response rate. In the next few months, we plan to revise the survey so we can poll on a more regular basis. We so appreciate feedback and realize that even criticism can be useful, constructive, and help us make positive changes.

On a closing note, I want to say how much I enjoyed our last meeting with Terry Hypes and Big Brothers Big Sisters (ask to see his fabulous video with Mayor Barnet) and am looking forward to our meeting tomorrow morning with Cindi at The Haven.

Rebecca Parrish

More from the Preservation Trust

Hello again fellow OCB grantees,
In my last post, I mentioned that I would write again after our Annual Board meeting. We held this board meeting at the Spartanburg Public Library (Hoescht-Celeanse Room) on Wednesday, September 26th. We had a great turnout and were able to adopt new policies created by our Governance Committee. Best of all, we have really streamlined our board meeting process to "cut the fat" and take less time, a change appreciated by busy board members and staff alike.

As an organization, part of our visioning for our future includes understanding our housing stock within the City of Spartanburg and identifying historic neighborhoods that can benefit from our assistance. We realize that a city-wide housing survey of such neighborhoods is essential and will be presenting to the City of Spartanburg Historic Architectural Review Board next week to encourage them to advocate and seek grant funds for this survey. This will, obviously, be a piece of the puzzle for our future, but it will also benefit everyone in the bigger picture. Understanding neighborhoods connects us with residents and their needs; it can spotlight our schools, transportation, need for parks, health services, etc.

We are turning in our progress on both of these fronts to our consultant so that we can move forward with the remaining strategic plan, per our OCB grant. I'll keep you posted on the progress...thanks!

Closer to answers...our OCB grant

Hello everyone! The last time I wrote, the Preservation Trust was awaiting deliverables from our hired help, consultant Bruce Lyon, and we are one step closer in that process.

To help our board gain strength, Bruce sent out an board member self evaluation form. For any of you who have not done this before, I think it is a must. Boards should evaluate themselves (just like they do with staff) once per year. It has been eye-opening to review their thoughts. We are using the information to change several things about our board structure, meetings, and board understanding.

Right now our board is on the "large side" according to many advisors, including the folks at SCANPO. We are evaluating not only our board size but also our board skill set and participation levels. After some training with Allison Black Cornelius, we installed a Governance Committee to evaluate our bylaws, policies, committees, and meeting structure. They are suggesting some changes, including updating our bylaws, understanding legal rights and requirements, create policies specific to board members (ie, Attendence Policy and Complaint Resolution Procedure), and educating in our board meetings rather than updating.

We are hoping to institute some of these changes at our annual board meeting in September. Bruce Lyon has already conducted our board retreat (May) and will be submitting a needs assessment, organizational work plan, and financial forecasting plan for our organization.

Rebecca Parrish

Computer Lending Program

As Curt and I have mentioned previously, the Foundation has implemented a Computer Lending program for our grantees. We have two laptop computers and two LCD projectors that can be checked-out of the Lending Library. Several of your OCB colleagues have already used this new program. If you are interested in borrowing a computer and/or projector, please contact Cece Brown at 573-9500.

Just checking in

Hello Everyone
Well I will admit that it has been awhile since I have logged on to the blog but I also will say that I thoroughly enjoyed my first OCB Cluster Meeting at TOTAL ministries. Since I am new to Spartanburg these meetings are providing me an opportunity to learn more about the agencies and organizations in our city - well at least those in my cluster.

Rebecca - well not sure if you are the first one to spend all of your money -I am whittling away at it. Our grant was provided to solicit additional funding for our office through membership recruitment. So far I have had special remittance envelopes printed, had them inserted in two our newsletters and am now working on getting a prospect letter out. The first letter will go to those on our mailing list - since they are already familiar with our work I am hoping to have success there before venturing out to cold lists.

Looking forward to the next OCB cluster 2 meeting - hosted by Preservation Trust.
Angela

Training on Leadership Succession

The NeighborWorks Training Institute is hosting a full-day symposium called, Preparing for Success and Succession: Maximizing Opportunity at a Time of Leadership Change, on August 15, 2007 in Washington DC. According to the brochure, two-thirds of nonprofits will face a leadership transition over the next three years. This looks like a great training full of information that is important for all nonprofits to consider.

To register, go to www.nw.org/onlinereg