Focus Group: Saturday, June 23

You are all cordially invited to our first Strategic Planning Focus group.  The event is Saturday, June 23rd, from 10 am to 1 pm, and we'll serve pizza for everyone who can stay to the end. 

With less than a year to go before the inaugural long retreat at SCOL, KCC is setting out a strategic plan for our future.  As any organization grows, it must consider weighty topics in order to continue to meet its core mission.  For KCC, that mission "is to support practitioners in their process of spiritual awakening. The emphasis in the training is on the cultivation of insight and compassion in both formal meditation and in daily life."  This first focus group gets to the heart of that mission--our programs. 

In preparation for the meeting, we've created a worksheet to help you pre-think some of the topics (see the bottom of this post).  And, if you can't make the meeting, consider filling it out and returning it to Dora DeCoursey; instructions are on the sheet.  We've also included some contextual information--useful even if you can't come.

We hope you can come join us.  KCC is a trust held by all members, and we know that keeping it aligned with its mission is so important to the sangha.  If you can't make this meeting, there are three more throughout the summer.  Put them on your calendar and come when you can:

Sunday, July 8, 2 pm to 5 pm

Our Urban Center: Finding our new home

Saturday, July 21, 10 am to 1 pm

Our Selfless Service: Working together

Saturday,  August 4, 10 am to 1 pm

Our Financial Resources: Creating the means to flourish

Hope to see you Saturday--

Focus Group Handout (Programs)

Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

Below is a document Bill Spangle prepared for the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC).  Bill and Dora will be doing retreat most of the month of February at SCOL's winter retreat and they won't be able to attend the next two meetings.  In it, Bill outlines in very clear terms KCC's current position, the situation of the planning process, and the next steps we confront.  The SPC hasn't had a chance to discuss it formally in a meeting yet, but there was quite a bit of enthusiasm about putting this out in front of the whole Sangha as soon as possible. 

We want members of the Sangha to have the opportunity to comment on and influence this process while it's happening.  As you'll see, Bill has already incorporated SWOT results into his analysis.  It is a very useful document--easily worth the 5-10 minutes it will take to read and digest.  If you have feedback, please use the comments section below.  

________

These are some ideas to get thinking started for the strategic plan goals and preparation for the Leadership retreat. There are three parts:

• A review of progress since the last vision statement.
• A summary of current situation based largely on the SWOT process.
• Some thoughts on the next steps leading up to the leadership retreat and the focus groups.

A Review—

Ready for action.

At the time the Vision statement was drafted many of the items in the vision were in fact just ideas, shared visions of the future. In the 13 years that have passed, many of the elements of the vision have come to life in some way. The sparely stated intention to create a retreat facility has manifested in the acquisition and development of 7000 square feet of facilities at Ser Chö Ösel Ling and we now stand on the verge of beginning long retreats. To meet the growing needs of the sangha there are now 4 teachers at KCC, the Mahamudra program is in its 16th year at KCC, and the programs of instruction and retreats have expanded significantly. But some elements of the vision have only partly been implemented and others, most notably the vision for a new urban center, are still just ideas.

While the accomplishments are by themselves substantial, it is important to note that what the community did to accomplish these things has itself been transformative. The process of acquiring, planning and building the facilities at Ser Chö Ösel Ling has pushed both the organization and individuals to develop new skills and abilities and working relationships. Retreats, land stewardship activities and the task of managing Ser Chö Ösel Ling have had a significant impact as well. In the area of pastoral care, members of the community have risen to the challenges of supporting each other through birth, old age, sickness, and death. Families have come together for mutual support. Long time members have deepened their practice, and a new stream of younger people have become associated with KCC. It is clear that the community itself has matured and evolved along the way.

Current resources and challenges—
Based on this review of the recent history and the sense of the current situation derived from the SWOT process it is possible to put together a sense of the resources and challenges KCC now faces.

Categorized SWOT Questionnaire Responses

Below is a rather detailed document collecting together all the responses we received to our questionnaire prior to the Sangha-wide SWOT meeting.  Bonnie M. and Dora D. worked together to sort the responses and put them broadly in like categories.  Within those categories, responses are divided into their respective categories--strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats/challenges.  These are the general categories Bonnie and Dora identified:

• Teachers 
• Programs and Teachings
• Sangha
• Volunteer/Staffing
• Organizational
• Facilities
• SCOL
• Larger Community
• Miscellaneous

This is a brainstormed list and represents the broadest group of ideas we have to work with.  Over time, we'll hone it down to five or six items.  Beginning in late March or early April, we'll begin to have sangha focus groups to focus those larger categories into strategic items.  (Under facilities, the strategic item may be "secure a larger urban center with a commercial kitchen and rooms sufficient to host study groups, the children's program, and offices," for example.)  The document is long, but if you have some time, scan through it and notice the depth of thinking from the Sangha and also areas of anxiety, opportunity, conflict, and inspiration.  They are all excellent grist for a juicy strategic plan!

(Also, note that there is a button that allows you to download the document so you don't have to read it in the window on this blog.)

Categorized Responses to SWOT Questionairre

After the SWOT, Formulating Issues and Focal Points

On January 14th, the KCC Sangha met to discuss KCC's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats/challenges (SWOT).  This work was a preliminary step in beginning to hone down the major categories of strategic focus.  As a way of transitioning into that next step, meeting organizers asked attendees to fill out 3x5 cards and identify the areas that seemed most pressing to them.  It was a good time to get a first sense of things--the SWOT items and discussion were freshly in mind.  Peter F graciously agreed to take the cards you filled out and collapse them into categories.  There were, of course, a lot of answers given by just one or two people.  (Peter's chart is at the end of this post.)  Four responses, however, were given by large numbers of people, and two others were also mentioned frequently.  Have a look:

1. Communication (28)
2. Fundraising and financial transparency (27)
3. Volunteers; organizing, management, mentoring (27)
4. Urban Center (22)
5. Program and practice groups (13)
6. Succession (11)

On Monday following that meeting, members of the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) met and we spent the majority of the meeting further discussing these categories.  One of the difficulties is thinking about how to frame these categories conceptually.  With little effort, we can divide KCC's activities into major areas--facilities, finances, operations, volunteers, programs, communications.  But these categories alone don't suggest a strategic orientation.  It's easy enough to imagine that the strategy for one or more of these categories is just "continue with current practices." 

A panoramic view of the January 16 meeting of the Strategic Planning Committee.

Take the urban center as one example.  We have known for well over a decade that the current site at 73 NE Monroe is inadequate--too small, too few meeting rooms.  But what is our strategic goal?  Do we merely want a bigger center, or do we want a different center, and if so, what kind?  Asking these questions is more useful than just identifying categories--they help bring the larger category in to sharper focus. After kicking ideas around for an hour, members of the SPC began to get a deeper sense of what we were actually looking for--and realized we had a lot more work in front of us.

What are your thoughts?  If you were limited to five or six strategic initiatives over the next five years, what would they be? 

At the next SPC meeting (Monday, Jan 23), the committee will step back from this discussion in order to try to lay out a firmer timeline of events, with members identifying how much time and work they can commit to the process.  Then we'll be back at it, focusing back in on the strategic plan.


A document containing the aggregated list of suggested topics for KCC's strategic direction are below the jump.

Bylaws

Attached are KCC's bylaws.

KCC Bylaws