Message from the President
Message from the President
In the last newsletter, I touched on our collective strength born from the principles of strong family values, allowing us to better serve the families of our community. Today, I want to expand on that theme and talk about the role we play as good stewards of our resources in the context of our culture, our people, and our community.
Discussing resources seems an appropriate topic at this time of the year. If you consider yourself an Alaskan, you live for the summer and fall and all the associated bounties. Alaska is alive and teeming with subsistence activities and people are out "fishing, hunting, and picking" for the season's many resources: salmon- pink, red, silver, and "king" sized ones; clams of all shapes and sizes; wild berries of all colors and shapes; moose; and the list goes on. We carry out our subsistence activities and respect the laws and the environment that protect us from depleting the natural resources.
There is a general frenzy of activity with nearly everyone satiating themselves in the first harvests before they begin the process of putting the surplus up for the winter. Without fail, those foods make their appearances throughout the winter months and early spring when those natural resources become scarce. Trading takes place between those who have surplus fish and those with an over abundance of berries and other harvests.
Not everyone is a moose hunter and not everyone likes to clam, but in the trading of our surplus foods, people enjoy the sampling of foods that they did not expend energy chasing or gathering. In this process, we've become efficient through specialization and we've developed a culture that respects the land and what it offers. We learn to share and allocate our food resources so that they last longer and are enjoyed by many throughout the year.
These subsistence activities, I believe, serve as a good model for a successful organization with a corporate culture banded together for the purpose of fulfilling its mission. As organizations, we become successful when we specialize and do the things we do well. We respect and safeguard our resources so that we can continue to share and provide for future needs. For example, as an affordable housing provider, we provide housing and related services to those who need it, and likewise, we rely on others to provide the support products and expertise necessary to carry out our mission.
With subsistence, we all have to play our part in preserving and safeguarding the resources so that we can continue to enjoy their bounties. Similarly, organizations must be good stewards of the resources they own, generate and are responsible for. We must be respectful and mindful of our obligation to safeguard and "nurture" our resources for the long-term benefit of our clients and our community.
To live up to those expectations, we need to be a successful and efficient organization. We need to be competent and have qualified staff that can do the job well so that we can plan for the future in a world of shrinking resources.
Good stewardship is key to our ability to continue to generate enough resources to feed our mission. We need to be cognizant of our responsibility to the next generation. As we begin to look at ways to generate more revenues, we begin to value our specializations as tools to our financial strength. Capitalizing on those specialties allows us to begin to market our human and intelligence resources to generate the revenues from activities we know best. For those of us in the not-for-profit world, we start to think and act like a business and we look toward becoming a "social enterprise."
Being good stewards is being principled and aligning our actions with our organizational values and goals with a community focus. Good stewardship allows – even requires each of us to concentrate on what we do best without the added burden of having to do everything. In the end, we share our capacities and resources, and we all win.
Carol