MESSAGES
FROM KEN ROLLING
Needmor Board Chair 2008-Present
 
Community Organizing to establish a just society: Now More Than Ever.

I suspect that view of the goals and work of the Needmor Fund would have been uttered in various forms by every board and staff member serving the Fund throughout the first fifty years of our history. Over the years the Needmor Funds board and staff articulated their understanding of community organizing as a vehicle for social justice and for achieving change in our unjust world. The Fund's basic values- of promoting social justice through engaging poor and marginalized people in the work of establishing just living conditions for everyone in our communities- were established by the original founders and .gifters. of the Needmor Fund: the Stranahan family.

The Fund's current Board of Directors is a dynamic mix of Stranahan family and civic members. We gratefully take on this 50-year legacy of the Fund, to do our part to provide resources to organizations of engaged members who build powerful organizations intent on creating communities of caring and compassionate people. Needmor continues to support organizations that are committed to creating just living conditions in our increasingly diverse world.

Now More Than Ever: A slogan perhaps. But for Needmor it challenges us to continue our commitment to promote just communities through participatory democracy that is created through strong and effective community organizing.

Our work is never complete. The Fund's board and staff look forward to furthering the legacy of our first fifty years and to increasing our impact together with our partner community organizations.

FROM DAVE BECKWITH
Needmor Executive Director
 
The Needmor Fund started more than fifty years ago as the charitable expression of the values of two people. Over the years, the people involved in Needmor have changed, the program has changed, and the governance has changed. That general sense of values has evolved into a Mission Statement, a Vision Statement, a Values Statement, Operating Policies, and Grantmaking Guidelines. Retreats have been held, debates have taken place, disagreements have been worked out, and words and phrases have been added or subtracted.  

When I interviewed with the Board of the Needmor Fund in December of 2002, they asked what my approach to grantmaking and Needmor would be. I explained that I have a lot to learn, but that I understand the mission statement of The Needmor Fund to be expressed in three words - "We fund organizing" - and that, as long as we agree on that, the rest is detail.

We agreed then, and it's still true.

We fund organizing.


FROM MARY STRANAHAN
Needmor Board Chair 2004-2007
 
In these dark times of increasing paranoia and the curbing of civil liberties our government seems to have lost the original meaning of “We the People” in the constitution. Needmor is about putting dollars in the hands of groups of people who are not fully included in “we the people,” so they can exercise their rights and hold their elected officials accountable for their actions. This is the basis of democracy.  

Community organizing helps put power in the hands of the disenfranchised so they can participate on an equal basis in this society. Through the years, Needmor has found that funding organizations of low and moderate income people to organize for power is the most democratic expression of citizenship that we know. We insist that there be a strong component of leadership development in each organization so we can build up that true participatory democracy. By supporting community organizing efforts we are supporting the democratic principle originally articulated in our constitution and bill of rights.

 

FROM GEORGE STRANAHAN
Past Needmor Board Chair 2001-2004
 
Progressives believe that not only is change inevitable, it is the very demand of progressivism; we are committed to moving forward into a more just society. The intended consequence of change is that organizations, such as Needmor itself, must learn and adapt too. Organizations must continually organize themselves, and I hear the voice of some wise community organizer saying to me, “All organizing is just reorganizing;” and another saying, “The first step in organizing is to challenge your own assumptions.”  

The Needmor community - Board, staff and grantees - led by our new Executive Director are making the Great Leap of challenging our assumptions and reorganizing. We expect to land on our feet, on firm ground, by mid-year 2004. Unquestionably we have learned a great deal about a changing world and nation, about changes in the field of community organizing, and about changes within our own organization. Because learning is exciting, we have had plenty of exciting moments! I take seriously this advice from J. S. Brown:

“The way forward is paradoxically to look not ahead but to look around.”

 We have looked around with some alarm, for we seem to be in a period where fears are overwhelming our dreams. Needmor will continue the dream of a more just society and will continue to fund organizing in the pursuit of that dream.