Getting clarity about what we want can lead us to rethink the very essence of the causes we support.
Imagine this scene: A researcher watches as a five-year-old girl draws a picture of her extended family. The girl grabs bright-colored crayons and carefully draws her smiling parents, brother, and sister in the middle of the paper. Then she reaches for dark gray to sketch her grandparents, smaller and off to the side.
Theresa Bertram got wind of this research and thought about what it meant to her: As young as five, we’ve begun to hold images of diminishing as we grow older.
Theresa was executive director of the Cathedral Foundation, a service arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Jacksonville, Florida. The Foundation had earned a national reputation for its services to senior citizens, including retirement communities and Meals on Wheels.
Still, Theresa wasn’t satisfied.
We’d built our services based on what was best for seniors, as we saw it. We were responding to external factors — medical problems, isolation, lack of engagement. And we were focusing on programs for which funding was available.
This was under the banner of restoring independence. But it occurred to me that when we deliver meals to people at home, or care for them in retirement communities, we might actually create or perpetuate isolation and dependence. We might inadvertently preempt a different response from their families, their neighborhoods, or the community.
Theresa began to wonder whether the Foundation might make an even more significant contribution to society.
Instead of focusing on the Cathedral Foundation and its programs, how much money it could raise, or even on the needs of the Jacksonville community, what if they could explore the larger questions of aging in American society?
What if they could take a serious look at the best that aging could be, in order to reframe the conversation about aging and create a new set of social expectations?
An ambitious agenda, to be sure, and one that’s yet to be realized. My point in telling you this mini case study is to spark your imagination about how you might think of your work in a larger way.
What’s the most significant contribution you and your organization could be making?
And what is your work really about?
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