Last week's session of the Civic Leadership Institute not only allowed us to understand collaboration among the big players in civic life, but also brought a communications challenge to life through a rather daunting exercise.
My table-mates and I, all of us being strangers to one another, were given the budget of a city council and told that we *were* that city council, and we had to meet the press in fifteen minutes with a balanced budget, even though it showed a half-million dollar deficit! We quickly learned the benefits of collaboration and teamwork as each person at the table shared his or her expertise to assist the group in coming up with a budget that could work. Even more jarring than crafting a budget on the fly is realizing the need for having skilled spokespeople who can look into the camera, literally and figuratively, and explain budget cuts and changed priorities. The spokesperson must be able to face the criticism of the media and public and be skilled at the artful explanation of news that has a very high likelihood of being interpreted as negative. This exercise was a little scary, even though it was just "pretend."
The rest of the session picked up on the themes of this exercise, featuring a panel with representatives from the world of philanthropy (Deborah Vesy of the Deaconess Community Foundation and Randell McShephard of RPM International Inc.), the government (Chris Warren, Chief of Regional Development from the City of Cleveland), and the media (Bruce Hennes of Hennes and Associates).
Mary Beth Carroll from FirstEnergy coordinated the discussion in which several of the panelists described the movement of the last seven years towards regional collaboration, highlighting the philanthropic community's growing interest in scalable projects that are helping the region to come together and to thrive, as opposed to individual, discrete projects or programs. They also noted that regionalism (formerly a dirty word in the area) has grown in appeal among government entities and grantmakers. Programs like the Fund for Our Economic Future's Voices and Choices demonstrate an interest in airing the concerns, needs, and ideas of all people within our region in an effort to bring us together.
So, perhaps our attempts at regionalism are beginning to gain traction, but who sets and communicates the agenda? According to Bruce Hennes, it's not the local media. The days are over for the newspaper to set the civic agenda. The media's job is to tell stories, but with limited budgets and staff, organization's cannot wait for the media to discover them. The message was clear: organizations need to focus on getting their own stories out there, to the local newspaper, yes, but also through e-mail, social media, Internet, blogs, and popular radio shows.
As we learned in our city council exercise, the hardest part in creating meaningful change is "getting your story straight." Whatever the collaborative effort, it will wither without clear expectations, communications and public awareness, whoever your public might be.
--Dave Holmes, Regional Training Coordinator, Foundation Center-Cleveland
Read my other Civic Leadership Institute posts here and here.

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