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« More from Almanac: Dick McFarland | Main | More on our finances »

August 29, 2008

Update on the Citizens League's Finances: Success and Sustainability

Greetings Citizens League Members, Partners and Friends:

I'm writing this to provide an update on the Citizens League's status at an important time in our continued growth and development.

As you may have heard, the short and unfortunate story is that we have had to adjust our 2008 expenses to get in line with anticipated income. This has led to the elimination of the position of Deputy Director, held by Ann Kirby McGill, earlier this month.

This is clearly a loss for the Citizens League and a decision that I did not take lightly. Ann's dedication to our mission and principles and her efforts to help us achieve our goals were tremendous. As someone who not only embodied this mission and principles, but also the joy and humor that go along with public work, her presence is missed on a daily basis.

As people have heard about this decision, the obvious first question is "what's going on?" Why did this happen?

This decision is not a sign of larger problems, although it might have been if we didn't take action. This situation is a product of our success, not our failure.

In recent years, we have seen our budget increase from $300,000 to over $1 million. At the same time, the Citizens League increasingly is seen as a place where people of different views can come together and produce solutions that are acceptable to citizens and formal policy makers in all types of institutions. The result is that our commitment to good public policy work is running ahead of financial commitments to the Citizens League.

As I've said to some people, the "common ground" is sometimes a costly piece of real estate.

Although it is difficult in the short term, in the long run the Citizens League will be stronger. This has in many ways been our most successful year in a long time, as we have become a sought-after partner in finding policy solutions and a respected bipartisan forum for innovative ideas and effective civic engagement:

• Policy work that we started years ago was implemented (e.g. the $190 million Urban Partnership Agreement), and our policy work is helping to define the agenda on issues like health care reform and the use of tax subsidies at the legislature. This policy success is the result of all of your efforts and our ability to achieve our mission, not just the efforts of staff.
• Last year we brought in more than $1 million in revenue, and income exceeded expenses.
• We've achieved real breakthroughs identifying new ways of engaging citizens in policy processes through the Minnesota Anniversary Project (MAP 150), and our events, such as Policy and a Pint^®, continue to attract record numbers of participants.
• We will soon launch new programs that focus more deliberately on civic leadership.
• Our policy agenda for the next year -- including work on water policy, poverty and immigration and higher education and -- is exciting, timely and relevant.

I want you to know that we are acting quickly to address this issue. Having identified the cause of these financial concerns, we are implementing a number of changes that will make us a better-managed organization.

• We are cutting other operating costs and overhead while minimizing the impact on our core policy work and mission.
• We are implementing rigorous tools and new processes to control and track expenses.
• We've developed a plan to raise over $250,000 by the end of the year, and the Board is already fully engaged in this effort. We're halfway to our goal, after just a month of work, and expect to meet our development goals by the end of the year.
• We're working to make sure our policy and engagement workplan going forward matches the staff and member resources we have, and ensures that the outcomes achieve the quality standards that we demand.

Staff and the Board have been great throughout this. Talented, creative and committed. They have stepped up incredibly well in tough circumstances and we're lucky to have them.

This has also been a good wake-up call for me as a manager and leader. I take full responsibility for the situation. My goal here is to be as transparent as possible, to take steps now that preserve the success you've allowed us to have, and to build for future success and sustainability.

Thanks for your involvement and your work with us! As I said, don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns -- or to post them here as comments.

Posted by Sean Kershaw at August 29, 2008 1:09 PM

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