These are times of great opportunity for the Citizens League to be an active participant in designing the future of Minnesota. Our policy work is highly regarded and is influencing discussions that are occurring in city councils, corporate board rooms, places of worship, the State Legislature -- in short, wherever Minnesotans are meeting to talk about the issues facing our state, the Citizens League often is involved.

We want to take advantage of this environment by having a more aggressive communications outreach. To do that, we need your help. Our communications staff is you -- our members and the resources they bring to the table. We are asking for pro-bono assistance from communications experts in agencies and businesses. We want to tap into this tremendous pool of talent, but we also want to be respectful of people's time and willingness to contribute.

So here is our plan. When we have a communications need that would benefit from the expertise of professionals, we would like to "auction" the assignment. We will send a message to our list of communications professionals outlining the task and the anticipated time commitment and invite people to sign up for the job.

We need your help to make this plan successful. Here's what we are asking you to do:

• If you are interested in receiving our requests for (pro-bono) help, email Sean at skershaw[at]citizensleague.org with your contact information.


• If you think others in your business might be interested, share this message with them and invite them to let us know.


• And, if you know communications professionals outside of your business who might be interested -- whether they are Citizens League members or not -- please share this message with them and encourage them to volunteer.

In return for contributing their professional expertise, volunteers receive the satisfaction of knowing that they are helping to forge the common ground on issues and policies that will continue to make Minnesota a great state in which to live and work.

I'm pleased to let you know that we’ve made great progress since then.

Our 2008 fiscal year audit was just completed by Larson Allen. We'll be posting it here, but it showed that we ended the year "in the black" by $22,000. (This is significant, because it wasn’t until mid-year that we realized we had financial challenges.) The audit didn't identify any major concerns or issues to resolve, other than the need to continue to rebuild our balance sheet. Our net assets were still at ($147,000) at the end of 2008, so we have a ways to go.

* We're not taking anything for granted this year, but so far in 2009 we're running ahead of budget and ended the first quarter with a net income of $22,000.

* We have been approved to maintain our working capital line of credit for an additional 12 months from the Nonprofits Assistance Fund.

* We continue to improve our financial practices and policies, and have a very talented and active Finance Committee on our Board of Directors.

* We are hard at work on development activities this year, with a reinvigorated Board Development Committee, a new part-time Development Manager (Dani Fisher), and a great list of donors and prospects.

This success to date is due to the hard work of our board, and the generosity of you and community institutions. As I said, we're not taking anything for granted and have a lot of work to do, but it's encouraging to know that your and our work so far has seen results in these difficult times.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

Thanks so much for your support! - Sean

I don't remember if I answered him or not, but I remember him spending more time talking about finding your "calling" -- whatever it is -- than I do talking about seminary. His description of what moved him to go into the ministry was really a description of finding your lifework and calling in any field.

From then on, my interest in policy and politics and public life, which began in elementary school, took on new meaning and new clarity.

By an amazing coincidence, Rev. Johnson was from the St. Paul and actually served on the very first Metropolitan Council. We have a picture of him in our office with a group of community and Citizens League leaders as Governor Lavander signed this legislation in 1967 (the year I was born).

I didn't know about this connection until I started this job -- which is certainly as close to a "calling" for me as anything I've imagined.

Rev. Johnson passed away last weekend. He lived an incredible full life, and impacted thousands of people more than he did me. His funeral tonight at First Covenant Church in St, Paul will be a nice -- and strange -- homecoming. There will be people there from my childhood in Omaha, my new home in St. Paul, and maybe even from the Citizen League's past.

He was an amazing teacher -- a true "sheppard" in every sense of the word -- and I owe a great deal to his intelligence, insight, patience and faith. I hope I can pass on the wisdom he gave me to others.

Tonight was the awards ceremony. A great list of awardees! Here they are.

Quotes from Joel Kramer's key-note talk:
* Pessimistic on whether or not we can turn eyeballs into cash. Ads simply won't support traditional journalism in the future.

* What will pay for journalism in the future? Will readers pay for journalism?

* In 10 years, will journalism be like art is today, with participants "on the margins" or supported through entirely other means?

Alternative models -- potential:
1) Readers pay, either through subscriptions or voluntarily (iTunes model -- my analogy).
2) Philanthropy pays, especially for investigative reporting.
3) Gov't pays

"I don't know the answer. I know how much the answer matters." - JK

Favorite quote, from Jill Barcum at the Strib: "Medicate isn't the 800lb gorilla. It's the 1800 lb gorilla....When are politicians going to be honest with us about this."

You can learn more about the series on the main page for the 4/30 event: here.

What next? We need your help!
We're exploring how online learning will transform education as our next topic. What speakers and ideas would you like to see featured? Please use the Comment feature here to make suggestions.

Here's an earlier post of mine on innovations, following on a conversation with Ted Kolderie.

Here's a cool link to work by McKinsey on how innovation works.

Thanks! Sean

My testimony (posted below), originally said that this would harm districts that want to sell/lease their unused buildings to compensate for lost revenue. Districts would have had this option, even had the bill passed. I was publicly corrected by one of the Representatives who supported the restrictions.

It was a good lesson for me to double-check the facts. Our position would not have changed, but my argument would have been tighter. As much as we talk about being fact-based as an organization, it's important that we both get the facts right, and admit when we're wrong.

I had a nice conversation with my "corrector" Rep. Davnie, after the meeting about how to improve the charter/district dialogue, and the importance of facts in these conversations. He disagreed with our position, and positions we'd taken in the past, but raised a number of good points about the need to improve the quality of chartered school performance, and the quality of the dialogue between chartered schools and district schools.

http://tinyurl.com/bc56oo

Sean

Talking with Ted Kolderie provided important insights, as it always does. And the conversation made the need to realize our mission more important. Some notes:

* It's not enough to say "stop doing bad things and start doing good things". How will you make the good things happen?

* We're trying to 'do' improvement, rather than set in place the opportunities that cause improvement. We're focused on 'what', when we should be focused on 'how'.

* Our times call for talking about how we create self-improving systems, not put all of our energy into one-time improvements. Rather than say "how do we do 'x'", we should be asking "how we can structure systems so that 'x' is most likely to happen"? What are the reasons and the opportunities for improvements. How can we reestablish the mechanisms that generate innovative ideas?

My thoughts: This is a perfect example of several points.

1) Why 'imagination' is important. We have to be able to 'see' how things can improve, and why we need a better model for policy-making.

2) Why 'capacity' is critical. It's not that we're trying to create the perfect answer or the perfect solution, but ultimately to create the capacity to build these better answers.

3) Why we need to talk about the civic 'infrastructure' needed for this to happen. What are the roles and resources and relationships and incentives in the system that are needed for these improvements to occur?

This makes our upcoming series on 'Innovation' perfectly timed. After the talk with Ted, I'm thinking of calling it 'Imagination Works'. An attempt to get at both the big ideas, and the means/mechanisms/systems to make the big ideas materialize.

"What's Next, What's Real: The Economy" is being held on Friday, January 9, 2009 from 7:15-9:30 a.m. at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Minneapolis. The Collaborative will take a discerning look at the realities, hyperboles, remedies and opportunities that the tumultuous economic, financial and political environment present.

• National Economist & Early Education Advocate: Art Rolnick, Federal Reserve
• CEO of Large MN Healthcare Organization: Mary Brainerd, HealthPartners
• Nationally Recognized Real Estate Developer: Patrick Ryan, Ryan Companies
• Veteran MN Venture Investor: Michael Gorman, Split Rock Partners
• MN Weather Icon & Entrepreneur: Paul Douglas, WeatherNation; Singular Logic

For more information and to register click here.

I hope you will join us for a morning of lively networking and purposeful discussion.

Sean

I am proud of what we've accomplished this year, excited about the work ahead of us in 2009, grateful to my staff and Board leadership -- and humbled by all of this.

• We've surpassed our membership goal. We're now at over 2,100 members, the most in over 10 years. If you are considering joining, now is a great time to do so. And if you are considering a year-end financial contribution as a current member, remember that this contribution can come in the form of "gift memberships" for friends and peers. Contact our office if you have any questions on how to do this.
• We've had an impact on public policy, and have a great agenda ahead of us. In health care and in transportation, 2008 was a year of genuine impact -- turning your work and your innovative ideas into policy impact at the Capitol and in all types of institutions. The involvement of our members, from many ideologies and many interests, makes our work more credible -- and better for Minnesota.
• In a time of real challenges to all nonprofits, our financial capacity has grown in the past year. We still have a great deal of work to rebuild our reserves and our balance sheet (recovering from a loss in 2007), but we are ending the year not only having recovered from our short-term financial concerns this summer, but having put in place the internal practices and processes that make us a much stronger organization in the future. We set and achieved a goal of raising over $250,000 in unrestricted contributions, which creates momentum going into 2009.

In 2009 we have a unique opportunity to demonstrate how our guidelines can improve the public policy process -- and outcomes. We'll apply these guidelines to work in water policy, poverty, immigration and higher education, and regional policy issues. In these and other policy areas, we will increase the ability of our members to become engaged in our work and more connected to each other, building active citizenship and civic leadership skills.

Next year clearly brings with it unparalleled challenges, but also great opportunities for innovation and system-change.

Thanks for your interest, your involvement and your support. Thanks again for making our success possible in 2008, and for raising the bar for 2009.

Happy New Year!

Sean

P.S. (If you are able to make a year-end contribution, you can click here to do so.)

Comments welcome! Sean

I welcome any thoughts and comments.

I liked my proposed headline a lot more: "Driving us to distraction, or into the future: why we need a better conversation on schools and learning". Oh well.