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LEADERSHIP

GRANTMAKER FORUM BOARD PRESIDENT SPEAKS TO
WASHINGTON STATE SERVICE COMMISSIONERS

NATIONAL SERVICE

LEADERSHIP

What is the work of the Grantmaker Forum in the coming years_ In recent years, most of the Grantmaker Forum's conferences, major educational sessions, and publications have focused on the roles that service and volunteering play in advancing active citizenship. In January 2003, the Board of Directors began a process of active reflection and over these past months came to the realization that the conversations the organization has been sponsoring and leading are larger than the organization's name may imply.

There are many approaches to active citizenship (service being one example) and they are not all visible or equally valued by those involved. There are many ways that people contribute to the goal of engaging citizens in civic life, from youth engagement to community development, from service and volunteering to voter participation and community organizing.

The board of the Grantmaker Forum believes that that there is value in bridging these approaches and better understanding how they each relate and contribute to one another. In November the Grantmaker Forum is sponsoring a conversation at the Wingspread Conference Center with leaders from a wide range of national civic organizations, from the NAACP to the League of Women Voters, to consider how to support the role that citizens must play in building community institutions and solving important public problems.

During this period the Grantmaker Forum is considering the role it too must play as a national leadership organization. If you are a member of the Forum, please be sure that you have responded to our email and letters requesting your comments about the organization's future direction. If you are not yet a member of the Forum, please consider joining us now at this very exciting moment - not only to demonstrate support for the direction in which we are headed, but to help us define that direction so that we emerge with YOUR interests and needs at heart. For membership information, click here.

The Grantmaker Forum board of directors will convene January 9-10, 2004, in Berkeley, California to consider the organization's future direction. Please send your comments by January 8th.

GRANTMAKER FORUM BOARD PRESIDENT SPEAKS TO
WASHINGTON STATE SERVICE COMMISSIONERS

On November 6th, Lara Iglitzin, Grantmaker Forum Board President and Executive Director of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation was invited to speak at the Washington Commission on National and Community Service Annual Planning Retreat dinner in Seattle. Ms. Iglitzin was asked to offer her reaction and suggestions for continued federal funding for national service. To read the text of the speech, please click here.

NATIONAL SERVICE

On the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Corporation for National and Community service and the passage of legislation to create AmeriCorps in 1993, Innovations in Civic Participation (ICP) released Getting Things Done: Ten Years of National Service, the first-ever report to detail the impact of AmeriCorps and other national and community service initiatives on neighborhoods and communities across America.

The report details the success of national service in youth programs, health care, human services, education and rural development. ICP hosted a national forum Getting Things Done: The Impact on National Service on Critical Social Issues on May 15th and 16th in Washington D.C. which bought together national service program leaders, experts in the fields of youth policy, rural development, and aging, policy makers, government and private sector funders, and national service volunteers.

The Forum provided the opportunity for participants to share information about challenges and best practices; to discuss the scope and shape of future national service policies; and to raise awareness of how service can be an effective strategy for tackling critical social issues. For more information about the report, please contact Linda Marson or click here to download a full text of the report.