Breakout session 3, Tuesday morning: Setting Funding Priorities

Goals:

-Determine whether our goal is to change lifestyles or affect concrete results
-Determine statewide priorities
-Find a way to connect the tangible projects to bigger more long-term priorities. Otherwise we can win every battle but lose the war
-Unite stewardship projects with environmental education
-Go beyond GoCo and REI to the rest of the corporate world to buy in to what we are doing and to expand the pot of money that is being directed toward the stewardship mission
-Provide evidence to the funders that the programs they are funding will be sustainable over the long term
-Determine what we mean by funder: state-level to foundations to individual volunteers

Actions:

-Form a unified message before we approach funders. (A strategic plan?)
-Tie our missions to the missions of funders so that funding relationships can be institutionalized and sustainable
-Determine collectively the economic value of our work on the environment
-Put together shared metrics and accomplishments to present a more unified, easy-to-understand message for funders of what has happened and what needs to be done
-Tie the stewardship movement into the popularity of Colorado as a place that people move to for the lifestyle and link our marketing into the model that exists for parks
-Reach out to other sectors to include them in the conversation about our collective goals
-Establish work groups that will include representatives from many sectors such as: heath, education, policy/advocacy, state and federal governments with the goal of creating unity around the stewardship movement on volunteer issues, marketing issues, economic issues, best practices etc.
-Identify special resources and expertise that individual organizations have such as VOC crew leader trainings.
-tap into fact that many organizations are funded based on effective volunteer programs

Resources:

-The existing expertise and resources of individual organizations
-existing relationships with funders and organizations in other sectors
-a collective database of accomplishments and needs (needed)