The Leadership Circle is committed to stewarding the mission of NCN: “to encourage and support the healthy growth of nature connection organizations and their leaders in building resilient, regenerative, and just communities.”
This work is continued today by those of us on the Leadership Team who are able to volunteer their time and energy. We are working to build up our revenue again in order to be resourced enough to re-engage in a deeper way.
In the fall of 2023, our leadership team at the time was navigating interpersonal conflict, exacerbated by a lack of financial resources as well as a lack of meaningful structural and relational mechanisms. We took the winter off to reconsider our individual and collective capacities and commitments to NCN, and in the meantime learned that our new fiscal sponsor at the time (Open Collective Foundation) was closing operations. Lisa, Maggie, and estephanie reaffirmed our intention and capacity to continue serving on the Leadership Team on a voluntary basis and focused our efforts that spring and summer to restart the search for a new fiscal sponsor. We began meeting again weekly starting September 2024 and since then, have been working on the following:
We’ve found a secure financial and legal home with our new Fiscal Sponsor, the Climate Justice Hive! CJH is local to Boulder, CO, walking distance from Lisa’s home, and is building “a well-coordinated and collaborative ecosystem for organizers working in solidarity with frontline community leaders in a world centered in climate justice.” We’re excited about how this partnership will support our work in tangible ways (financial and legal) as well as aspirational (future member collaborations and benefits).
We’ve been prioritizing our interpersonal relationships as a team - practicing communication, accountability, and repair as a basis for moving forward through unstable times. Learning from our lack of structural and relational mechanisms, the three of us have spent the last year working on relational working agreements emphasising clear and direct communication and moving at the speed of healing. Right now we’re on a volunteer basis, using working meetings to move forward what we can, and being honest about our capacity limits.
We’ve invited our member community to two online gatherings this spring to reconnect and check in on how everyone is doing in this specific time of cultural and political instability. During this phase of renewal at NCN, we will hold off on asking any organization or individuals to renew their membership until we have reconnected, rebuilt trust, reaffirmed our commitments to be in community, and redefined the terms of membership.
As we consider the role of NCN, we are sure of the need for strong advocates for justice and nature connection along with intentional spaces to bring people and organizations together in sharing information and building connections across our biospheres.