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CGF looks at the road ahead

by Holly Van Houten, Executive Director

Sometimes we must take a look at where we've been and assess where we are, before forging ahead. Last fall, Committee for Green Foothills’ board of directors embarked on a strategic planning process to help define our priorities and identify ways to increase our effectiveness in advocating for the protection of open space and natural resources in our region. As an outgrowth of this effort we changed our mission statement and started a project to map critical and threatened open space lands.

We were lucky to have the leadership and assistance of Elena Pernas-Giz and Joan Sherlock to help facilitate the process. Elena began her work with the Committee as a board fellow from 2002 – 2004, while she was completing her MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Elena recently joined the Humane Society of Silicon Valley after two years as Director of Process Excellence at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Joan, another former board member and marketing consultant, led us through the first steps of revisiting and updating our mission statement and making it relevant to our current work.

Learning From Stakeholders and Members
We launched the planning process by reviewing our incredible 45 years of history; interviewing community stakeholders, leaders and elected officials we work with; and polling donors and members who help advocate for environmental issues.

What are the positives?

• We continue to be well respected and highly regarded as an organization
• We effectively and nimbly address open space issues as they arise
• We can be depended on to disseminate factually correct information
• We are the source many turn to for expertise, technical advice, and help in creating coalitions

Where can we improve?

• We need to increase our visibility in the communities in which we work
• We need to define our priorities more clearly
• We need to make some operational changes to become more effective

We summarized what we learned and used it to help establish priorities in our recent board/staff retreat. We will then develop a strategic plan that clearly lays out these priorities and the steps the board and staff will take to achieve the goals of the plan. We’ll report more on our progress in the next edition of Green Footnotes.

Although the Committee has advocated in South County for over 30 years, helping to create many strong land use protections, South County agricultural lands are under mounting pressure by housing and office complex developers. Preliminary information shows where southern Santa Clara County is threatened by uncontrolled development and suburban sprawl.

The Board is currently considering what steps we could take to increase our ability to respond to this pressure to develop open space and agricultural lands. The most immediate threat is the City of San Jose’s plan to annex and develop Coyote Valley which lies along the 101 corridor between San Jose and Morgan Hill.

In the meantime, if you want to share your own views about our priorities or operational improvements please contact me at: holly@greenfoothills.org or (650) 968-7243.

Published Spring 2007 in Green Footnotes.

Page last updated July 3, 2007.