Editor?s Note: Three metro Atlanta organizationsthe Metro Group, Research Atlanta , and the Regional Leadership Forumin December 2005 merged to create their region?s first true civic league.  The Regional Atlanta Civic League will be a new vehicle for engaging the public in the development of broad-based solutions to regional challenges. (See this month?s Regional Files for more ) Former ARS chair and current ARS board member Chris ChadwickExecutive Director of FOCUS St. Louis, a regional civic organization also formed by a mergeraddressed Atlanta?s regional leaders on January 20^th about St. Louis?s experience and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for Atlanta.

Ten years ago this July, FOCUS St. Louis was formed with a mission to create a thriving, cooperative region by engaging citizens to participate in active leadership roles and to influence positive community change.  Since then, we have become an effective force for positive change in our region.  We have worked hard to improve conditions in each of our four policy priority areas: Good Governance, Racial Equality and Social Justice, Quality Educational Opportunities, and Sustainable Infrastructure.

It hasn?t been easy at times, but the rewards definitely justify the effort.  Many of the issues we tacklefrom racial equality to governance reformoften seem overwhelming.  It?s tempting to throw up our hands and say, ?what can I do about that??  or ?how can I possibly make a difference??

At times like that, I like to revert to the words of the late John Gardner, who has provided us with some of our most insightful thoughts on leadership and building communities.  Gardener once wrote: ?I keep running into highly capable potential leaders all over this country who never give a thought to the well-being of their community.  And I keep wondering who gave them permission to stand aside?  I?m asking you to issue a wake up call. And I want you to tell them that this nation could die of comfortable indifference to the problems that only citizens can solve.?

Gardner is right.  Each of us has a responsibility to help improve our community.  We must be champions, connectors, leaders, followers, teachers and mentors.  In order to succeed, Gardner said communities must develop what he calls, ?The Responsibles,? an active group of ?tenaciously caring citizens who are devoted to keeping a community in working order.? 

In the St. Louis region, FOCUS St. Louis plays this role.  Here in Atlanta , the Regional Atlanta Civic League can do the same.

So how does FOCUS go about it?

I?d like you to visualize with me a three-legged stool.  We have three primary areas in which we work.  The seat of the stool is our bi-state region.

The first leg of the stool is developing leadership.  FOCUS? signature leadership development programs provide cutting-edge opportunities for civic and business leaders, young professionals, executives, and high school youth to learn more about the region, meet decisions makers, enhance their own skills, and develop networks for future action.  Today FOCUS has more than 3,000 leadership graduates and offers five different programs to reach all levels of leadership potential.  Our flagship program, Leadership St. Louis, is a nine-month 18-day program, now in its 30^th year with 1,600 program graduates.  As a result, we have our own core of ?Responsibles? who are committed to improving our quality of life in St. Louis .

The second leg of our stool is influencing policy.  We work to bring about positive change in the community by involving citizens in issue analysis and problem solving.  Our citizen volunteers spend as much as a year studying issues.  Their work results in task force reports, which provide valuable analysis and recommendations to develop strategies to address regional issues.  Outcomes from FOCUS? in-depth task force reports include enacting state and local legislation, convening regional conferences and forums, establishing coalitions and organizations, and expanding human services.  Often I hear people say, ?We don?t need another report that will just sit on a shelf.?  At FOCUS we make sure that reports don?t sit on a shelf.  Implementation is critical.  Currently, FOCUS is implementing recommendations to address racial inequities, the difficulties of educating our newly-arrived immigrant populations, and the need for more affordable/workforce housing.

Finally, our third leg of the stool is promoting community connections.  This role reflects FOCUS? belief that citizenship should not be a spectator sport.  We work as a regional catalyst and neutral convener in numerous regional collaborations centered around issues like racial equity, building better nonprofit boards, business diversity, and engaging young professionals.  We host an ongoing series of community policy forums, issues briefings, and other special events that are designed to engage citizens from across the community and to get them more involved in the process of solving our mutual problems.  These initiatives engage all citizens in our vision of a thriving, cooperative region.

The work we do is typically difficult and at times painstaking.  What makes it work is that we are consistently true to our stated values, namely Citizen Involvement, Diversity, Quality Leadership, a Regional Perspective, Community Consensus, and Focused Outcomes.

The Challenges of Mergers

FOCUS St. Louis was created through the merger of two of the St. Louis region's most influential nonprofit organizations, Confluence St. Louis and The Leadership Center of Greater St. Louis.  Together, they represented more than 30 years of experience in developing community leaders and engaging citizens to influence policy.  These two organizations shared a history of working to make the St. Louis region a better place for all people.

Each of these organizations could have continued down separate paths, and both would likely have continued to be successful.  But the leadership of these two groups, at the time, recognized that they could expand the reach and impact of their programs and activities by merging.  So today I congratulate the leadership of the Metro Group, Research Atlanta, and the Regional Leadership Forum for their vision and commitment to this same change process.

Now, I?m not going to tell you that the merger was an easy process.  I?m sure you also faced challenges during your own process.  For us, there were some turf battles, some second-guessing, and a fair number of other barriers that different people tried to put in our way.  But we found that most of our constituents believed a merger did make sense.  As long as our process was open and transparent, and as long as we made sure that we communicated clearly what we were doing and why, we didn?t run into any major problems. 

Most importantly, the merger discussions gave us an opportunity to think about what our region needed, to think about what we valued, and what were the best practices of both organizations that needed to be preserved. 

To understand how significant this merger was, you first have to know something about the St. Louis region.  Ours is an area that includes 2.7 million people spread across 16 counties in two states.  St. Louis is the most decentralized/fragmented region in the country, other than Pittsburgh .  We have over 700 units of local government in our regionand we tend to be proud of that fact.  We like local control, we value our neighborhoods, and we are cautious about stepping too far outside our comfort zones.

None of that is necessarily good news if you are attempting to create an organization that seeks to promote regional solutions to problems and whose role is to convene people from different parts of the region to work together.

But that is exactly what FOCUS St. Louis is doing.

We recognize what political scientists, sociologists and public administrators across the country have documented.  That regions are where the real action is taking place.

In a world marked by increased globalization, ever-changing community demographics, and ever-improving communications technology, a fragmented approach to community and governance no longer makes sense.  The challenges we face extend across municipal boundaries.  Opportunities are best pursued in collaborative fashion.  Solutions require a new way of thinking that is not limited by tradition, turf, or artificial barriers.

Today, FOCUS St. Louis is a regional, nonprofit, nonpartisan, member-based organization governed by a 32 member, volunteer board of directors.  The board includes business executives, educational and political leaders, and community volunteers.  Each year two high school seniors who are graduates of our Youth Leadership program are also chosen to serve on the board.  Our work is supported by a staff of 10 full-time people, several program consultants, and a steady stream of interns from local colleges and universities.  We are seen as a wonderful training ground for students who want to learn how the community works and how they can make a difference.

Six Lessons Learned

I?d like to share six lessons that we have learned which I hope will help you with your work ahead.

First, work hard to establish a true partnership and high level of trust between your board and your staff.  I am mindful everyday of this fragile yet critical balance.  At FOCUS, our staff is empowered to work directly with board members at all levels.  That allows us to keep things moving ahead quickly while keeping everyone in the loop.  It also allows our staff to be entrepreneurial in how they approach their jobs and to take calculated risks that they might not be willing to take in a more bureaucratic environment.  The result is that we achieve a lot more in less time.

Second, it?s critical to build a diversified revenue stream so you are not dependent on any one source or vulnerable in this changing market place.  Clearly our most important source of revenue is our members, not only for the contributions they make, but for the access they give us to other potential funders.  In St. Louis, the competition among nonprofits for funding has gotten much more fierce.  And that means we have to spend more staff and board time on fundraising and communication, to make sure that our supporters and our prospective supporters know what we are doing, what we have achieved, and what we hope to do.

Which leads me to my third lesson:  Don?t assume that people know what?s going on or that they will take the time to ask.  Be proactive in communicating with them, not only about your needs, butmore importantlyabout your results.  It is important to recognize that ours is a difficult business to explain and to market.  We do so many different things, and our work has so many different outcomesmany of which aren?t readily apparentthat it is very hard to explain to someone what we do and why they should support us.  That doesn?t mean we don?t try.  It just means that it isn?t easy.  So my advice to you is to have patience and don?t expect instant gratification.  Keep plugging away and keep inviting everyone to join you in your efforts.

My fourth lesson relates to the last one:  Invest in the systems and technology you need to do the job right.  The power of the Internet can not be underestimated when it comes to almost any strategic aspect of our work: sharing policy reports, spreading brand awareness, membership recruitment, citizen engagement, ? the list goes on.  Make sure you can capture and manage donor information.  The power of a good, well-managed database is invaluable.  Have the capability to communicate with your supporters in whatever ways they prefer.  Think high-tech but also high touch.  Stay on top of what?s happening with customer service technologies that your supporters are going to expect.  You?ll find that it?s a cost of business that seems high at first, but that is essential to compete effectively for dollars, attention and support.

My fifth point is to value diversity.  The major reason our Leadership St. Louis program has been successful for 30 years is that we put a lot of work into making sure that every year?s class is representative of the entire communityby race, income, geographic location, age, and occupation.  That same attention to diversity is exercised in everything we do, from recruiting members for our board to finding volunteers for our task forces.  You can?t advocate regionalism if you don?t demonstrate that your own organization is representative of the region as a whole. 

Finally, my last lesson, based on 10 years of working with FOCUS St. Louis, is to be nimble and flexible.  In a diverse region, one size rarely fits all.  We have found that certain types of programs work with one group but not another, that some people still prefer snail mail to email, and that sometimes it?s important to make a leap of faith if that?s what the situation calls for. 

By heeding these six lesson and innumerable others, FOCUS St. Louis brings to the community a thoughtful, deliberative process that ensures that every issue we address is completely and carefully analyzed, pulled apart and put back together with solutions in sight.  I hope that this same deliberative process works for The Regional Atlanta Civic League.  FOCUS is known as a neutral convener, a place where disparate, often competing groups feel comfortable coming together for discussion and debate.  That reputation is perhaps our greatest strength, and it is certainly something we work very hard to maintain.

I urge you to be open to new ideas, to be willing to let go of what?s expendable, and to continue to explore as far and as wide as you possibly can.  Your community will forever be in your debt.