Collaboratory executive priorities
From The Collaboratory
Priorities for Organizational Development
- Living our vision
- The vision of the Collaboratory, Increasing hope and transforming lives through education, collaboration, innovation and service, looks in two directions. Many of us are attracted to the opportunity the Collaboratory offers to be agents of hope and transformation in the lives of others as we share the Gospel of Jesus in life, word and deed. But we members of the Collaboratory are also on a journey, and we also need to have our hope increased and allow the Holy Spirit to continue to transform our lives more into the likeness of Jesus. "Living our Vision" is the theme for the Collaboratory Chapel in 2010-11, and a priority for the Collaboratory. To offer hope and transformation to others we must ourselves be and be ever becoming people who have embraced hope and been transformed.
- Listening to lead
- As the ministry of the Collaboratory and the size of our organization grow, the Director and Student Director have recognized their need to commit all of the time needed for listening to advisors and student leaders so that they might better understand and meet their needs. Listening and waiting to understand others is not doing nothing, it is the first essential task in the Collaboratory and much of life. We invite all members of the Collaboratory to join us in paying attention to one another. We need to listen patiently and carefully to discover what God is doing among us and to join him; and we need to listen to our partner organizations and clients to also learn and participate in what God is doing there.
- Expanding (MAP)
- This year we introduce an expanded Member Achievement Portfolio (MAP) data base tool that enables members and teams to set goals for performance and get feedback. It also helps to Collaboratory by consolidating member participation data that will help us tell our story to people and organizations who pray and give money to the Collaboratory. A team might use MAP to set and track a goal for member percent satisfactory completion of assigned tasks. Individuals might like to have for their résumés a computation of total hours served, a list of training activities completed, and a summary of leadership positions held. Student leaders will receive training at the Leaders Workshop. For additional help contact Jon Martin, student director in 2010-11.
- Advisor resources
- The Collaboratory is a student led organization, but we are vitally dependent on advisors to mentor student leaders, to be the long-term memory for our work between generations of students, to do some of the project work for which students have not yet completed the relevant course work, and to carry our projects through occasional times of reduced student commitment. There are more students who would like to work in the Collaboratory, enough to do additional projects, than we have advisors to support the work. We need more advisors, and to better support our advisors.
- What is our value proposition for on- and off-campus advisors: what of value to our advisors does the Collaboratory create and provide for them, and what do we ask in return.
- How can we make it easier for advisors to get started, put advisors to work who want to be involved but can not make a huge or long-term time commitment, reduce the administrative burden of advising, and better support off-campus advisors.
- Fiscal sustainability
- Thank you Collaboratory for all you have done to budget and track expenses. Your efforts have provided us with enough cost data to guide future budgeting and, most important, to give us a much better understanding of where we are spending our money and what are the critical costs for the ongoing work of the Collaboratory. The Director is developing a revenue strategy for meeting our expense budget. This will help us to share our needs with people who invest money in the ministry of the Collaboratory, and help us to know whether our income is keeping up with our expenses. The Director is also working with the Finance Team to create a financial health “dashboard” that includes indicators of fiscal health, such as months of operating cash on hand, to guide decisions.
