| BeFriends Life Community has experienced rapid growth and transition since its incorporation. We were founded in response to a need in the community. As a result, we require dynamic adaptability in order to provide quality services that not only meet the temporary need providing a place during the day for our amazing Friends, but also offer sustainable solutions to the challenges they will continue to face throughout their lives.Our organization has embraced several leadership changes. Though these changes can challenge an organization, they were necessary to continue the momentum of our rapidly growing program. Each Executive Director played an important role with his or her strengths and paved the way for the next leader to utilize his or her strengths. Our Board of Directors supported each transition with dynamic governance and strategy. The current strategic plan for 2016-2018 includes the development of a Succession Plan for executive staff and board members. This will ensure consistency in mission and culture, organizational endurance, and sustain the engagement of stakeholders. As an organization, we believe we have define our mission well, and we provide our specific services with quality and value. At this time, we can now document a long-term vision and the policies and procedures to support our culture and operations. As a human services nonprofit, we have built into our strategy the ability to navigate staff turnover, as this is a common reality of our field. We take great pride in hiring high-quality staff who bring tremendous strengths to our organization, and we believe in developing our staff, just as we develop our participating our Friends. The Succession Plan will incorporate procedures to ensure that we do not lose the benefits brought by each staff member when he or she leaves, and allow us to build upon those contributions, which will minimize the impact of turnover throughout the organization. As an organization, we have also reached a maturity level that allows us to hire upper-level experts in the field, who provide a higher level of competency in our field. These are career-minded professionals that are committed to the field and our organization. This has provided an extra level of sustainability as well as more concrete procedures to ensure continuity throughout our operations. |
