In late August, we gathered Guardians’ staff from around the West in beautiful Occidental, CA for a staff retreat at the Occidental Ecology and Arts Center, a special place that my family and I have been connected to for many years. I was eager to share this unique land-based nonprofit organization and community with Guardians’ staff as we came together to deepen our connections, build trust, and discuss a plan for the next several years of Guardians’ focused work to protect and restore the American West.
When I joined in February, this idea of gathering the staff together in the near future became a priority. Guardians has historically held an all-staff retreat every 18-24 months, but given the retirement of our long-time Executive Director and me coming on board to lead Guardians into the future, I felt it was critically important for us to gather in community as a staff sooner rather than later. The timing of this is also important as the country was just coming out of the pandemic, Guardians had recently experienced some staff turnover and internal promotions, we are more geographically dispersed across the West, and we had a need to gather, talk story, and build trust so we can operate with greater unity of purpose.
We spent our four days together connecting with each other, being among majestic redwoods, talking about Guardians’ past work and successes, and how to move into the future, deepening our focus and intention. We laughed, we had challenging conversations, and together we mapped out principles and priorities for the organization. We talked about what a thriving West into the future looked like and a 3-year strategic plan to guide our work and ensure we continue making significant progress against the forces of capitalism, colonialism, racism, and all the other exploitative forces serving neither people nor planet.
We will continue Guardians’ long legacy of being a voice for natural landscapes like the Gila and the Permian Basin, wildlife like the Sage grouse and beavers as well as prioritizing building the Bigger We. That is engaging with and becoming better partners and co-conspirators with fenceline, frontline, and Indigenous communities in order to build the necessary power to drive systemic change at scale to stop the poisoning of wildlife, drying up of rivers, clearcutting of forests, or the dumping of carbon into our atmosphere.
An Executive Summary of our new strategic plan will be finished in November, outlining specific short and long term goals. Stay tuned for this and as a hint, here is some of what you will probably see included – a newly developed theory of change, strategies to expand our legal team with legal interns and fellows to enable executing additional legal lawsuits and tactics, and power building and base building frameworks for incorporating more organizers and methodologies to engage, recruit, and involve members in our on-the-ground grassroots work.
We are deeply appreciative of the donors and funders who responded to our request for restricted funds for this retreat and agreed that it was a priority! And we are grateful for all of our members and donors from across the country who continue to “have our back” and support our work. Their passion for protecting the wild elevates our impact towards a better future for people and the planet, which we know is not only possible but absolutely necessary.
