Board of Trustees Bi-Weekly Recap

November 1, 2021   Greetings WESTAF colleagues:   Feels funny to send you this biweekly after we have shared so much together this past week! So full of pride and gratitude for our WESTAF community — I hope you are, too. Thank you again to the many who played such an important role in making this past week such a huge success. For those who traveled to Denver, hope you made it home without too much of a hassle! Lots of good information is below in this (briefer than usual) biweekly, so thanks as well to all of our contributors!…

October 18, 2021 Dear WESTAF Community: The first fortnight of our new fiscal year concluded this Friday with a fabulous virtual “Meet the SRI Team” confab that was both hilarious and informative! Thank you, Anika, Ashanti and Jade Elyssa for the fun times, and we can’t wait to meet you in person in a few weeks! In other news, I’m so excited about the WESTAF Women’s Suffrage Mural. There’s more information about this project below, but check out this awesome PAA site that Lori Goldstein put together to map its progress. A reminder that this Wednesday, 10/20, is International Pronouns…

October 4, 2021   Dear WESTAF community:   This is always a very busy time of the year. The last few weeks seem to have especially borne that out, so I am ecstatic to be coming to you from the early October of our newly minted fiscal year — FY22! Wow. Huge thanks to all of the WESTAFers who have been building budgets, plans, goals and OKRs on top of all of the regular work. First off, I wanted to extend hearty congratulations to our colleagues Kelly Ernst, promoted to CVSuite manager, and to Trevor McElhaney, who has the new…

September 20, 2021 Hello everyone! Happy, happy Monday. We’re moments away from the kickoff of the Creative Vitality Summit! I am so proud that WESTAF is hosting this and has attracted such super partners and panelists, and I hope you are, too! This is a busy week for many, so let’s just dive in: CREATIVE VITALITY SUMMIT OPENS TODAY – OVER 440 PEOPLE HAVE REGISTERED (DH) Thanks to Leah Horn, Samantha Ortega, Natalie Scherlong, Moana Palelei HoChing, Kelly Ernst, Justine Chapel, Natalie Villa, Ashanti McGee, Paul Barrow, and Brandon Jay, for all of your efforts on the Creative Vitality Summit….

September 7, 2021   Hello WESTAF community! Hoping that everyone reading this had a fun and restful holiday weekend! Before we dive into this biweekly update, I just wanted to offer huge thanks to trustee Susan Garbett, who has arranged for the WESTAF staff to attend a special friends-and-family preview of the new Meow Wolf experience in Denver — Convergence Station. Thanks Susan — we’re really looking forward to it! Let’s just jump right in: CREATIVE VITALITY SUMMIT REGISTRATIONS TOP 300 AND 40 SPEAKERS CONFIRMED (DH) As of 9/1, over 300 people had registered to participate in the Creative Vitality…

August 23, 2021 Greetings WESTAF community: It’s Sunday evening and I’m vanning back to Denver, having just emerged from the woods (glorious weekend camping near Cottonwood Lake in Colorado’s San Isabel National Forest). That adventure was the perfect end to this past week’s energizing and inspiring retreat with the leadership team in Colorado Springs. The retreat gave us much to process, and generated some potent ideas and concepts to bring into our upcoming RAO retreat, September BOT executive committee meeting and October staff and trustees meeting — more to come there. As we barrel towards the end of FY21 WESTAF…

August 9, 2021 Greetings WESTAF community: So much activity in all corners of the organization these past few weeks! A warm welcome to Ashanti McGee…the registration launch of WESTAF’s Creative Vitality Summit has already attracted over 120 registrants in just the early days of registration…the herculean launch of the new CaFE admin User Interface…panelists getting lined up for the ARP Fund for Organizations…a busy executive committee meeting…planning for several key in-person meetings happening in the coming months…settling in over at the Alliance Center…read on below for updates on those items and a whole lot of other important stuff, too! WESTAF…

July 26, 2021 Greetings WESTAF Community: Wowza — already time for another biweekly! So much outstanding activity in all corners of the organization these past few weeks. This time of the year, we’re deep in planning for FY22, and the Mackenzie Scott gift we received recently has added a wonderful, if complex, dimension to our thinking. In addition to the planning that we’ll be doing in various upcoming meetings and retreats (see below), this article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy by Bianca Casanova Anderson has also kept us grounded and inspired. Additionally, we’ve been thinking a lot about mission-aligned investing…

July 12, 2021 Dear WESTAF team and trustees: Hope everyone has been able to find some shade or otherwise beat the heat in the sweltering west this summer. Before I go ahead and jump right in, I just want to convey continuing appreciation to my WESTAF colleagues who regularly contribute to this update — thanks, guys! Here we go: WESTAF ENDORSES CREATIVE ECONOMY REVITALIZATION ACT TO BE INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS (DH) WESTAF has endorsed a piece of legislation, the Creative Economy Revitalization Act, which is due to be introduced by U.S. Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM). The bill seeks $300m…

Dear WESTAF community: Oh my gosh! We’re just a few days out from the beginning of Q4! Where did the year go?! If you feel like I do, you are bubbling over with pride about the superb work that WESTAF is doing right now in granting and advocacy, as well as across our business platforms. If you read on below, you’ll learn more about our real-world impact as an essential regional and federal advocate as we secure and distribute funds across the western states while making sure our collective voices are heard in Washington DC, as well. On the business…