Last year, the Vantage Point board and staff annual retreat culminated in a new 5-year strategic plan. It felt big, it felt like a stretch, it felt pretty amazing. The first of 5 Strategic Goals (or BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals, as I see them) stated that by 2025 Vantage Point will be a leading contributor to equitable, inclusive, and sustainable practices in the not-for-profit sector, especially in lifting and strengthening Indigenous, underrepresented, and emerging not-for-profit leaders in BC.

We have focused our first year towards this goal in learning, in being humble about what we don’t know, and courageous about taking steps, individually and as an organization, to activate the learning. As a team we’ve committed to learning from the experts through the Strategem Conference virtual workshops, hosted by Cicely Blain Consulting, including introductory learning in anti-oppression, inclusive language, racial justice, and LGBTQ2S & inclusion. We will work through the Decolonizing First Workbook together as staff and board, through facilitated workshops with Michelle Nahanee.

As part of the learning journey, we are honoured to introduce our new Organizational Consultant, Dorla Tune. I am immensely excited to learn alongside Dorla in our work to strengthen not-for-profit organizations in BC through our training, planning, and consulting supports. Dorla connects her leadership experience to her commitment to strengthening equity and social justice through organizational capacity building:

Over the past 20 years, I have worked in a variety of different not-for-profit organizations. From transition houses to child welfare, from settlement agencies to philanthropy, and grassroots community development organizations. In each of these workplaces, people are the most important component; the people doing the work and the people receiving the services. Often, not-for-profit organizations are full of individuals bringing their lived experience and passion to the work in hopes of improving the lives of others. Lived experience and passion are critical to providing meaningful experiences to communities, yet they need to be nurtured and channelled through systems of organizational capacity to have the desired impact.

For me, joining Vantage Point as an Organizational Consultant means I get to work with other not-for-profits to improve their capacity systems all in service to people. Leadership, governance, training, mentoring, and strategy are only relevant if people remain at the center of the work. Not-for-profit organizations hold critical spaces in the community. We are in a time when the deconstruction of colonial and racist systems is non-negotiable. How effectively not-for-profit organizations do their work in service to improving lives, requires their organizational capacity to be rooted in equity and social justice.

I am excited to join Vantage Point, a place where I can continue to deepen my knowledge while sharing my skills and experiences in the not-for-profit and charitable sectors. Looking forward to seeing you soon!