Latest news, alerts, and events.
Latest news, alerts, and events.
Closing out an old year and entering a new one is that moment when so many of us take stock of what has just passed and what is yet to come. Looking back at 2024 from Foraker’s perspective, I remember it as a year of big projects, big internal shifts, and many expected and unexpected changes. Some of our projects were planned and some not, and per our usual, we ebbed and flowed with each other and made it work. Does this sound like your workplace? I found that time and again, groups we engaged with in 2024 were experiencing a high degree of change similar to what happened during the pandemic but also very different in that the changes were coming more from inside and not as much from outside the organization. Regardless of the source, the level of pandemic uncertainty and stress is still with us, and my hope for 2025 is that it resolves even a little.
For us, there were also other essential ingredients to our big work including the need for external partnerships, the coalescing of our internal team, and a commitment to learning our way forward to an agreed destination but with less understanding of exactly how we would reach each goal. Once again, this showed us that our tolerance for ambiguity and our curiosity serve us well. I wonder what ingredients were part of your experience?
The projects would have been one thing but to do them all amid team change both coming and going was an added layer of complexity. 2024 saw the largest growth in Foraker staff since our finance team formally joined us in 2010. We are still deeply in this mix of human change and job redistribution, and it will likely take the better part of 2025 before we see a complete team as we have envisioned it. (You can read more about our Foraker team changes below.) Not unlike many other nonprofits (maybe you, too), saying goodbye and hello as a team was a relatively unused muscle for us before the pandemic, but now it seems we have “a Foraker way,” and I am thankful for that. Have you developed “a way” to manage employee shifting in your organization? The workforce shortage and changes don’t appear to be ebbing for 2025, so maybe now is the time?
Looking to this year, we are excited to present our latest economic report, Alaska’s Nonprofit Sector: Generating Economic Impact, which we released in December. The report includes new data, and we’ve prepared a toolkit to help you apply it to your work. We are getting ready to release an updated version of The Gender Pay Gap in Alaska’s Nonprofit Sector. This report, too, includes a toolkit for your use. In addition, we will provide resources to help you navigate the real-world implications of Ballot Measure 1 with your employees. And we will keep you briefed as we advance our public policy priorities to strengthen Alaska’s nonprofits, tribes, and the impact we have in every community and with every Alaskan. Stay tuned for these announcements and more.
I hope this is the year you bookmark Alaska Board Match. Our goal is for this resource to be used statewide in both rural and urban Alaska – and we need your help to make it happen. I also hope you are looking at the opportunities in The Alaska Funder’s Directory as you consider your philanthropic leveraging options. And be sure to mark The Foraker Leadership Summit on your calendar. Collaboration and partnership is our theme since we know the only way forward is and will continue to be together.
With our new staffing hires and more consultants being added to the mix in 2025, we are gearing up to be ready and responsive to the needs we have seen and heard from so many of you. We will be focusing more on supporting Tribal Administrators and Tribal Councils in their unique environments, ramping up our efforts to provide more support for a spectrum of HR and belonging requests from compliance to fostering more welcoming spaces. Our goal in all this is not just to help you attract the next workforce but to retain them. To that end, we are working on plans to provide a more robust offering of HR shared services support for small and medium-sized organizations. And we are ramping up our ability to assist you with fundraising support and to meet your financial accounting requests all with an economy of scale and Foraker’s commitment to relationships, quality, and excellence you have grown to trust these last 24 years. The most recent data from our Statewide Capacity Report confirmed that people and money are your biggest challenges, and we want to meet you right where you need assistance to move forward.
I wonder what is on your 2025 list? Will you look inward with your team more or look out and explore possibilities? Will you pick one thing or five to go deeper or wider? Will you focus on collaboration and working better together? While we don’t know exactly what is to come, we do know that change is our constant companion and adaptation is our best tool if we use it from a place of deep connection to who we are and the values that are our DNA. I wish this for you – that deep connection and unwavering commitment to purpose and values, and to use it as a gift to know how to adapt.
In that same way, I like to pick a word to set my course for each year that both reminds me of our core and lights the way forward. Knowing that 2025 will hold more change for us as we continue to deepen our work, expand our team, and grow into possibilities, I am picking the words “steady on” as a singular thought. I am centering this idea to hold our goals, to keep us moving forward, to keep us together, and to plant and plan for the future. May your own word for the year hold you “steady on” as we navigate our way together into the new year.
Meet our team who are ready to meet you in your work
2024 brought both a reorganization of some team members and the addition of new staff, which allowed us to grow strategically and remain resilient and responsive to Alaska’s nonprofits and tribes.
New staff team members:
The team you know with new roles:
Our team is made up of remarkable people with interesting lives and backgrounds – get to know more about them here. We also added several new consultants in 2024. Read more about these wonderful team members here. We look forward to sharing more updates in 2025 as the staff and consulting team continue to grow.
We are ready to work with you. Happy New Year.
Laurie