Board Elections

A BOARD

FOR THE NEXT 50 YEARS

BY LISA BARCLAY, ELECTIONS CHAIR

When I joined the board a few years ago, I was the nextto-youngest board member. Today, I’m next to oldest, which makes me pretty happy. Not that I’m happy to be getting older and crankier, of course, but because our efforts to make board service possible for busy younger people—like those with small children—have paid off. We now have two parents of toddlers on the board— Claire and Juri.

Our work is not done, of course. We continue to work toward a board with members from a variety of backgrounds and experience, both to best represent our community and our members and to bring a range of ideas and perspectives to our work. We have been exploring ways to reach people who might not think of serving on the board (and who might not always have time to read newsletters). For instance, we’ll be reaching out to different groups in our community, such as farmers and producers, to find out how we could best make board service possible for them. You, too, can play a part. You don’t have to serve on the board yourself, but think about friends and acquaintances, or perhaps a farmer or producer at the Farmers Market, or the coach of your child’s soccer team or their piano teacher.… Who might make a great board member? Being a great board member does not take particular expertise because we train our candidates in board work. What it does take is a willingness to learn, a desire to truly absorb different opinions, and an ability to work well with other people, which includes the strength to admit mistakes. So, if you know someone like that, send them our way and I’ll meet with them over coffee to fill them in on the details of board work. To complete the candidate process before the next election, they need to contact me by mid-January. They can email me at coopboard@foodcoop.coop.

Here’s to fifty more great cooperative years!