Leadership Email – Torching Glaciers

I once heard a speaker use an amazingly graphic image about “torching glaciers.”  I guess this cemented in my mind because it’s such an interesting image.  Think of a glacier, with its slow moving, voluminous mass.  And, picture someone beneath that glacier with a blowtorch, with water dripping little by little.  For many of us, our work seems like torching glaciers.  We know that there are huge, adaptive, wide needs that exist.  I think of non-profit work that I’m involved in and how there will always be another child or family that needs mentoring or strengthening.  I know many of you are on the ground floor, “torching glaciers.”  It’s difficult work at times, but little by little, just like the drops of water from the torching of the glacier, we see successes.  And, even if you’re not in non-profit work, progress may come in big chunks at time (like, undoubtedly, when you are torching a glacier) but by and large, progress seems slow or even nearly stagnant at other times.

For this reason, all of us involved in leadership roles in Reno County should be encouraged about the happenings in Hutchinson this week.  The Hutchinson Community Foundation is sponsoring Match Day.  I view Match Day as a torching of a glacier.  In a sense, we’re empowering the 26 different non-profitswith resources.  We’re widening the scope of the blowtorch so that the HCF’s vision of “a one-time opportunity to dig deeper, to grow each endowment exponentially, so that our nonprofit partners can enrich people and programs for even greater impact” is reached.  Match Day isn’t the final solution to the problems we face.  But, it is certainly a means to be mobilized to make some progress.

Let me personally invite you to consider (if you haven’t been asked already) what you might give on Wednesday, November 28^th at Eagle Media (here’s some more details).  We are all, I believe, united around the goal of making progress on the deepest needs facing our community.  Maybe this Wednesday could be a way you can torch a glacier and help make some progress in areas you care about deeply.