Dear SMART Community,
I have been serving as your Acting Executive Director for a little over a month now. While it’s been a whirlwind of a month getting organized in my new role, I’m very excited about where we’re at one month in. I’d like to regularly update our entire community on what we’re working on so that you feel informed.
First, I am a firm believer in collaborative decision-making. To that end, I have assembled a team of leaders from within our National Office staff to help me make the best decisions possible for our long-term growth and sustainability. That Executive Leadership Team includes individuals with a wide range of experiences, varying viewpoints, and a commitment to bringing clarity and focus to our work together as a community. The members of that team are Melina Gilbert, Mike Hooper, Pete Rubinas, and Shawn Thomas.
The Executive Leadership Team and I are committed to working with our Staff, Board of Directors, and Volunteers in a way that builds trust in our organization. Open and honest two-way communication is the only way that we’re going to be able to achieve everything that we can together. Stay tuned for formal mechanisms that we plan to implement to encourage that two-way communication in the near future.
Rest assured that our highest priority remains supporting our meetings throughout the United States and Canada. If you run a meeting and need more support, please don’t hesitate to contact Melina directly at mgilbert@smartrecovery.org. It is our goal to grow our local public meetings by 5% by the end of this year and 15% by June 30, 2023. To hit those targets, we need to retain the meetings that we currently have while supporting the creation of new ones. Let us know what you can do to help!
Mike Hooper, who previously served as our Outreach Director in Ohio, recently moved to Havelock, NC, and is now serving as the Outreach Director for the Southeastern states of NC, SC, GA, and FL. If you are in one of those states and have outreach or grant ideas for him to pursue, please reach out to him directly at mhooper@smartrecovery.org.
Finally, there has been some discussion in our community about the amount of fundraising that we’ve been doing as an organization. This is one area that we will definitely improve our communication going forward. Growing a national organization like SMART requires significant effort on multiple fronts. To support those efforts, we recently hired Kenya Welch as a full-time grant writer.
Growth can certainly be supported by strategically pursuing grants at the Federal and State level, but our operating expenses have always been, and will continue to need to be, supported by individual donations, Pass the Hat group donations, Bookshop sales, and Training revenue. To provide more stability in these recurring revenue streams, we’ll be working hard to develop our major gift capabilities. We’ll also communicate an annual Fundraising Calendar so that you can choose to donate in the ways that feel best to you without feeling obligated to participate in every campaign.
In closing, I want to call attention to our recently adopted organizational values of Empowerment, Equity, Inclusion, Integrity, and Accountability. When we support one another in living up to those values, the sky’s the limit for how helpful this organization can be to individuals who are building a Life Beyond Addiction.
Respectfully,
