Clik here to view.
Function Over Form and the Element of Time
The Foundation recently held a convening in Seattle seeking input on the physical characteristics or manifestations of communities intent on articulating, acting on and stewarding their heart and soul....
View ArticleTime Out of Mind?
I’ve attended leadership classes and listened to my most empathic friends explain that a critical element of all successful collaboration is finding middle ground or meeting people part way. No...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lightening Up and Stepping Out
A little update from the underbelly of the Orton Family Foundation BlogFrog: we’re trying to lighten up.Not quite a newsflash, I know, but critical in a number of ways. Orton Staffers, by and large,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Open Source Democracy
Jared Duval’s book Next Generation Democracy has just been released by Bloomsbury. Jared is on my Board, so I’ll admit my bias. But there’s no doubt his book is an important contribution to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Soul Delivers on the Economic Front
Recently, the Knight Foundation teamed with Gallup to survey Knight’s 26 communities“to find out what emotionally attaches people to a community—what makes them want to put down roots and build a life...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Building Civic Capacity
As part of our Heart & Soul Community Planning work with towns in the Northeast and Rocky Mountain regions, we at the Orton Family Foundation work to train residents in facilitation, story...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Size Matters
Photo: Martina Rathgens (Flickr: size matters) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commonswww.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons"...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Power of the Individual
Several weeks ago, Middlebury College opened the Center for Social Entrepreneurship, a new program encouraging students to take an active role in their education while accomplishing good at the same...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stewardship: Sustaining Citizen Engagement
Note: This post is section one of a five-part series highlighting excerpts from the study Stewarding the Future of Our Communities by Steven C. Ames, the Foundation’s 2012 Craig Byrne Fellow. This...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Making Change Through Stories, Large and Small
Storytelling has caught on as a means of social change and civic engagement in the last five to ten years, and has been a popular practice for, well, pretty much forever. Consider the use of slave...
View Article