This is challenging to get a handle on, but we are starting to see that this really ISN’T an issue for the local volunteer. Increasingly, people view community as a regional, statewide, or international collaborative sort of environment. It is challenging for an organization with a traditional structure to change and adapt in order to reflect that. Traditional models no longer match up with what is actually happening on the ground.

As an organization of volunteers stepping up and learning by doing, providing hands-on leadership development in a community, we talk a lot about the push and pull between the physical and virtual-how do we tie ourselves all together? As a statewide organization, we believe in the power of connecting all of our local volunteers together- over and over again it has been proven that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Community for us is increasingly about what connects all of our efforts as leaders around the state- and creating the safe space to learn from each other.