Roundtables · the community of practice, in one room
Come and correct us.
A case study is built from the public record, and the record only shows so much. A roundtable is where the community corrects it: six to twenty community leaders, brought together by a host charity with a sponsor behind it, for a day or an evening. It is the first thing we do anywhere.
What it is for.
The people who decide whether a charity closes are volunteers, most of them facing the question for the first time. What they usually lack is a view of the whole: how many organizations around them are in the same position, who could take on the work, and which of their neighbours' closures were chosen and which simply happened.
A case study puts that view on a page, and it is a starting point. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders together, for a day or an evening, to talk about how organizations close in their community.
They go through the case study and correct it. It is built from public filings, which are limited and uneven, and the people in the room know their community in ways no filing shows. Their corrections are made in the case study and dated.
Then they work out the particular difficulties facing the charities near them that have grown too small, too weak or too unsteady to keep up their work, or have drifted from what they were for. Nothing is decided about any one organization.
What comes out is a group of leaders who have looked at their own sector together and, if they want it, boards that close together.
The host provides
A charity that belongs to the community, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch. It chooses the room and the time, names the facilitator, and invites the community leaders. It looks after the relationship with the people it invites and with the sponsor.
We provide
Everyone who comes receives the case study and the free Primer ahead of time, so the room starts from the same page. We propose an agenda and prepare the facilitation with the host's facilitator. Within the month, we send a report in the room's own words, and the resources that go with it, with the host's and the sponsor's names beside ours. After that we keep the work going through our news and updates.
The sponsor provides
A sponsor helps defray the cost of the roundtable and of the report that comes out of it, and is thanked in the room, on the report, and, if it wishes, on the case study page.
What the community keeps.
First, each other: community leaders who have now met and know who else is doing what.
Then the report, within the month, in the words the room used: what the case study got wrong, what the community said about how its organizations close, and what it asked for. It has the host's name on it, and the facilitator's, the sponsor's, and ours, and it is the host's to circulate. The corrections we owe the case study are made and dated in the correction log, so the next reader gets a more accurate case study.
And, if the room wants it, the boards close together. A small number of organizations that have decided, or are deciding, each pass a board motion naming a coordinator from their own community, and take their own Toolkit licence, at no cost where the board has already decided to wind down. We bring the method, the binder, the training, and support by phone. When the last of them has closed, the method stays in the community.
Three ways in
Bring it to your community.
A roundtable needs a host, a sponsor, and six to twenty community leaders. Say which of these you are and where, and we will send what you need to decide.
You would host
A charity the community trusts, with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch; a council or a diocese can be one too. You choose the room, the time, and the facilitator; we send the invitation you can put your name to.
We would hostYou would sponsor
A funder, a firm, a foundation. You help defray the cost of the roundtable and its report, and your name stands on the report and the case study.
We would sponsorThe sponsor sheet (PDF)
You would come
A community leader, or a board that recognized itself in a case study. Say so, and when a host convenes your community you are on the list.
Our board would comeIf your community or your body has no case study yet, a case study can be made for any set of federal ridings or any national body in Canada from the public record. Start with a conversation.