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*This response pre-dates the creation of this Serendip page, and is being put up now for completeness of archival purposes.*

The bulk of my time on Monday 9/16/2013 was spent in an extended staff meeting.  As opposed to the hour-long staff meetings held on alternating Tuesdays, this special meeting was intended to give the full staff – nine people total, plus myself – an opportunity to discuss the new strategic plan that had been formulated over the summer.  The meeting began with everyone collectively agreeing to a set of ground rules that would oversee the meeting – concerns such as keeping to one topic at a time (and putting additional topics in a “parking lot” to be addressed later), and encouragement for everyone to feel they had the right and the space to ask questions of things they didn’t understand. 

From there we moved into the first session, which was relatively short and intended to get everyone thinking about the three strategic goals of the new plan: philanthropy, social change, and capacity building.  To do this we divided into three groups which was each assigned a goal; the group then had to illustrate the goal on a piece of presentation paper (we were given copies of the strategic plan which outlined each goal), and each group then presented to everyone after about five minutes.  I appreciated this method as a way to get everyone involved and engaged, especially because it did not rely on any specialized knowledge to articulate the goal and how it fit with the organization.

Though there were intended to be more components to the meeting, we only progressed to the second, in which each department (or individual, as the case may be) described what they and each individual member did as part of the organization, as well as on a daily basis.  This discussion was especially interesting as an intern, though most staff members expressed significant interest as well, remarking that in many ways they had been unaware of the real details of what each job entailed.  Not only did this session offer substantial clarity regarding the basic bones and functioning of the organization, but it was also an excellent way to begin approaching the organization as the subject of my Praxis exploration.  Various components and remarks from each presentation left me both with more insight into the philosophy of the organization, as well as more questions as to how that is carried out. 

The presentation from the grantmaking department at one point focused on a summit we hold once annually to facilitate discussion among women’s service and advocacy organizations in the Greater Philadelphia area, and to use that discussion to gain an understanding of what issues are of most concern and interest to the women these organizations serve.  These issues then serve to inform how grants are distributed through the one of our grant funds. 

I was actually able to assist with the very end of the summit this summer, and then as now I see this initiative as a strong demonstration of the organization’s commitment to community-based work.  Rather than determining independently what issues and causes will be organizationally valued, the organization actively seeks and facilitates the input and concerns of the organizations directly involved with women in the region. 

I had a similar response to various points presented by the Policy and Advocacy Department.  To begin they clarified why the department is both “policy” and “advocacy,” as they are not always recognized for the two different (though related) concepts that they represent.  “Public policy” refers specifically to influencing rules, promoting or opposing legislation, working with legislators, etc.; whereas “advocacy” has to do with messaging, how the organization presents issues to the public, and engages with the community as both a constituency and potential volunteers/advocates themselves. 

This distinction is very apt to how I am relating to the organization in this Praxis, as it lays out what I perceive to be a potential divide in how feminist theory can exist as feminist organizing and politics.  On the one hand, the public policy work that we engage in is very much rooted in traditional methods and institutions.  It involves a significant degree of working with entrenched political institutions – the PA General Assembly, as a piece of American “democracy,” generally speaking – and doing so through very structured methods, such as lobbying.  In this way, though the organization may promote very feminist, women-oriented causes, its methods are hardly radical; at least in the way that I would hope to see feminist organizations embrace, challenging systems in both method and cause.             

This then contrasts to advocacy, which is much more involved with ties to the community.  Though the degree to which the organization engages with the community is not necessarily as high as it ideally could be (something hampered by the fact that it is not a direct-service organization – which in itself is something else to consider), advocacy does endeavor to engage with the community as agents of their own advocacy, education, and change.  Though I also find myself curious in this respect as to how the organization has selected its three areas of issue advocacy – violence against women, reproductive freedom, and economic self-sufficiency.  Though all clearly deeply important issues, I don’t believe I’ve heard how those issues originally came to be embraced.  Where various funding priorities are tied to responses and feedback from conferences, summits, and real community engagement, I would likewise hope that a similar process informs the organization’s areas of issue advocacy (which it may very well; I just don’t actually know at this point).