New national focus to redefine corporate purpose resonates with work in place at Incourage

Where just last week more than 200 CEOs of world-leading corporations committed to redefine their corporate purpose, in 2014 Incourage committed to align all assets to pursue our core purpose of co-creating an inclusive, adaptive and sustainable community. The newest way we are doing this is through an active ownership practice that we call Place-Based Shareholder Engagement. Our strategy includes engaging with publicly traded firms that impact our regional and state economy.

Today, Aspen Institute published “Place-based Shareholder Engagement: Where Community and Corporate Purpose Meet” featuring Incourage. Along with our national partners mentioned in this blog, we hope that our efforts will help to establish a productive dialogue and collaboration with the nation’s CEOs committed to a new vision of capitalism that benefits stakeholders as well as shareholders.

As always, if you would like to learn more about our work and the impact we are having here, please contact us directly at hello@incouragecf.org

Co-creating a blueprint for a sustainable community

On behalf of Incourage staff and board, I am excited to share information about an initiative we launched this week, with support from Nathan Cummings Foundation, which we hope will make a powerful contribution to the future of our community: Incourage is convening a diverse circle of residents from our region to form the Sustainable Communities Working Group. This group will engage residents across our community to co-create a “blueprint” for the sustainable community that our region can become.  

Incourage is committed to ensuring that this endeavor is not merely a thought exercise that results in nothing more than words on paper. We will turn the blueprint into real-world action: Incourage is ready to be bold in offering new funding possibilities specifically designed to resource this blueprint created by our community – blending grant, investment and other forms of capital and support, to bring this blueprint to life. 

The blueprint will also inform the priorities and direction for the newly announced Partnership for Sustainable Communities of Incourage and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, a center for thought-leadership and action on sustainable communities that is the first of its kind in the state.

Realizing the power of our potential is at the heart of what inspires Incourage to keep pushing the envelope of what is possible in our region, and to continue to explore what our role should be as a community foundation operating by and for the people. 

We are honored to work with 22 thoughtful, dedicated community members who have accepted the invitation to come together toward the shared goal of envisioning a sustainable future for our region. We also look forward to the input and insight that the Working Group members will gather from the intentional conversations they will host with colleagues, neighbors, classmates, clients, and others. Together, we envision a blueprint that represents the ideas, hopes, and priorities of many people across our community.

To help design a process of cutting-edge co-creation, Incourage is collaborating with Joanna Cea and Jess Rimington, whose work and research as Visiting Scholars at Stanford University’s Global Projects Center is represented in the Stanford Social Innovation Review article, Creating Breakout Innovation, and focuses on collaborative processes for community transformation. Together - with Incourage - they will facilitate a process that places residents in the driver's seat to identify a set of practices to realize our community’s vision of a sustainable future.

When I think about us expanding our horizon and looking toward our community’s future, I think of the reaction we enjoy when taking people to the roof of the Tribune for the first time. The rooftop view of the riverfront and downtown invokes awe-inspired comments and vision; seeding conversations about possibility. It is a similar feeling of potential we hope the “blueprint” will spark in setting our collective sights high for what is possible with the future of our community. 

Our staff and board are very excited for the co-creative process ahead. We are committed to learning from and acting on the reflections and recommendations that emerge – making the blueprint as impactful as it can be.  

If you are interested in joining the conversations about this blueprint and sharing your own ideas, please reach out. You can email me at kryan@incouragecf.org, or Heather McKellips at hmckellips@incouragecf.org, or call us at 715.423.3863.

Thanks for reading and for your interest in our shared, sustainable future!

Kelly

An Economy in Transition: Toward a Shared Vision

I’ve been listening to the General Motors downsizing announcements with a familiar feeling of angst and empathy; the pain of economic transition is undeniable and real. Our community has experienced this firsthand due to the impact of market forces and globalization on the paper industry.

Over the last two decades, Incourage has come to understand that we may not be able to stop the forces of the global markets, but we can be smarter and more intentional about transitions. 

We’ve learned a few things about what matters.   

We’ve learned that increasing local ownership, community led decision-making and inclusive economic growth are essential to transitioning single-industry economies. Because of this, Incourage has focused our efforts in these areas with training programs, grants, convenings, research, capital projects and partnerships/initiatives that have impacted thousands in our region.  

We’ve learned that effective economic transitions benefit from ingenuity, willingness to think differently, accepting ambiguity and perseverance – working for an economy of the future that is emergent. The real task is keeping the faith, or as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

We’ve learned that accelerating economic and cultural transitions requires examining our own behavior as individuals and institutions. Incourage assessed our policy and practices to become smarter and more intentional about how we use all of our resources, including our investment portfolio, for greater mission impact and economic growth.

As a result, we now include holdings in publicly traded companies whose operations have a bearing on our community, including paper companies and large retailers. Incourage votes its shares and otherwise gives voice to resident concerns in favor of positive moves by these companies, such as increases in their minimum wage and effective governance practices.

This strategy is increasingly important as corporate ownership structures have changed over time to now include control by remote private equity firms with short-term incentives to maximize shareholder gains, often times at the expense of workers and community. Further, we are working in partnership with like-minded shareholders, stakeholders and public officials to set new standards for how corporations manage transitions. 

We’ve learned that we need diverse and strong businesses who embrace mutual value and shared benefit for all stakeholders – business, workers and community. This is particularly important in rural, less densely populated communities like ours where one restructuring, sale or closure can disrupt an entire economy.   

Finally – and most importantly - we know that effective transitions require all of us working toward a common vision of the future and a recognition that we are all connected by virtue of this place we call home. 

Thanks for reading.

Kelly