An organization might be trying to involve more people in its mission, create opportunities for people to contribute in different ways, strengthen something that already exists, develop an idea that has not found the right structure, or figure out how to approach a need that reaches beyond the organization itself. The people around it bring their own abilities, experience, interests, circumstances, knowledge, and ideas about how they would like to participate.

My focus is especially on environmental conservation, animal advocacy, education, and community organizations, and on creating more ways for young people, people in transition, older adults, people with disabilities, and others with different circumstances to participate and contribute.

The interesting part is what can be developed around all of that. What does the organization care about accomplishing? What do people care about contributing to? What resources and relationships are available? What could another organization bring? What would allow someone to participate who cannot participate in the usual way? What kind of structure would make the experience worthwhile for the person and useful to the organization?

The way you bring people in is by going out.

An organization sits within a whole community of people, knowledge, resources, relationships, places, and institutions. Looking at the situation from those different points of view changes the picture.

This way of examining a situation is what I call Reference Point.

What are we overlooking? What is being treated as fixed that does not have to be? What are we assuming this person, resource, organization, or place is for? What changes if we define it differently? Who could participate if participation looked different? What is disconnected that could be useful together? What could be adapted, shared, repurposed, or organized differently?

Seeing another possibility is only part of it. Potential needs the right container and structure to hold it.

The people involved have to be able to participate well. Responsibilities have to make sense. Resources and funding have to exist. The structure has to work in practice, account for what happens over time, and be something the people involved can realistically carry.

Underneath all of this is a larger idea that matters to me: I want to live in a world that takes better care of what it has.

That includes people and what they have to contribute. It includes the organizations and communities already caring for things that matter. It includes resources, relationships, knowledge, places, environmental conservation, and animal advocacy. It includes creating more opportunities for people to participate in that care rather than leaving responsibility to the same people and institutions over and over again