The Quilt is the national association of regional IT collaboratives, including our clients OSHEAN, MAGPI and MCNC. 

The Quilt seeks to be a dynamic forum where leaders from throughout the advanced research and education network community build on the intellectual capital and best practices of network service providers worldwide.

In this project, The Quilt, wanted to move forward on several strategic and organizational fronts. The primary focus of this effort was to implement a strategic action plan to transition to organization from an interim executive director to a permanent hire. Our role was to facilitate, coach and help manage the process.

HELIN, a regional higher education library network, wanted to redesign its governance model and align its committees to the go-forward strategic priorities as outlined in its strategic plan. The project built a hybrid governance model drawn, in part, from these sources:
1. High Performing Governance by New Commons 
2. Board Policy Manual by Michigan Library Consortium
3. HELIN Strategic Plan Framework
4. Crafting a Charter to Help People Work in Groups by New Commons

Outcomes desired are:

• Creating a strategic plan as a living document
• An outline of a yearly planning cycle with a focus in guiding implementation

Our process to achieve this was:

• Ongoing planning with the Board/Executive Committee
• Collaboration with Executive Director to Produce the Plan
• Design and execute Staff Planning Workshops: New Commons engaged the staff to develop two elements of the plan: draft conditions analysis and first cut of possible strategic initiatives for considering including in the matrix.

In 1992, New Commons helped the Providence Foundation convene a series of workshops to create a vision of Providence in the year 2010. In 2009, Providence Foundation again convened a series of workshops to envision a future Providence. This time, the foundation invited young and emerging leaders to share their thoughts on what Providence could be in 2030.

Participants came from large and small businesses, non-profit and advocacy organizations, and from within city government. In late July, the emerging leaders presented their vision document to the Providence Foundation's Board of Directors. The vision was subsequently presented at Pecha Kucha Night: Providence. At present, the visioning process is in transition to become a network that can begin to implement some aspects of the vision. 

On an annual basis, EPSCoR hosts a Diversity Workshop for a variety of stakeholders to further augment their efforts to attract and retain students of color in the STEM disciplines.

Michelle Gonzalez of New Commons was engaged to facilitate the workshop in order to enhance the sustainability of this project. In previous years the Diversity Workshop engaged participants in principles of diversity, but didn't create a plan to further make the diversity initiative a systemic one.

The agenda started with a panel presentation from the following individuals to futher amplify the question of "What is diversity and how do we harness this initiative for our students?"