New Friends Around Town

Jane and I have been busy lately.

Jane's been doing a tremendous amount of support work in our home office - hours a day on the phone and computer, collecting information and organizing it - filling out the online calendar, expanding our database, etc. ad infinitum. As I often say, she's the brains of the Coine endeavors, I'm the mouth.

So I've been using my mouth plenty. I'm a gadfly: I really enjoy meeting people and making new friends, and I've been doing both around Naples lately. Here are just a few examples of the people I've met in the past few weeks.

Two weeks ago I bumped into CAN, the Cancer Alliance of Naples. They help people who are struggling with cancer and so have trouble paying bills, or need to find a suitable support group, or whatever their need might be - when appropriate, they give up to $3,000 per person in financial support.

CAN has had two CAN Ride fundraisers, but this year the previous event chairmen couldn't participate (one moved to Venice; the other has to work!), so they weren't going to have a ride at all.

Well, we were exploring a fun fundraiser for Naples Social Action, and the model we're going to follow is to partner up with one charity per event, to (literally) spread the wealth and support causes we particularly believe in. A friend suggest I contact Allyson McLean, one of those two chairmen I mentioned. She asked me to do it with CAN. I met Kathy Nicklaus, the Executive Administrator of CAN, and we had a nice long talk. I knew right away that she is the type of person we want to support. An event was born - or perhaps I should say, reborn.

The third annual CAN / NSA Ride & Extravaganza is on! It will be held July 14th in Cambier Park, downtown Naples. It promises to be "The Event of the Summer!" For more information and to register online or download an entry form, go to http://www.naplessocialaction.org/.

I wrote that Kathy is the type of person we want to support, rather than saying that CAN is the type of organization we want to help, and that was no mistake. CAN is a very, very worthwhile organization. But that is more because of its leader than its mission.

One thing I know first-hand as an employer and a consultant to business leaders is that an organization is its people. The leadership of an organization is everything. With the right leaders, the group can be great; without talented leadership... not so much.

So as I make acquaintance with nonprofit leaders around town, I am assessing the leaders I meet far more than the charities themselves. As we teach in our workshops, "You are always on a job interview." Even when I'm meeting with well-established leaders who think they have nothing to prove, I am interviewing them. If they impress me, I'll try to support them. If they don't, I'll put them in the "Next" column. As in, "That interview is over. Who's next?"

When Jane and I were deciding where we'd like to hold the Coine Foundation's first ESL class, we chose based on leadership: Sheryl Soukup, in this case. Sheryl is Executive Director of Immokalee Non-Profit Housing (INPH), an organization that provides affordable and nice housing to the working poor in Immokalee. There is a terrible housing problem in Immokalee, and this group's mission is vital - but again, there are so many important causes around town. Why work closely with INPH in particular? Because from my first phone conversation with Sheryl, I knew I wanted to help her any way I could. Now that Jane and I have worked closely with her for a couple of months, I know what a good decision that was. Already successful, Sheryl is a rising star in the local nonprofit community.

I joined the board of directors at Literacy Volunteers of Collier County because I'm impressed with the sincerity and energy of their leader, Danny Tyler, and because the mission is so important.

I couldn't be more impressed with Ed Laudise, Executive Director of the Immokalee Foundation. As mutual friend Mike Reagen puts it, "Ed is social justice!" We have made ourselves available to help Ed as he changes the world - and a guy like that is bound to do it.

Speaking of Mike Reagen, President of the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce.... Before we moved, Coine had been a member of three different chambers up in the Boston area. None impressed me, and I was turned off to the very notion of a chamber of commerce. But I went to a couple of Naples Chamber events, and they were great. I made acquaintance of a few chamber staffers, and they impressed me. Then I sat down with Mike, who was generous enough to give me a good portion of his morning, and I walked away a believer. Contrary to my expectation, I am now an enthusiastic member of our town's chamber.

It's all about leadership.

This isn't news to anyone, but Dawn Montecalvo at the Winter Wine Festival is a leader worth supporting. After our sit-down, I know exactly why she is a leader of the nonprofit community on a national scale. She's "coming from the right place," as my Dad liked to say, and she has the skill to - well, the Wine Festival is the biggest of its kind, worldwide. Enough said.

Grace Place is yet another inspirational organization, led by two amazing women: Stephanie Campbell, its founder and driving spirit, and her right hand Stephanie Robbins. We will be working with them more in the future, have no doubt.

There are plenty of other groups and leaders worth mentioning, and I hope those folks don't feel slighted not to be mentioned. I'll be profiling some of them in a future entry.

Of course, some of those people I haven't mentioned for a reason. Not every job interview goes that well. I've run into some appalling examples of uninspired leaders and staffers, people who seem just to be going through the motions to cash a paycheck. And there's one player in town we're undecided about. This group may actually be effecting the giving community in a negative way, but we'll take our time to decide.

But why focus on the losers? We're sorting through the bunch, making two piles: keepers and throw-backs. Jane and I are concentrating on the keepers.

Life's a lot more fun when your attention is completely focused on the positive. And if you aren't having fun, you're doing it wrong.