Robert Egger's Piece of Mind

People say to me…..”Dude, you are ALWAYS on the road!”

And I say, “No, Baby…I’m always on a mission, and the mission takes me to the road.”

This week, the mission took me back to Colorado, Denver to be specific, where I saw countless colleagues from previous visits, or from other cities, but who now call the Mile High City, or that great state, home.

I spoke at the Colorado Nonprofit Associations Fall Conference. The room was packed with over 500 people who came in search of best practices, new ideas and….from me….a sense of what comes next—what we can do, together, to shift the system.

Well, I pointed to a friend in the audience who is already doing some of the early work to rethink the equation and redraw the lines that demarcate the .com world from the .org world.

Her name is Dace West, and she is the leader of the Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships….which was founded by then Mayor Hickenlooper to create a more dynamic, robust and (dare I say) profitable environment in Denver.

Dace and her team are pioneers. She’d be the first to admit that they learned a lot along the way, and that they have a long way to go….but what a trail of ideas they are leaving. FOLLOW her….

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JUST back from a whirlwind trip that took me from Idaho to Wisconsin to Connecticut.

At EACH juncture, I spoke, with escalating fervor, to nonprofit colleagues about our shared economic contributions to every community and our essential need to work in concert to elect new leaders.

What kind of leader do I want? Ones who commit to appointing a liaison to work everyday with nonprofits in their city or state.

There is only one state where a Governor has a point person—Connecticut, under Gov Malloy, and his point person, Deb Heinrich sat down with me yesterday for a solid chat about her first years work. Pay attention to her….her work could very well become the prototype.

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I am a futurist. I study trends and anticipate opportunities….then I march out to meet that “likely” future with the audacious goal of changing it. Here’s an example.

There are 90 million “Millennials” (people born between 1985 and 2000) in America…and they have been raised doing service. They will have a huge impact on America if they choose to move beyond the charity that they may have encountered during those service trips and channel their ideas and energy into tactics that embrace economics and politics. Some already are.

I travel ALOT, and I dig the road for so many reasons, but most of all, I dig seeing living breathing examples of innovation in action. Last year, I visited the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, and wrote about students efforts to register to vote in local elections, and the many hoops they had to jump through to gain that right. In the months since that visit, they elected one of their own to the City Council. His name is Scott Foster, and he is a natural leader, as you’ll see from this video. But what I dig the most about him is that he is trying to expand the communities understanding of their assets. He sees students, seniors, nonprofits, along with traditional businesses and trade association as important contributors to the future of Williamsburg. That greater vision is exactly the kind of “all hands on deck” thinking that will be required to help rebuild and right America’s listing economic ship.

A week ago, I stood in front of Monroe Elementary School in Topeka Kansas, where the historic Brown vs the Board of Education lawsuit originated. That Supreme Court decision struck down the odious “separate but equal” ideal that kept white students and black students divided. Of course, the Courts decision was driven by the Constitution, but make no mistake—they knew this was not only illegal—it was stupid. Our country only works when we work together, without false or antiquated divisions. I believe that that idea will one day let us leave behind the idea of that .COM businesses drive the economy, while .ORG charities do good deeds. Truth be told—we are equal in that NO community can function, thrive or grow without a dynamic combination of both. There is no profit without nonprofit. And when we meet that future, we will rightly view any business that helps this country stay free, safe, secure, open and just as an essential player in the great and unfolding American dream.

I’m on that road—join me.

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