As executive director of Farmworker Housing Development Corporation (FHDC), I’ve always been committed to doing what is needed to move us forward. In FHDC’s 20th year of operations, we found ourselves as stable and influential as we had ever been, and yet we were confronted by key challenges. Always a very grassroots, community-based organization, FHDC was positioned to make big leaps and take on a statewide role in housing development. However, we did not want to lose our connection to the community. Our mission and the issue of sustainability drive our need to grow; a market assessment estimated pent-up demand for 40,000 units of farmworker housing in the mid-Willamette Valley, Oregon’s prime agricultural region.

As we considered the challenges and opportunities in front of us, FHDC participated in three separate processes. I enrolled in the NeighborWorks America Achieving Excellence (AE) program at Harvard University to improve my own leadership skills as executive director at FHDC. Our board and staff also engaged in strategic planning. Then Oregon Housing asked NeighborWorks to work with us to conduct a PROMPT® capacity assessment. Some might think the overlay of these three processes was overkill and redundant or even, at points, potentially conflicting. In the case of FHDC, all three processes were necessary to move the organization to where I knew it needed to go.

NeighborWorks Organizational Assessment Services (OAS) looked at FHDC comprehensively, enabling our staff and board members to step back and see all we do at once. As unbiased, third party reviewers, the OAS consultants really challenged management to analyze our own work, quantify it, and plan for the future The PROMPT® assessment turned out to be a good tool to build our confidence. The process encouraged us and stakeholders like Oregon Housing to see how important and effective our work really was.

My simultaneous work in the AE program and our internal planning supported what we learned through the OAS assessment. My AE performance challenge, a practicum tied to the course, focused on positioning FHDC for long-term sustainability and statewide competitiveness. This, in turn, directly related to our strategic planning goals. By timing these activities so that the discoveries were symbiotic, the board and executive team came together to build a new organization on the solid foundation that already existed. The overall processes were transformative and continue to impact how FHDC does business.

In a recent executive team planning exercise, each member wrote down five things that would create a picture of success in our property management work in the next five years. When we shared our thoughts, the degree of common agreement was noteworthy. It was clear that the three processes had worked. Discipline and analysis had permeated FHDC and filtered through the organization. It was a powerful moment for the team.

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