This weekend, we celebrated our years at our building at 53 Prospect Park West, as we get ready to move to a new location. It was an emotional party, as we have spent many decades at this beautiful Park Slope address, but we move with new purpose and excitement for what is to come for our society.
Organizational Background
The Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture is a humanist spiritual organization working towards the goal that the aim of human life is to create a more humane society. Our responsibility is to enable individuals to improve their personal relationships, and to work with the larger community to create a better world. To this end, Ethical Culture respects and welcomes a diversity of beliefs and fosters active engagement through “deed before creed”.
There have been multiple projects and service activities that have emanated from our membership as BSEC over the years. We “preach” values and practice from the “pulpit” each week as the place we reach for higher ground. And we are deeply committed to teaching our ethics and values for social justice to younger generations.
BSEC is a 501(c)6 nonprofit religious congregation committed to creating a welcoming community for people of all ages, races, and religious beliefs and we are connected to the 25 societies and circles of the American Ethical Union.
Context and Framing
As a congregation of Humanists, we pride ourselves as being free thinkers. This can be a strength and a weakness. Over the last 15 years we have not had a “clergy leader” stay with us for more than 3 years and we have never had an Executive Director. Over the many years we have been led and managed predominantly by the Board with a tiny staff. As COVID shaped the last three years in many ways, the community experienced itself differently through zoom, and large gatherings have not occurred.
We are about to leave the building we have occupied for over 80 years as a humanist gathering space. For many years, we have struggled under the weight of the details of property management leading to the decision to sell the property. While it took a lot to come to the vote to sell the property and it was not an easy path, we managed to build a strong consensus among members. Come June, our most prominent place of gathering will be no more. While we will be untethered, we are seeking a common anchor to do good in the world, committed to the next evolution with the hope of being increasingly clear of who we are and what we do.
Intent
BSEC is facing an opportunity for significant organizational change. While our membership is declining like most religious organizations, we now have resources to make key improvements to the overall leadership and management of our organization and strategically plan our new future.
In June we will have a financial gain in exchange for the real estate. To come to this point we have grappled with some important and significant challenges.
The next step before us is to solicit the help of an outside consultant as we establish some foundations for our evolution. We want to collectively explore, with strong facilitation, how we build a new collective, robust vision, fulfill our mission and strengthen our relevance in 2023 and beyond. This work will then inform our next steps: where we relocate, who leads, how we build our membership and their engagement, how we partner with community allies, how we staff our work, and what is to be our priority programming. We hope to learn how to move forward to strengthen our role as Humanists in Brooklyn and to refortify our impact as an Ethical Culture Society.
Key questions we want to explore through this consultancy:
Who are we as an Ethical Culture Society? How do we represent ourselves to the world and what do we mean to ourselves? As a group of people who do good in the world, how do we do it together?
As individuals, we each touch ethical living and action in innumerable ways. We need to see what we have in common, how “we” may be defined, and to what values and principles we all claim to adhere to. What are our uniting principles and vision for what we can do and be in the world?
What is our vision? What is our mission? Where do we want to go? What would we like to see BSEC do in the next era of our organization’s evolution?
The primary goal of this consultancy is to help us see and agree to our way forward.
Organizational assessment:
Recommendations & Deliverables:
The consultant will prepare a set of recommendations that can be tested with the board and membership. As the summer months will see tremendous physical transitioning, the process of engagement should align with the spring and summer of 2023 to help the organization prepare to make decisions and review a set of next step recommendations by Sept. 30, 2023.
It is expected that through a process of appreciative inquiry, there will be recommendations for facilitated experiences to develop further the organization’s priorities, shared vision, renewed mission, relocation and financial plans. Establishing a strongly transparent and democratic process for engaged decision-making will be vital as BSEC will be facing many decisions this year, and beyond.
We anticipate support to help the organization identify its core principles and shared vision, with attention to the roles different people may play and what may be the next set of job descriptions to assist with the changing needs.
Sample Deliverables:
Formats for Communication
The consultant will have access to the Board of Directors and membership through its Organizational Transition Task Force on a weekly basis through designated liaisons (Staff, Executive Committee and Task Force member) who can help with the logistics for the consultancy including listening tours and the facilitated groups that can be convened. The meetings can be in person and via zoom. It is anticipated that there can be a report on a bi-weekly basis to ensure the process advances expeditiously and with support from the Board and the Task Force.
Preliminary Timeline
The contractor’s qualifications should demonstrate:
The proposed approach should include:
How to submit
On April 30th, BSEC, in collaboration with Good Neighbors of Park Slope, had a community dance, led by Laurie Shayler, from Dance Connection.
It was a lovely night, full of gracious steps and many fun missteps, with about 50 friends of all ages, sharing a great night with music, dance, wine, and snacks.
Some pictures from the event can be found below:
Last week, we put out a call for feminine products, in support of “Pink Moon”, the Brooklyn Central Library’s distribution of menstrual products to low-income teens. Thanks to donations from our members, the Flying Squirrel Homeschoolers Co-op, and members of our community at large, we collected 5 large bags of products to donate to the library’s distribution. Thank you all for contributing to such an important cause, which tends to get so little attention!
This weekend the Ethics for Children program held a Family Fun Day for about 50 children and adults. This wasn’t just an event for our families. We invited families from the local sanctuary shelter to join us! Working in collaboration with Rachel Lori from Gowanus Mutual Aid, we extended the invitation to families newly arrived in NYC. Thanks to the help from guest artists the kids and their families were treated to all kinds of fun activities including a lesson in plate spinning with Laine Barton, making sock puppets with Katrina Avino-Barracato, and learning traditional Mexican dances with Alda Reuter & Benjamin Perez Hidalgo. Rounding out the event, we shared a meal with many treats made by EfC families and everyone took advantage of the yard to visit and play on the sunny spring day.
