Building an effective organizational structure. The CRA has recently implemented what it hopes will be a solution to some of its biggest challenges by becoming a free-standing non-profit organization. The challenges arise from the complex relationship between the Alliance members (the local citizens on the Alliance Board of Directors providing guidance to the partners’ work) and the Alliance partners who are the ones doing the bulk of the conservation work. In recent years, the Alliance members, according to current Board of Director member John Paul Bledsoe, felt as if they had “lost control of some of our partners…they were making decisions instead of the Steering Committee.”
The Forest Service’s Kent Evans commented in late 2002 that “the Alliance is really loose. When everyone gets together, we’re still seeing each other as individual agencies with individual projects until someone says, ‘now, realize, we are the Alliance.’ And they say, ‘oh yeah, I guess we are.’” Evans believes that these struggles will be resolved by the hiring of a staff person devoted solely to Alliance activities and housed separate from any of the large partners. This suggestion is now being implemented as the Alliance searches for its first paid staff member. By formalizing the group as a nonprofit, by conducting its own fundraising, and by having its own staff, the group believes it will be better able to direct Alliance-guided work in the watershed and have a stronger sense of identity.
Bridging multiple groups with multiple objectives. Striking a strategic balance between fulfilling Alliance goals and fulfilling individual organizational goals has been challenging. Many of the partner organizations of the Alliance operate under different goals than the five identified by the Alliance, each influenced by its own institutional environment. Forest Service partner Kent Evans explains that each partner agency or organization has its own marching orders. The FWS marches in step with its recovery plans for threatened and endangered species. TNC staff members, in partnership with local and regional stakeholders, follow the organization’s Conservation by Design process and develop iterative Site Conservation Plans that guide conservation action on the ground in conservation areas. The Forest Service is guided by its Land Management Plans. The Alliance’s business plan, written by FS and TNC representatives, was an attempt to unite all the partners’ goals and with the hiring of Alliance staff should become a guiding light for Alliance activities. One member of the Alliance Board of Directors commented that “Kent Evans has been one of the greatest assets that the Conasauga River Alliance has had,” in his initiative to get this plan developed.
Managing growth in membership. Increasing interest in membership has also been challenging the Alliance. As an indication of the Alliance’s positive reputation and proven accomplishments, there have been increasing requests from people and businesses in the watershed, especially from the carpet industry in Dalton, to join the Alliance’s membership. A lot of these individuals would like to play an active role in the Alliance, but until recently, the citizens on the Steering Committee (now Board of Directors) had been hesitant to expand membership, uncertain about the implications of further growth. The new Board of Directors has a commitment to representing diverse interests on the Board. As outlined in their by-laws, membership of the Alliance Board of Directors includes: “one representative appointed by each county commission (Polk and Bradley counties in Tennessee and Murray and Whitfield Counties in Georgia); one member appointed by each of the three Soil and Water Conservation Districts (Bradley County Soil Conservation District, Polk County Soil Conservation District, and the Limestone Valley Soil and Water Conservation District); one member appointed by each of the two Resources Conservation and Development (RC&D) Councils (Southeast Tennessee RC&D and Limestone Valley RC&D); and ten at-large members appointed by the Board of Directors to represent the diverse interests operating within the Conasauga River watershed, such as forestry, carpet manufacturing, developers and builders, utilities, recreation, and the Farm Bureau.” The new Alliance Board is actively soliciting diverse representation.
Similar to the progression towards diversity in representation, the Alliance hopes to expand its geographic influence in the future. The majority of the Alliance’s work has been conducted in the upper watershed, and many want to expand efforts southward to integrate the southern portions of the watershed, including the carpet industry, into the Alliance. They are also looking forward to growing partnerships with private businesses in the area, including an approved project to build an education center on 5 acres of a 200-acre former dairy farm recently purchased by Dalton Utilities, and a wetland construction project to treat runoff from impervious surfaces at one of the carpet company’s plants.
Finally, the organizational structure of the Forest Service has at times been challenging for staff trying to think and manage at a watershed level. The agency’s management information systems collect and store information about accomplishments by ranger district, making analysis of accomplishments watershed-wide difficult. Evans also explains that many projects are put on the back burner in particularly bad years for forest fires, and there is often little time to evaluate success on projects let alone implement projects: “Because we’re the US Forest Service, and I’m a firefighter too, if things go to hell in June, everybody leaves. You’ve got smoke, and a lot of things stop.”
This site was developed by the Ecosystem Management Initiative through a partnership with the US Forest Service and the US Department of Interior. Read more.
