Finally feels like winter now and its only 28 degrees but the wind makes it feel 17 and it's going to get so much colder before it's over. I must be in Minnesota I am talking about the weather.
I had several strange dreams last night. One was about working at the Soap Factory but the layout of the building and the things we were doing were out of context of what volunteer work would entail there. We were (three of us) moving around scrap metal and there was one volunteer who was asking if he should take something like looked like a table? I tried to say no that seems ill advised but he did so anyway and soon thereafter he was met by some unpleasant looking fellows that attacked him for stealing the table. Not sure what that all means in terms of hidden meaning in dreams. Probably nothing.
Made me think for a while though... mostly about the recent board led meeting at the Soap Factory held on Dec 1st. I never got up in front of the crowd of 100+ people, to tell them my thoughts. Not sure anyone would care to hear what I would have said. I just listened. It seemed rather pointless to say anything really.
They presented the meeting as if its intent was to find solutions to its current problems. That notion is a farce. The board proceeded to spin a story about how and why they got to the place where they are now, broke and forced to shut the doors. Their story is two fold: Part one of the reason for closing, the director being a part time temp, means they failed to qualify for a large grant which was something they depended upon to function for the winter. Part two the: building costs related to the HVAC, bathroom construction and so on put them in the brink of defaulting on loans. That these extra costs came to them as a surprise being forced by the state to install the HVAC system and was only given a two month notice, that it needed to be done.
Both of these reasons are non-sense and attempts to save face for the board by blaming other people. The Soap Factory has been told by the state for decades it needed a HVAC... to say this came with only a few months notice is dishonest at best. Secondly the grant loss, that may have caused some financial disturbance but it was the boards poor decision to not search ASAP for a permanent director. Hiring a part time interim director was a foolish decision in general, let alone its impact on one grant.
What that meeting really was to me was the wake, and by this I mean as in: a watch held over the body of a dead person prior to burial and sometimes accompanied by festivity. Instead of a dead person, the death was of the organization. Unfortunately this wake service was held six months to a year delayed because the Soap Factory (SF) as I knew it, was no longer in operation. Let me explain why I feel this way. As 2014 unfolded there was a mass exodus of leadership at the SF. The director left, the program manager Lillian transitioned to run the basement then left after that project, Mitch the building manager left as did Dani the volunteer coordinator and Tana the Deputy Director, gone. This vacuum of leadership could not be filled by anyone very easily, even though Colin (Building and Installation Manager) and Kate (Program Manager, Exhibitions) are terrific and did as much as humanly possible, it would have been nearly impossible to expect anyone to know the legacy of the 25 year old org and help navigate it without some senior leadership to guide them. This is why not having a passionate permanent director was devastating blow. Not being able to make strategic decisions to generate revenue, having a 16 hour a week leader basically, sunk the ship. Additionally in 2014 they decided to kill the volunteer program, a catastrophic error. Why? Because by removing the most passionate people from helping do work at the SF removed a core piece of the reason to be there. Those volunteers were the life blood of the SF. And killing that program drained them of life. It also was the source of much free labor that now had to be contracted out and paid for by a very small bank account. Having the hundreds of volunteers present and involved the SF community had additional benefits such as word of mouth for evens, gone... addition revenue from those passionate volunteer to attend events, gone. There are other impacts as well, such as volunteer contributing ideas, networking with other artists and other factors.
All that was left when I returned in 2015 was a building with heat and a haunted basement that was constructed by paid workman. Not nearly a shadow of what it was in 2013 when I left for my tour in the Peace Corps. All in all... I think things are pretty dire at the Soap Factory. The lack of leadership in the board of directors, and their Temp Director with now all staff laid off, how can things turn around? Who is willing to give an organization money knowing they have no one they should trust to give that money to spend? It is a very sad wish things were different but at least we had our wake.
