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Private Equity Fund Of Funds This was supposed to the year that the Club laid its internal conflicts aside. We all wanted to focus on the mission of dealing with the Bush Administration. Instead we are engaged in the most rancorous election since I joined the Club staff in 1973. We have been sued for the first time by Board candidates Our elections are receiving far more media attention the Club's work to stop the Bush Administration. I think we all think this is tragic and disturbing. A fair amount of finger-pointing is going on as to who is to blame.

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Curve Equity Exposed Fund The finger-pointing is probably unavoidable, but it won't help us in the long run. And this year's rancor is a part of a larger set of questions about the future of governance in the Sierra Club.

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Equity Income Funds I don't claim to be an unopinionated person, or a neutral in these disputes. But I'm not writing this essay as a combatant. While I have biasses I'm probably not aware of, and therefore can't allow for, this essay is an attempt to provide some context and framework about what is going on. This essay reflects my understanding of the evolution of the Club's governance culture over twenty five years. Others, will, of course, see these issues very differently. I have no monopoly on the truth. But I have tried to avoid self righteousness, and to listen to those with whom I disagree.

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Private Investment In Public The Club's current Bylaws, which shape it, were last rewritten in a major way in 1979. In 1979 the Club had only 180,000 members, but it was growing fast. Most Club members had joined the Club because they knew someone personally who already belonged; but direct mail was beginning . A full 19% voted in the election of 1979; only six years earlier 32% had voted. There was no email, few faxes, and telephone conference calls were rare and expensive. The Club conducted its business face to face, and most of those who paid dues thought of themselves as "members."

Equity Mutual Funds Today we have 750,000 members, about 85% of whom joined in response to a door to door canvass or direct mail appeal, not because they know someone in the Club. In 1973 with 137,000 members we had 40,000 votes cast. Last year, with five times as many members, we had only twice as many votes as twenty five years ago. We have email, faxes, and conference calls -- more than most of us can manage. Our business is largely conducted on line. It is far, far easier to circulate petitions and organize caucuses than it was when the Bylaws were written. More than half our dues paying "members" define their relationship with us as one of being a contributor, not a member.

Birmingham Contact Equity It's a very different Club, and a very different climate for internal democracy and governance, but we have, essentially, the same structure and rules.

Private Equity Investment Firm WHAT'S NOT AT STAKE

Complying Deal Equity Funds I don't think today's conflicts are about whether the Club should be democratic or grass-roots; I think for all sides that is a given. "Democracy" and "grass-roots" in the Sierra Club are code words. The problem is that people have very different visions of the best way to be a democratic, grass-roots organization. Most of the time people are arguing about different visions of democracy and alternative forms of grass-roots empowerment. The terms become a symbol -- "we're the good guys."

Equity Msn Private Wyoming Two fault lines run throught the Club. The Club's strength lies in the tension between these opposing perspectives -- like a cable-stressed bridge we benefit from not having resolved them. But we do need to manage the stress this creates in a less destructive way than we are doing right now.

American Equity Investment FAULT LINE ONE: ONE CLUB VS. FEDERATION

Equity Index Funds One fault line stretches between those who speak of "one Club" vs. those who emphasize "one size doesn't fit all." (Most individuals are somewhere along these spectrums, not at the extremes.) Should the Club operate primarily as a national organization? Should chapters and groups be consulted and involved in setting national polices goals and strategies, but then expected to work in a coordinated way and speak with one voice? (That's what our Bylaws emphasize.) Or should the Club allow greater independence and autonomy to its chapters and groups to develop divergent messages, strategies and even goals? (That's what some chapter and group leaders mean by restoring power to the grass-roots. It's how Audubon works.) Note these are both visions of a grass-roots organization -- but one is unitary and national and the other is a federation of more independent chapters and groups.

Equity Private Team Wyoming FAULT LINE TWO: THE CLUB'S VOICE VS. THE CLUB'S WORK

Equity Group Investment The second fault line divides those who emphasize the importance of what the Club as an organization SAYS to the broader world from those who believe that the Club's great strength lies in the work its grass-roots activists DO in carrying out the Club's campaigns.

Capital Development Equity This conflict is often what folks mean when they attack "the old guard" or "the purists." But many of those in the Club's leadership who emphasize the pragmatic, campaign role are younger than and newer to the Club than some of those who feel the Club should emphasize bearing witness to what needs to be done, and leave the grubby details of incremental progress to politicians.

Article Between Difference Since this distinction -- between the Club as a voice and the Club an activist community -- is rarely discussed, here are some quotes from recent postings on the CCL-Discussion list:

Contact Equity Private Wyoming "Among the factors leading to global environmental deterioration to which the Club has not devoted meaningful resources are the following: [1] high per capita consumption by Americans, [2] population growth in the U.S. caused by the fertility rates of American residents (citizen & non-citizen alike), and [3] American population growth caused by in-migration to the United States. Those advocating that the Club go on record as advocating immigration restrictions are asking that the Club address item 3 before we establish a record of going after 1 and 2 in a significant and meaningful way."

Agreement Equity Investment And in response:

Business Equity Funds "It is very unfair to state that immigration reductionists want the Sierra Club to go on record as advocating immigration restrictions before we have addressed individual consumption and births in a meaningful way. We are already on record in favor of reducing consumption and births..... The Sierra Club doesn't need to make immigration reduction a top priority. But we do need to go on record that it is necessary to reduce immigration as well as births, individual consumption, and pollution."

Private Equity Fund Note the emphasis the first poster places on what the Club has done, and the focus by the second on what the Club takes a stand on.

Investment Property Home Almost all Club leaders, of course, fall somewhere between the extremes I have described. I've never heard someone suggest that the Club, once the Board decides something, ought to operate like the Prussian Army, nor has anyone ever suggested that Chapters should be free to do whatever they choose.

Managed Equity Funds No one wants the Club to become a pure debating society. And even the most campaign centered leader acknowledges that to decide on the policies and strategies for those campaigns, the Club must deliberate, decide, and make choices.

Capital Entrepreneurial Equity TWO VISIONS OF GRASS ROOTS DEMOCRACY

Private Equity Hedge Funds These two fault lines have consequences for your view of what is "fair," "democratic," and "grass-roots."

Email Equity Private Wyoming If you empasize the Club's national, unitary role, you will want a strong role for chapters and groups in advising the national organization, but you will then want strong mechanisms to hold everyone accountable for implementing these decisions. If you wish we were more of a confederation, you will want to give chapters and groups more power to ignore the results of national deliberations, even ones they were involved in, as in a true federation. Neither point of view is wrong; neither is undemocratic; neither is hostile to the idea of a grass-roots organization.

Equity Loan On Investment One group sees the emphasis on speaking with one voice as oppressive; the other sees the desire for local entities to go their own way as undemocratic and disprespectful of the organization's decision making processes.

Equity Income Mutual Funds Typically, those who want the Club to emphasize its voice and its policies, emphasize direct democracy -- votes of the members. Since the most important thing the Club can do is to speak, they are willing to devote far of the Club's energy and resources to resolving issues, like immigration, which are controversial. They believe that even if the Club's decision is a closely divided one, the Club has an obligation to provide guidance to others about the correct solution. And they believe that a vote of the membership is the final arbiter of the Club's view of these issues.

Private Equity Group Those who are more focused on what the Club's campaigns do tend to empasize representative democracy and the role of the elected national, chapter and group leaders. They also tend to put greater emphasis on "Voting by showing up," the idea that those local and national activists who actually put their time into the work of the Club are its principal stakeholders. (Here the By-laws fail to give any special voice to these leaders; they make every paying member an equal stakeholder.) These leaders typically want the Club to devote its energy to working on the things that it easily agrees on. They don't think it's important for the Club to take a position on every potential environmental issue, since the Club can't possible mount major campaigns on all these issues, and in their view, what counts is the Club's campaigns, not the Club's policies. And they will fear that trying to resolve issues which are controversial among Club activists will drive whichever side loses away from the Club or diminish their willingness to devote their energies to the Club's major campaigns.

Private Investment Public And these two perspectives will also have very different views of the procedural method for deciding that a question has been decided and doesn't need further attention. Those who emphasize the importance of the Club's voice will want to allow the most extensive possible debate to get the right answer; those who emphasize the primacy of its campaign work will want to move one once it becomes clear that an issue will be divisive and may drive activists comitted to the Club's major campaigns away.

Real Estate Private Equity Both perspectives will, legitimately, see themselves as expressing an aspect of democracy. One group will insist that they are protecting the right of the minority to use the organization's democratic processes to achieve their preferred position. The other will see itself as the defender of the right of the organization's democratic majority to decide that certain issues are outside the organization's scope, and to put such divisive issues aside.

Contact Equity Private Us At the end of the day it comes down to which you think is the bigger risk; that the Club will fail to speak on an important issue, or that trying to resolve a controversial issue will weaken the organization; that the Club's majority will suppress the minority, or that the minority will fritter away the organization's energy in revisiting peripheral questions.

Real Estate Equity Investment These are all valid points of views; these issues have troubled democratic polities since Ancient Greece. Given that fact, we shouldn't be so quick to assert that our point of view, our interpretation of fairness, our concept of what the rules should be, are self-evidently right -- we may be correct in light of our own personal vision of grass-roots democracy, but very wrong given someone else's priorities.

Structuring Venture Capital THE ROLE OF FACTION

Equity Private Quebec Team After Brower's followers recaptured the Club's Board in the mid-1970's', for years Club elections were primarily about individual leadership styles, experience and qualifications. Most Directors came up through the Club's grass-roots structure, had spent years working on issues and programs, in the Council or as chapter and group executives. Occasionally the Nominating Committee would reach outside for some unconventional candidate without such experience, but most such outside candidates didn't fare well. There were petition candidates, but they were mostly experienced Club leaders, often former Directors, who had not found favor with the Nominating Committee.

Equity Mail Private Wyoming There were factions ON the Board, but faction played very little role IN ELECTING the Board. Candidates would mail to members in their own chapters. And the most heated debates on the Board were about resources -- which services the Club would provide to its chapters, groups and members -- how much emphasis on outings, how much funding for publications, or the field program, what issues would be the major campaign focus, how fast the Club would invest in geographies beyond its traditional California core.

Investment Home Equtiy Loan As the Club became more politically consequential, and environmental issues themselves became more political, this began to change. Individual public lands activists inside or outside the Club found that if the Club did not support their particular strategy, it was difficult to obtain Congressional support or backing. Previously, activists who had a strategy the Club rejected would work through, or even create, another organization. But as the Club loomed larger and larger, this became less attractive than changing the Club's position. First the advocates of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, (NREPA), then the believers in ending commercial logging, concluded that the most effective strategy they could adopt was to change the Sierra Club's approach to their issue. Some of these activists had been active inside the Club and wanted their organization to adopt their priority; others came to the Club with the goal of changing its policy approach.

Private Equity Jobs These policy conflicts were also, in part, generational. A new generation of younger activists were more likely to embrace both NREPA and ECL as goals. When other, and often older, Club leaders resisted these new ideas as politically unfeasible, and resisted the efforts of new activists to move into leadership positions, the Club's activist base began to fracture. For the first time in decades, slates and faction became a regular feature of Club elections. John Muir Sierrans was formed, ran candidates for the Club Board, and placed a series of ballot question before the Club's membership.

Equity Investment Strategy When the Club attempted to resolve the long-standing dispute on immigration by adopting a neutrality position, Sierrans for US Population Stabilization, SUSPS, emerged, and modelled itself initially on JMS. It too ran candidates for the Board; it too placed a ballot question before the members.

Education Equity Investment JMS, broadly speaking, succeeded. The Board agreed to support NREPA.On the second vote the members adopted the ending commercial logging policy. A series of JMS candidates were elected to the Board. The Club's policy on grazing was significantly toughened. A substantial generational transfer took place within the Club's leadership, and shortly after I became Executive Director the youngest Board in recent Club history was elected. Adam Werbach, elected with JMS support, became the youngest Club President; Jennifer Ferenstein followed as the second President initially elected on the JMS slate. JMS leaders have not only been elected as petition candidates, they have been nominated by the Nominating Committee and appointed to serve on the Nominating Committee. JMS is no longer, in any fundamental sense, a group of outsiders, although many of its leaders continue to see themselves in opposition to the "old guard."

Private Equity Company The transfer was not smooth. There were bitter battles on the Board, and within some chapters. The conflict was often as much about political strategy and style -- insider vs. outsider, reasoned vs. confrontational -- as it was about policy. In some chapters, like New York, appeared to be predominantly geographic factionalism, upstate vs. the City. As a result there is still a group of JMS activists deeply distrustful of what they see as the Club's "old guard" and its efforts to take the Club down a path of excessive pragmatism and exclude them from power.

Equity Guide In Investment While there were small grass-roots organizations outside the Club cheering JMS on, and some of their leaders occasionally joined the fray, the candidates initially put forward by JMS were largely young activists, people who had at least some Sierra Club experience, and for whom the Club was their primary environmental focus. Only David Brower, of the JMS Board candidates, could be described as an outside celebrity, and he was obviously also the premier inside celebrity. And organizations other than the Club provided very little of the organizational muscle and energy behind the JMS insurgency. (A perfectly respectable word having no connection with what's going on in Iraq, but originally applied in politics to anti-boss, reform Democrats in New York City.)

Contact Equity Private Quebec SUSPS was not as successful. The membership rejected the proposal to adopt a policy in favor of restricting immigration, and while SUSPS ran a number of long-standing Club activists for the Board, none were elected.

Home Equity Investment OUTSIDERS ENTER THE FRAY

Dimension Equity In Private The battles over NREPA and ECL had been over strategy -- there was relatively little division in the Club over the intrinsic desirability of establishing big wilderness, or phasing out the commercial timber program. But many Club leaders believed that restricting immigration was not only unstrategic, but fundamentally an unethical position for an environmental organization like the Club to take. This gave the issue a particular bitterness.It was about right and wrong in a way that earlier disputes had not been. And immigration raised, in ways no other Club issue had, the emotionally charged question of race and racism. (I'll discuss this later.)

Credit Equity Home Investment During the vote on the immigration ballot question, a new phenomenon emerged. Outside organizations intervened in a substantial way in the Club's election. Mass mailings to Club leaders were sent out by other immigration restriction organizations, including some whose primary focus was not environmental. SUSPS was able to identify substantial financial resources to pay for special mailings, including an official Club one on both sides of the issue to the entire membership. The election campaign on the immigration issue was by far the most expensive and intensive in the Club's history.

Private Equity Investor As SUSPS continued its efforts to change Club immigration policy, its leadership worked more and more closely with other immigration restriction groups. For many of its identified leaders, the Club was simply one of their organizational foci. Outside groups appeared to provide more and more of the infrastructure and support for the SUSPS effort. And SUSPS began to do more and more recruitment and advocacy outside the Club, especially on its own web-site and that of other groups. It even testified on one occasion before Congress, and tried to trademark its own name, making it an outside organization in a way that JMS had never been.

Equity Guarantee Insurance In the election of 2002 SUSPS elected its first Director, UCLA Astrophyicist Ben Zuckerman. In 2003 SUSPS ran three candidates. One, Dick Schneider, was a long standing Bay Chapter activist, a major leader in successful Club campaigns to protect open space in the East Bay. A second, Paul Watson, was the head of the Sea Shepherd Society, and had rejoined the Sierra Club shortly before his first run for the Board of Directors in the late 1990's. The third, Doug Lafollette, was a long time environmental activist and Wisconsin Secretary of State, a Club member for many years, but not one who had been active as a grass-roots leader within the Club. Watson and Lafollette won; Schneider lost.

Private Equity Analyst Lafollette became the first prominent public official elected to the Club's Board since before the firing of David Brower; Watson joined Brower and Dave Foreman as one of a very few heads of another significant national or international environmental organization elected as a Director.

Equity Investment Policy These election results posed a fundamental challenge for those Club leaders who believed that the Club's primary stakeholders were its volunteer activists. Those activists were also experienced in the Club's particular style of grass-roots campaign organizing. Their skills were seen as essential by those who felt that organizing, not taking positions, was the Club's key role.

Create Equity Equity Into Most Club members neither vote in the Club's elections nor consider themselves members in a governance sense -- they are financial contributors, checkbook members. Those who do vote have very little information about the candidates. Most know none of them personally.

Company Equity Investment This dilemma does not have an easy solution. It has bothered Club leaders ever since, in the early 1980's, the Club's formal membership exploded, while its network of engaged activists who knew each other grew much more slowly.

Top Private Equity Firm It's been commonly remarked for decades that its almost impossible to handicap the elections for the Board; a candidate can do very poorly one year and poll strongly the next for no apparent reason. But in a low information and sporadic engagement context, such quirky results are to be expected.

Private Equity Deal But the sudden success of SUSPS in running outside candidates with outside credentials suggested to some that, in fact, the Club's elections could be consistently influenced by outside name recognition and celebrity -- the Schwarznegger phenomenon. In many non-profit organizations, of course, such luminaries are consciously sought for the legitimacy they bring the organization. But in the Club's grass-roots culture, some feared that the primacy of the chapter and group leaders would be fundamentally threatened if outside credentials and experience became a normal pathway of Board membership. They worried that chapter and group activists became increasingly less able to win elections.

Apollo Private Equity In September of 2003, in what seemed to be a temporary truce in the immigration wars, the Board agreed by a unanimous vote to put off a membership vote on immigration until 2005, but then to place an agreed upon ballot question before the membership. One of the major arguments for this truce was the need to unify the Club in the face of the challenge from the Bush Administration.

Birmingham Equity Msn Private Speaking personally, I think this truce would probably have held even if SUSPS had run a slate of candidates for the Board -- except for three other events.

Birmingham Equity Mail Private One event was a speech given by Director Paul Watson to a conference of animal rights activists. At the conference Watson made the following statement: "One of the reasons that I'm on the, um, the Sierra Club board of directors right now is to try and change it ? we're only three directors away from controlling that board. We control one-third of it right now. And, uh, once we get three more directors elected, the Sierra Club will not, no longer be pro-hunting and pro-trapping and we can use the resources of the $95-million-a-year budget to address some of these issues. And the heartening thing about it is that, in the last election, of the 750,000 members of the Sierra Club, only 8 percent of them voted. So, you know, a few hundred, or a few thousand people from the animal rights movement joining the Sierra Club -- and making it a point to vote -- will change the entire agenda of that organization."

Private Equity Capital I don't know exactly what Director Watson meant by that statement, or why he said it. But at the September Annual meeting a series of Council delegates and other Club leaders rose to question or criticize Watson for this statement. He was asked which five Directors he was counting on, and who "we" was, but did not respond to those specific questions. He was also challenged about the appropriateness of "taking over" the Sierra Club. His response was that it wasn't really a take over as long as it was done through democratic means, by votes. Council delegate Drusha Mayhue challenged this perspective, saying that she felt it was not appropriate, although it was legal, to join another organization to change its policies or priorities, that people should join non-profit groups because they already supported their policies and priorities.

Private Equity Investing I believe that a great many Club leaders came away from the Council meeting with the feeling that some kind of understanding existed between the three Directors who had been elected with SUSPS support -- Watson, Ben Zuckerman and Doug Lafollette -- and some of the JMS elected Directors concerned with animal rights. The word began to circulate among leaders that some kind of coalition between immigration restrictionists and animal rights activists was trying to take control of the Board. And there has been a pattern on the Board on issues relating to election procedures of five Directors voting together.

Chicago Private Equity The second event which broke the truce was the fact that the SUSPS slate was led by Richard Lamm, the former Governor of Colorado, and that both of the other candidates on that slate were individuals with strong outside experience and credentials and no inside, grass-roots Club experience. Leaving aside the immigration issue, this slate was for many long time Club grass-roots activists their worst nightmare come true -- it suggested that in the future the Club's Board might be dominated by outsiders, elected for their non-Sierra Club credentials, and that activists who did the work of the Club would be disenfranchised.

Capital Equity India Private The third event which I'll discuss later, was the increased involvement of hate groups in trying to piggyback on the Club's imigration debate.

Equity Mail Private Quebec In response the Board was asked to endorse the Nominating Committee slate, but chose instead to provide the members with information about the activities of outside group's seeking to influence the Club's election. Three candidates chose to run as "Paul Revere" candidates to inform the members about their fears, not to solicit votes for themselves. Three members of the SUSPS slate sued the Club over these events, then dropped their lawsuit when the Club made clear that it believed they were trying to silence its rights to speak and that under California law, if the Club could show this was the purpose of the lawsuit, the Club could recover attorney's fees.

Private Equity Funding There is an odd feature of this controversy. Those who oppose the decisions by the Board to allow the Nominating Committee to identify its criteria, to require candidates to list their Sierra Club leadership experience, and to insert a notice about the activities of outside organizations at the back of the ballot, claim that these activities are "undemocratic."

Equity Jms Private As I said at the beginning of this series, "democracy" is usually a code word in the Club. It seems odd, at first blush, that activists believe that it is acceptable for outside organizations, which are not democratically governed, to seek to influence Sierra Club elections, but undemocratic for the Sierra Club's elected Board to tell its members about these activities and efforts.

Birmingham Email Equity This makes no sense if you view the Club, as California law does, as a non-profit corporation. Corporate boards, including non-profits boards, are allowed to try to fend off outside take-overs; they routinely endorse candidates. California law doesn't prohibit the Board from weighing in with the members. It simply requires it to allow competing candidates a fair shake.

Private Equity Conference Similarly, if you view the Sierra Club as it historically evolved, as a club of like minded individuals, those individuals would seem to have the legitimate right to insist that those who join it not try to change its character. It belongs to its stakeholders, and in the eyes of many Club grass-roots activists, the key stakeholders are the activists themselves. The Club is entitled, in that view, to tell the voting members, "look, folks are trying to change our organization and we don't think its a good idea."

Private Equity Career But some view the Club as a quasi-public entity, like a political party. From that perspective, its OK for the grass-roots, including smaller outside groups, to try to influence the party or the public entity. It's not OK for those who happen to head the entity at a given moment to use its resources to discourage change -- just as we wouldn't want the State of California to help one party or the other in a gubernatorial election.

Private Equity Definition So again, the conflict arises from very different visions of what the Club is -- a non-profit corporation/private group of like minded individuals, or a quasi-public body like a political party open to anyone to try to influence or capture.

Private Equity Week The Club's By-laws are ambiguous here. They say the Club is open to anyone who shares its environmental goals. But who defines what those goals are? And the Board is specifically authorized to spend Club resources in support candidates for the Board.

Private Equity Fund Raising Part 1 of 3
By Carl Pope, Executive Director
Sierra Club - 2/29/2004

Topic: Sierra Club

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