State Strategy Task Force
Attendees: William Guindon Jr, F. Celeste Branham, Brittany Gleixner-Hayat, Pamela Proulx-Curry
Staff: Lucy Martin, Maureen Kendzierski
Executive Summary:
The Service Strategy Task Force met on 12/11/2025 at 12:00pm for one hour. Meeting was facilitated by Executive Director Brittany “Britt” Gleixner-Hayat and attended by Commission Members: Chair Pamela “Pam” Proulx-Curry, Chair Elect William “Bill” Guindon, F. Celeste Branham. Also in attendance were VM Staff Maureen Kendzierski and Lucy Martin. Unable to attend were Chelsey Trimble-Fortin, Janet May, Jennifer Tarr, and Scott Adams.
The group discussed the schedule of meetings; there is a correction – meetings are monthly and had been inadvertently scheduled as weekly. This will be updated. Also, the January meeting has been moved from January 8th to January 15th due to a Commission conflict.
Britt notes that a member of the public, Jennie Coyne, will be joining the Service Strategy Task Force.
Britt provided an update on the process of identifying and contracting a facilitator for this strategic planning process. Due to the cost (over $10,000) for this facilitation process, normally an RFP would be required. As this takes 5-6 months, it is not an option for this process. Emergency Selection could be leveraged but requires the selection of the lowest cost of three proposals, limiting the ability to select the most qualified candidate. The third option, and the one Britt will likely pursue, is to hire someone from the Pre-Authorized Vendor list. Due to the delay in hiring contracted employees, we may not have our permanent facilitator for January’s meeting; it may be facilitated by VM Staff Maureen Kendzierski or by a day-contracted facilitator.
Britt clarified that she envisions the role of the Facilitator to be an enabler of the Commissioners, helping them to facilitate stakeholder meetings, doing background work, taking notes, and sometimes leading meetings and organizing information. The focus should be on the Commissioners and their conversations with stakeholders; ensuring that those stakeholders are able to connect with the Commission and its work.
Britt noted that the Schedule of Work for the Facilitator will be available soon for review and approval of the task force.
The next topic was planning for the January meeting of this Task Force. The focus of that meeting is a Look-Back at previous Strategic Plans; what did we promise and what did we achieve. It is important to note that what Volunteer Maine does is not going to change substantively, our mission is service and volunteerism. We may look to change where our services are directed, but not the mission of the Commission. Britt will distribute a packet at the next Business Meeting containing key materials for Commissioners to review prior to the next Task Force Meeting. These materials are on Basecamp, and VM will create a whiteboard that contains the materials, in addition to the printed packet that will be distributed.
In a discussion of the previous strategic plan documents, Pam, Bill, and Britt agreed that the language of this upcoming Strategic Plan needs to be tailored to its audience, and not overwhelm with too much detailed information, but that that level of information can be shared with the Staff who are supporting the implementation of the workplan. Pam noted that you can always give people more information if they want it, but that keeping it clear and simple for a public audience is best.
The goal of the January and February meetings are to learn from what has been done in the past, identify areas where the Commission has grown or needs to grow, and to support the level of understanding the public stakeholders have of what the Commission does and how it works towards its mission. Some steps to be taken are to focus on surfacing challenges faced in the past and identifying what was done and what was not done in relation to those challenges. The focus is not on finding solutions, this would drag the larger conversation into the weeds, but to identify an overview of what actions were promised in previous strategic plans and whether those promised actions were achieved. Britt also notes that she will create a slide framing some pre-existing Status Quo assumptions that will inform the group discussion, identifying areas like Staff levels and AmeriCorps funding that we will presume to exist and remove from visioning conversations in order to focus on what the Commission can do outside of those factors to address its mission and vision. Additionally, Celeste notes that she would like to hear from long-time Staff Michael Ashmore about what he thinks was missing from previous strategic plans and whether those missing items were still relevant to today’s Volunteer Maine. It was also suggested that Volunteer Maine create a survey of recent (within 5 years) exited Commission members to get their input on what has been accomplished through Strategic Planning, or not accomplished, in the past.
Another part of the January meeting should be identifying sectors within which Commissioners will host stakeholder meetings. These meetings will be supported by the Facilitator, but the identified Commissioner will facilitate the meetings themselves. This process should be supported by Stakeholder Mapping to ensure that the constituencies that are most closely aligned with a Commissioner’s background and network are the people with whom that Commissioner is connecting.
Oral History Project
Britt and Celeste will be meeting with Maryalice Crofton for 90 minutes each month to create an oral history of Volunteer Maine. This project dovetails with the Strategic Planning process as it will provide significant perspective on the history of the Commission that can inform future planning.
Action Steps:
- Britt will identify a facilitator using pre-approved list, possibly create a short-term contract for the interim with the same facilitator
- VM will print a packet of materials for the next Commissioner’s Meeting of items to review.
- Task Force Members will review the packet of materials.
- Britt will identify a facilitation plan for January meeting if permanent facilitator is not yet available/contracted.
- Britt will interview Michael Ashmore with the 3 questions being asked of Commissioners and the addition of the question, “What do you think was missing from the Strategic Plan in the last round(s), and are those things still relevant to the Commission?
- Britt’s slide deck for January will include the identification of presumed status-quo items that are not the focus on discussion (Staff levels, funding for AmeriCorps, etc.)
- VM will gather background information such as the interviews done with all past commissioners (chairs maybe?) for the 30th anniversary.
- VM will create a survey to be deployed to recently exited (within 5 years) Commissioners to hear their thoughts about SP, visioning.