Back in April, my Family Relations co-chair for Springfield and I had what we originally considered to be a crazy idea. We discussed the idea very briefly when we first became chairs in March, but figured that it would never happen and let it go. A few weeks later though, the idea came back with a vengeance. So after discussing amongst ourselves, with the rest of our executive board, with previous Springfield Family Relations Chairs, and with Family Relations Chairs of other organizations, we decided to go for it.
Over the course of the summer, we also spoke to our three currently paired families. And they, too, loved the idea.
So all of a sudden, it was happening. We were getting ready to announce to all the returning general members that we were planning to apply to be paired with a fourth Four Diamonds Family. Hours before the meeting we were sitting on the floor of Rachel’s room in Atherton, brainstorming ways that we could introduce the idea and give some explanation into our reasoning, while also providing a clear-cut way for everybody in the organization to be included in the application and let their own thoughts be heard.
From the moment we started our lead-in, we could see the smiles forming. And by the time we finished our presentation and sat down, we knew we had made the right call. In that initial presentation we asked our members to answer the question “What does expanding the Springfield family mean to you?” and gave them three weeks to do it.
It wasn’t until we received the first response (a two-page handwritten letter) the very next day that we received some clarification that our question to members was appropriate and that we truly were doing this for the right reasons.
Before we announced the idea to members and started getting their reactions, we were concerned that we were behaving selfishly. We were nervous that we made a decision that would further our legacy as FR chairs in Springfield but that our members and currently paired families didn’t want, and that we wouldn’t have the support of the organization in incorporating this new family with the rest of Springfield. We didn’t know how the captains in the Family Relations committee would respond to our application for a fourth THON family—would they take us seriously and consider our application and Springfield’s history in the THON community, or would they dismiss our application as being too greedy? And what about Springfield’s alumni? We are an organization with many long-standing traditions, but also an organization that has been rapidly growing in the past three years and needs to make structural changes to account for this growth.
In the past three weeks, the responses from our members have been incredibly reassuring. Our members expressed nothing but excitement and support for the idea, and over twenty of them answered our question with their own feelings about the application. We spoke to a few Family Relations captains, and their eyes lit up when we showed them our application-in-progress and had very specific questions for them.
And finally, two days before the application was due we received a response from a Springfield alumnus. In her message to us, she said: “I just wanted to email and let you know that I’m pretty freaking (keeping that language FT-OK for a change) excited for you guys to be applying for a 4th family. It takes a non-zero amount of backbone to break with the whole “3 family max” tradition we’ve had going for 16 years. So really, kudos.” In those three sentences, Tori told us what we needed to hear. Yes, applying for a fourth family is breaking with Springfield’s tradition and highly uncommon in the THON community. But that isn’t a bad thing. Wanting to do more and bring the organization to new heights is exactly what we are supposed to be doing as leaders.
It’s been almost five months since Rachel and I initially made our decision, but I think I finally have my answer as to whether we were acting appropriately as leaders, and the answer is yes. Members of our organization may not have thought on their own that Springfield needed and should have a fourth family. But when asked the question they know that we can handle it, and they are ready to tell us why they think so. And that’s really what leadership is: analyzing where an organization currently stands, believing in what it is capable of accomplishing, figuring out what it will take to advance the organization, confirming with other members of the organization that the intended path is appropriate, and then helping everybody to follow that path.
We don’t know when we will find out if the application was successful—it could be a week; it could be five months. For now I am going to stop thinking about the “fourth fam app” (as we have come to call it) and accept that it is now out of my hands. After spending so much of my time over the past month thinking about this application it is hard to let it go, but I know that I have done everything I possibly could have to improve our chances.
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