Our Bay Area is looking for a few good conservation organizers

A strategy for building up the Sierra Club Bay Chapter

With four counties, 42,000 members, and close to 1,000 already-active volunteers, the San Francisco Bay Chapter has just four Conservation staff. If we can grow to have a conservation organizer in each area of the Chapter, we will be able to accomplish so much more than now.

• San Francisco, with the 13th largest population of any city in the country and with over 10,000 Club members, needs at least one full-time staffperson. The issues decided in San Francisco often have important implications for the whole region. The power of having a full-time organizer for San Francisco was demonstrated last November when we played a significant role in maintaining a friendly majority on the Board of Supervisors. Now we need to do focused organizing to reap full benefits from this Board majority in areas such as renewable energy sources, the Hetch Hetchy system, Treasure Island redevelopment, public access to the shoreline, and protection of Golden Gate Park.
• Marin has a very sympathetic political environment, and its large, strong membership base (7,500) offers many opportunities for environmental efforts. Marin already has the most effective open-space protections of any Bay Chapter county, and it has begun very promising efforts for renewable energy. We should build on these successes and achieve an environmental majority on the Board of Supervisors and in the larger cities. A dedicated staffperson in Marin would help shore up environmental gains there.
• In Central and East Contra Costa we have 6,000 members, and the potential for political change is huge. For decades developers and big business have called the shots, and a number of cities are still trying to sprawl into surrounding open space and agricultural lands. Developer-friendly politicians tend to get promoted to supervisor, then to Assembly and state Senate. On the other hand, growth, sprawl, and traffic have become key issues, and some politicians are riding the smart-growth/slow-growth tide to higher office. We need at least one staffperson here.
• Southern and Eastern Alameda County have similar problems to Contra Costa - proposals for sprawl development and a relatively conservative political environment. Our membership here is not large (3,000), and organizing is difficult due to long commutes. We need at least one person here.
• West Contra Costa and Northern Alameda Counties, as urbanized areas, have different issues from the areas east of the hills. There are fewer large open-space campaigns, but a range of urban issues are vital for improving quality of life and for reducing the demand for sprawl: for example, Eastshore parks, casinos, affordable housing, and infill. We also have a very large, active membership base (15,000) here that to be truly effective should have at least one staffperson in each county. With our membership levels and activist base we should be able to imitate the success in San Francisco and create environmental majorities in key cities. (Some day we may even aim for the Board of Supervisors in these two counties, but given our smaller membership and activist bases in the eastern parts of these counties, we are somewhat far from that goal.)

In these areas, there are hundreds of elected officials making key decisions. Each regional organizer will work with some of these officials, and in addition, one of the key functions of our conservation director and conservation manager is to have the longer-term high-level experience and relationships to help interact with all these politicians.

One other key team member will be a large-donor fundraiser. An organization the size of the Bay Chapter, located in such a highly supportive area, should be able to raise hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars each year from individual large donors. This funding will translate directly into greater effectiveness in every region of the Chapter.

Does this goal of greater staffing and greater effectiveness at defending the Bay Area's environment sound sensible to you? We hope that you will support it with your contributions, just as the Chapter staff will support it with sustained organizing and fundraising work.

Mike Daley, conservation director; and Michael Bornstein, senior Chapter director