"Big Mama" – this is how Tanya Westmoreland is known in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Kids in the community stop and tell her about their day. They stand a little straighter when she's around and they want her to be proud. She is proud – of the kids and of the community she's called home for 24 years.
At NeighborWorks Green Bay, Westmoreland is also known as a board member and volunteer. NeighborWorks nonprofits keep their affiliation in the NeighborWorks network only if they have at least 33% of their boards made up by citizens in the communities they serve. It's part of a model that centers resident leadership, something NeighborWorks America has done since its founding 45 years ago.
"It's part of who NeighborWorks is," explains Jen Christian, senior director of Network Leadership Development. "Resident leaders bring true value. This is where they live. We want efforts to be led by them." Other board members, who come from varied disciplines, "learn from them and with them."
When NeighborWorks, which started as Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., began creating Neighborhood Housing Services organizations in its initial years, the charge was to bring together residents with public and private representatives and start building the local nonprofits. "That was the model," Christian says. "As we set up organizations, we were mindful of who lived there, what they wanted and where they wanted it."
Beckah Terlouw says it's critical to center community voices in board work, which is why NeighborWorks makes an investment in board members. "Community members on our boards are important because they understand their neighbors, they understand the gifts, talents and passions of the community and the challenges faced by the community."
Resident leaders are also trusted members of their communities. "They're insiders," says Terlouw, who helps train board members through NeighborWorks' Excellence in Governance (EIG) Academy. "Organizations are simply stronger when the board understands firsthand the story of the community."
Westmoreland is proud to be a part of NeighborWorks' tradition of supporting and elevating resident voices. How did she come to join the board? "They asked me," she says. "And I said ‘yes,' because I was interested." Having residents on a board of directors aligns with her idea of what community development should be. "If the people were being left out, I wouldn't want anything to do with it," she says. "But they wanted someone with boots on the ground."
During the first week in June, network organizations across the country celebrate NeighborWorks Week — a week that observes who residents and network organizations connect to serve their communities. Network organizations also celebrate the leadership of residents like Westmoreland. 
Westmoreland has spent her whole life in Wisconsin. When her mother went into labor with her in Chicago, the story goes, "my father rushed her to Milwaukee to give birth." She's remained in the state ever since.
On disability from the military, Westmoreland's life has largely been about volunteer work. She had a period of substance abuse, she says, and she followed that path to Green Bay. "But when I got here it was peaceful. It was clean." And Westmoreland got clean herself.
She became involved in neighborhood associations. And as her own life came together, she began helping others, too. That's what's she's done for the past 17 years. "It's different here. Everyone says "hi." I fell in love with Green Bay, and it gave me a new start. This neighborhood has kept me clean and sober all these years."
She's seen a turnaround in her neighborhood, and she's been proud to be a part of it. "It's a slow process," she says. "But people have been receptive to how I do things. I talk to children like I'm a grandmother. I talk to parents like I'm their mom. I love that fact that it has become more of a living neighborhood here than simply a living-in-your-house neighborhood."
But you can't change things, she points out, "unless you are in the thick of things." It's hard to get people active, and she wants other resident leaders to know this: These things can take a while. But change, she adds, does come.
"If I see something incorrect, I speak on it. If I see something great, I speak on that, too." She's also added to her community to make it better. She started a concert event in July that has become a yearly celebration. "It started as a dream I could not shake," she says. "I wanted an event that would uplift the neighborhood, and then people started helping."
Westmoreland wants the board to be great, too, she says. That's one reason she joined NeighborWorks America's EIG Academy, which helps participants develop leadership skills, strengthen governance strategies and examine and experiment with promising practices. The next cohort begins in August.
Terlouw, who knows Westmoreland from another NeighborWorks program called Building Leaders, Building Communities, says Westomoreland is very community-minded. "She represents the community in the truest way."
Noel S. Halvorsen, president & CEO of NeighborWorks Green Bay, says resident board members like Westmoreland "are critical to our mission of solving housing challenges and building stronger communities. We're committed to listening to our neighbors and incorporating their aspirations and ideas into our work. Who better to inform us and help shape our plans than the residents of the neighborhoods we're trying to serve?"
NeighborWorks started Excellence in Governance 12 years ago to share promising governance practices. The program is getting a reboot, but the purpose remains the same. "We take participants out of the comfort zone of a board room to help them figure out how to do better," Christian says. "We learned that board members were really hungry to be engaged at a strategic and generative level – they were not interested in being a rubberstamp. They wanted to engage with one another. They wanted to ask big, tough questions. They wanted to bring the hats they wear outside board room into the board room and use that knowledge to make their organization and community a better place."
Having residents on the board is as important now as it ever was – perhaps more so. Christian says NeighborWorks anticipates a wave of retirements, and boards of directors will have an impact on who the new executives turn out to be. "Who leads the organization is determined by who is at the board table. We are putting emphasis on who sits at the table and how they think about the future of the organization. If we want nonprofits to be led by folks from the community they serve, to look like the community they serve or to have a similar lived experience, we have to make sure that the board has some of that, too, so the next leader is truly understood and supported."
06/06/2024
