 |
|
|
Greenbelt Alliance In the News
May 7, 2007
Nonprofit profile: Greenbelt Alliance
Tom Steinbach,
executive director
Sarah Duxbury
Name: Tom Steinbach.
Title: Executive director.
Organization: Greenbelt Alliance.
Mission: To protect open space and promote livable communities in the Bay
Area.
Founded: 1958.
Milestone: Over 49 years, the Greenbelt has protected more than 1 million
acres of both working farmland and natural areas around the nine-county Bay
Area.
Annual budget: $2.5 million.
Expense allocation: Administration 6 percent, development 10 percent, programs
84 percent.
Corporate support: About 4 percent.
Corporate supporters: REI, Odwalla, Veritable Vegetable.
Board chair: Jean McCown.
Board members: 25, including Mort Fleishhacker, Laney Thornton, Deepak Kamlani,
Charles McGlashan.
Employees: 20.
Volunteers: Over 7,000.
Events: Go Greenbelt bike tour, Bluegrass for Greenbelt, hikes in the greenbelt,
farm tours and urban walks throughout the year.
Telephone: (415) 543-6771.
Web site: www.greenbelt.org
Office Issues
Recent challenge: Working to defeat Prop. 90 last November. That statewide
measure would have required taxpayers to pay landowners any time new laws
were adopted
that a landowner claimed would reduce their property value. It would have
caused cities and counties and states to stop passing laws to protect land
and the environment.
Measures of success: We look very closely at the land we protect from sprawling
development and at the growth of new jobs and housing in already developed
places. The way we define success is all about how do we get growth to happen
in the
right places.
Smartest move: Working directly with cities and counties on public growth
management policies to set firm boundaries for where growth will and won't
occur. We managed
to get 23 cities in five counties to get urban growth policies in place.
Missed opportunity: The lack of success in getting any high degree of regional
cooperation between 101 cities and nine counties.
Misconception: That environmental protection and economic growth are mutually
exclusive and they can't be achieved together.
Professional Insights
Personal path to nonprofit work: I have always been interested in how governments
think about and work to achieve the values our constitution articulates,
and that got honed in graduate school at the Kennedy School of Government.
Toughest aspect: The sense that the future of the landscape is on our shoulders,
and we're small.
Most surprising aspect: We're very, very focused on putting together a
vibrant economy and a protected environment. Both of those things are critically
important to us; it's not one or the other.
Biggest pain: Every single year there is some place in this region that
needs attention and needs work on behalf of organizations and we don't
have the
capacity to get to all those places.
Greatest pleasure: I get to wake up every day and look out my window and
see this great landscape and know the organization I'm working for is a
big part
of ensuring it's in good shape.
Introspections
Best recent moment: Watching (13-month-old daughter) Ellie take her first
steps. We also had a victory in an effort to protect some land.
Worst recent moment: Losing an effort in November 2005 to protect a pristine
hillside outside the city of Pittsburg in Contra Costa County.
Dream for another Life: I'd probably be sailing around the world.
Greatest inspiration: I get inspired by being outside in nature, basically
wild places.
Down time: Now that I've got two kids, I spend a lot of time playing outside
with them, and whenever I can, I get out and do some hiking and biking
in the greenbelt.
Causes: Right now I'm doing everything I can to reduce or address global
warming, climate change. Having watched Al Gore's movie, I drank the Kool-Aid.
Most like to meet: Eleanor Roosevelt. Of living people, Bono.
###
|
