Why am I doing this? After I retired and we moved to be closer to our kids, I started looking for something where my interest, experience and knowledge might meet a need in the community. I’ve served on numerous boards, created and taught workshops, developed and implemented strategic plans in the corporate and nonprofit worlds. I’ve directed human resources and led very successful marketing communication team for a regional privately owned company that grew into and became part of an international group traded on the New York and London stock exchanges. Those skills might be quite useful in a volunteer setting. But I wanted to do something different. A little more hands on doing something where I was accountable to myself. I always envied our computer graphics staff. So I decided to learn html which led to web design and software for newsletters. I wanted to do volunteer work with computers.
When I was a kid, I loved the library. I believed that books held the answers to everything. I spent hours searching for books on everything from art to ballet and zoos. The only limit was the restriction on the number of books a kid could check out. Even in college I would roam the university library stacks. Those were the days before computers and books were old and had a great aroma. While the Internet doesn’t have that great aroma, it still offers that feeling of roaming through the largest stacks in the universe. I wanted to do volunteer work that involved research and the Internet.
About three years ago, I talked with several people about publishing a newsletter that would inform people on what was happening in community and what was available for volunteer work. ‘Good idea’. So CommonGood was born, starting with 50 subscribers. As they say, the rest is history.
