Flip Among Friends @ Mark Rosen's All-Star Afternoon, Benefiting ACES, June 2013
Non-selfish wow, I just "opened the paper", so to speak, to see that Flip Saunders passed away today. I am not an NBA nor Timberwolves fan (Andrew Wiggins notwithstanding), so I don't have many Flip stories. I do have one, though. In 2013, Flip was one of a handful of folks who participated on a sports panel at our big ACES annual fundraiser. I sat next to him when neither of us was on stage, so we chatted quite a bit. My takeaway: Super-nice, salt-of-the-earth guy, smiled pretty much the whole day, and was pretty damned funny. Rest in peace, Flip.
Yet another reminder, folks, none of us are here for very long, and perhaps here and in good health for an even less amount of time.
When I sat down to write this entry, I planned on calling it "Shedding Skin". That was before I opened the paper. I'll start now where I intended when I sat down.
Shedding skin because we had our annual fundraiser for ThreeSixty Journalism on Friday, and that marked the end of an intense, terrifying, terrific 16 months. When I took that job, my neighbor said, "Good luck. New jobs are tough." I shrugged. She was right though, oh so right. One, I was taking over for a "legacy leader", i.e. someone who had been there for quite some time and was much admired. Two, there were a couple immediate challenges: One, our annual fundraiser was to take place four months after I started. Without getting into the nitty gritty, the essence of that was to enter a room of 200 supporters and convince them that even though they know and love my predecessor, we will kick ass under my leadership. The second immediate challenge was a major funding opportunity that presented itself three months after I started. Again, without getting into the nitty gritty, having a three-year vision for an organization you've been with for three months is difficult. (Fast forward to March, and we were notified we did not get that funding.) Then, post Thanksgiving, my one and only full-time employee announced he was leaving. So let's look at where things were in the beginning of January.
I was on the job for less than six months, I was the only employee, we had a site visit (that ultimately I was not happy with at all) for that major funding on January 10, and I got dumped on January 11, or at least that was the last time I saw her, and the dumping ensued the following week. Dump by text. Super mature. I know how to pick 'em.
So here we were, in January. I had a hunch that big funding opportunity would not bear fruit for us, so we switched our sights to other (and better, more realistic) things at work. I hired a replacement in February and added an additional full-time position in March. Long story short: Since March we have KILLED IT in every way. It has been absolutely amazing, and the final word of that 16 month story was Friday, our all-new annual fundraiser, with the three of us and 200 of our best supporters. It may very well have been the best night of my professional life--so far.
So, onward and upward it is, the sometimes gnarly skin of the past 16 months has been shed.
And rest in peace, Flip. There's a cool dog up there waiting to greet you.
