Dear Friends,
At the core of FOR’s theory of change is the primacy of responsiveness to the issues of the day through relationship. Our international fellowship began through the August 1914 handshake of Henry Hodgkin and Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, who pledged to seek reconciliation with each other even though their countries were at war.
 From a legacy of citizen diplomacy campaigns – such as organizing the global Dai Dong environmental campaign and sending delegations of U.S. peacemakers to such locations as the former Soviet Union, Vietnam, Iraq, Nicaragua, and Iran – to the human connections of solidarity that accompaniment engenders, FOR has fostered relationships that lift up each person’s humanity. While the network of relationships within FOR and the work we have supported have demonstrably made a profound impact for peace on our earth, this work has manifested in different initiatives in different eras.
Like many historic faith-based and peace organizations today, our funding sources are diminishing, causing us to reconsider how we are manifesting our work in these times. During the last five years alone, FOR has had to draw from reserves at an average of over $200,000 a year. In order to bring our spending into line with our income, the National Council of FOR has adopted a restructuring plan that seeks to balance FOR’s budget and create a sustainable future. This plan includes both reductions in staff and some expansions that can bring in new funding sources.
The heart of FOR’S new mission statement, adopted in 2013, proclaims our commitment “to organize, train, and grow a diverse movement.” In recent weeks, we have outlined our move to a “regional strategy” in two messages, “Returning to Our Roots” and “Reaching and Growing.” Our restructuring will help us carry out that strategy in a sustainable way.
 We will shift from five geographic regions to three, coordinated by a Director of National Organizing and focused on cultivating the next generation of multi-faith justice leaders. After a national search for a Director of National Organizing, we are pleased to announce that Ethan Vesely-Flad, our current Director of Communications who has been with FOR since 2005, will transition to this role later this spring. This move reduces our communications department to one full-time staff position.
 We plan to launch a fee-based “Fellowship School” modeled on the successful program that the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) program hosted by FOR-USA in late 2013 in the United States; these residential programs will bring cohorts of Fellows together (primarily at Shadowcliff, our national headquarters in Nyack, N.Y.) to experience intensive nonviolence training through diverse leaders from across our network, and then return to their grassroots regions as seeds for transformation. Gretchen Honnold, who coordinated IFOR's fall 2013 program in partnership with FOR-USA, is joining our staff on a 17-month contract basis to test the viability of this model. Furthermore, this initiative allows us to make better use of the asset we have in Shadowcliff.
This restructuring plan calls for us to increase our mentoring of young interns and strengthen campus-based work. In three U.S. regions (Northern, Southern, and Western), our organizing staff will establish multifaith, multiracial cohorts of interns; new small fellowships that we expect to be places of roots and nurture. We look forward to the new communities of FOR-related activists that will spring from this outreach.
At the same time, it is with a heavy heart we share news that this strategic reorganization will eliminate five current program positions, bringing to a close the service to FOR of treasured and experienced staff members.
Four members of our team – John Lindsay-Poland, Shauen Pearce, Susana Pimiento Chamorro, and Leila Zand, whose combined tenure at FOR represents almost a half-century of dedicated service – are concluding their professional service at FOR. These inspiring individuals have organized countless campaigns, coordinated speaking tours, traveled the world as emissaries for peace and justice, and broadly represented the fullest expression of FOR’s commitment to “demilitarize life and land.” On behalf of FOR and the peace and justice movement as a whole, we celebrate the transformational change they have made real and I express our deepest gratitude to these colleagues for their visionary leadership.
Another member of our program staff team, Lucas Johnson, was named last month as the new International Coordinator for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and following a transition period his FOR-USA position will similarly be closed in its current form.
The process of addressing our sustainability and the resulting decisions have been difficult for all involved, but the plan we have adopted will allow FOR to continue our needed work far into the twenty-first century. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, as a community devoted to furthering transformation through a nonviolent way of life, has been through many iterations of focus as well as many organizational valleys and victories. In the next 100 years, we commit to persevering for peace.
Thank you for your ever-present support, especially in challenging times, throughout this journey.
 Kristin Stoneking Executive Director
Fellowship of Reconciliation
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