Organizational History
In 1998, Eastern Washington University (EWU) hired Dr. Stephen Jordan as its new President. Around the same time, the citizens of Cheney, WA elected Amy Jo Sooy as the new Mayor. Dr. Jordan and the Mayor began meeting to discuss the local community dynamics and decided change was needed. They wanted to remove the historic barriers that had been created between the city and the university. The Mayor created a “Blue Ribbon” Committee to act as a cross-cut of the community with representation from downtown business owners, property owners, the City of Cheney’s Planning Department, and many more. The committee formed with the intent of fostering downtown development and creating a strong link between the downtown and the EWU campus. This committee, the predecessor to Pathways to Progress, consisted of seventeen community members and was intended to be a short term organization that would meet eight times over an eight week period. The committee was introduced to the Main Street Four Point ApproachTM to downtown revitalization (Organization, Promotions/Special Events, Design/Planning, and Economic Restructuring) and, along with City of Cheney Planner Glenn Scholten, participated in Main StreetTM Model workshops administered by the State of Washington.
By December of 1999, after the initial eight weeks were up, some committee members decided to form an organization in order to continue towards their goal of downtown revitalization. The Pathways to Progress organization was born and adopted the Main Street Four Point ApproachTM . Office space for the new organization was donated by local businessman Gary Geschke and located downtown.
In May of 2000, EWU formed an interdisciplinary faculty group to guide the university’s participation in Pathways to Progress. The resulting structure included committing a volunteer coordinator (Dr. Dick Winchell of EWU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning) to work under the direction of the Board of Directors. Shortly after the creation of the Pathways to Progress organization, four committees were formed within the Board of Directors to address the four points of the Main StreetTM Model. EWU Interns, working under the direction of the coordinator, were then assigned to specific committees based on their areas of study and interests. In Fall of 2000, Board members attended a retreat facilitated by Susan Kemp of the State of Washington Main Street Program. As a result of the retreat, Pathways reorganized in order to create autonomy for the four committees from the Board of Directors. Instead of being entirely composed of Board members and their assigned students, committees were now to be led by one or two Board members in conjunction with volunteers and students. This served to separate the committees from the Board of Directors body yet allowed for strong communication and collaboration between the Board and the committees.
By the beginning of the 2000-2001 academic year, Nancy Wainwright, a Business Law Professor at EWU, worked with fellow Business Faculty Member Lynn Stephens to perform the accounting work and organize tax status information necessary for Pathways to meet non-profit status requirements of the Internal Revenue Service. By the end of October 2000, Pathways to Progress gained probationary 501(c)(3) designation as a first step in becoming a non-profit organization. Five years is provided for the organization to collect sufficient financial records to prove that it functions as a non-profit entity. For Pathways to Progress, the five-year probationary period ended in 2005, at which time IRS approved for Pathways to Progress as a non-profit, publicly supported organization.
Pathways to Progress has successfully operated with public support of over ninety-eight percent. This is largely a result of government service and support through EWU. In addition, however, Pathways to Progress has a growing membership base as a result of an annual membership campaign. The campaign aims to gain financial support and promote community interest and involvement in the workings of Pathways to Progress. Members have included local business owners, some EWU faculty, and many individual residents of Cheney. Membership has increased from just six members during the first year to forty-four members in 2004, sixty-two members in 2005 and ninety-two members in 2006..
Board members serve a three-year term with the opportunity for a second three-year term when the first is completed. Board member terms are staggered so that one third of the members’ terms expires each year. Existing Board members typically recruit nominees for the Board of Directors. Nominees for prospective Board positions are selected to maintain the representation balance of the original four principle partners: downtown businesses, the City of Cheney, Eastern Washington University and the Community. A ballot is sent out three weeks prior to the Annual Membership meeting, which takes place on the third Tuesday of July. The completed ballots are returned and counted and the new Board members are announced at the meeting.
The Board of Directors meetx on the third Wednesday of every month to discuss issues and make decisions about the best ways to achieve and implement the four approaches to downtown revitalization. Every fall, the Board discusses projects (old and new) that are necessary in improving Downtown Cheney and getting people to come walk around and shop there. They use a straw poll to determine the projects of top priority for the upcoming year. Strategies for implementation are then created for the top priority projects. The first Organizational Strategy, which provides a ten-year outlook on goals and projects, was created in late Fall 2002. For several years, annual priority project determination was used to update the Organizational Strategy. In late 2006 and early 2007, the Board completed another strategic planning process and adopted a new Organizational Strategy. The Organizational Strategy and Priority Projects list are used to determine the allocation of funding toward different projects.
There are four officer roles filled by Board members: President, Vice President, Scribe and Treasurer. Board members make nominations and elect fellow Board members to these posts. Officers spend one year in office, however they may serve more than one consecutive term if they desire and they are re-elected by the Board. It has been tradition for the former vice president to be nominated (and usually elected) as the new president. Along with the immediate past president, the officers make up a five-person Executive Committee that meets midway between Board meetings to organize and prepare for the next Board meeting.
Pathways to Progress Presidents have been as follows:
Lisa Watts-McKee July 2000 – June 2002
Cindy Phillips July 2002 – June 2003
Ed Yarwood July 2003 – June 2004
Rhonda Elliott July 2004 – June 2005
Sue Wright July 2005 – June 2006
Ruth Galm July 2006 – June 2007
Steve Bertram July 2007 - July 2008
Fred Pollard July 2008 - present
After initially operating with the EWU volunteer coordinator and designated Board volunteer “administrators”, the Board recognized the need for a paid staff member to oversee day-to-day operations. They applied for and received a National Service – Learn and Serve America Grant, and in January 2001, Pat Malone was hired as Pathways to Progress’ first Executive Director. Pat Malone’s had prior Main StreetTM Model experience working as the Director of the Department of Community, Trade & Economic Development’s Main Street Program. In addition, he has done economic development planning in many small towns across the State of Washington.
In Fall 2002, Pat Malone resigned and Charlie Dotson was hired as an interim, though now permanent, new Executive Director. Charlie was the Planning Director for the City of Spokane, WA (regional hub of Eastern Washington, located seventeen miles northeast of Cheney) for twelve years prior to taking over at Pathways to Progress. His last big project with the City of Spokane was the creation of the Spokane Downtown Plan which included both a comprehensive plan and design guidelines for the Downtown area. In addition, Charlie is a part-time faculty member for the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at EWU. Before becoming Executive Director, Charlie was no stranger to Pathways to Progress. Instead, he had been very actively involved especially in a couple of the Charrettes. Specifically, Charlie was the facilitator for both the Matlock Building Charrette held in July 2001 and the Parking Charrette of November 2001. Since becoming the director, he has also facilitated the Ice Age Floods planning Charrette.
In May, 2008 Charlie Dotson retired from his service as Executive Director. EWU recommitted its dedication to Pathways to Progress by hiring Spencer Grainger as the Interim Executive Director. Spencer, a graduate of EWU’s urban planning program and Master of Public Administration, had worked at Pathways as a work study student between 2002-2003, and again from 2006-2008. In the years between his work at Pathways, Spencer worked as a community organizer in Spokane’s neighborhood business districts developing Main Street programs tailored to the needs of that context. Spencer’s appointment as Interim Executive Director is currently approved through June, 2009. It is the goal of the Pathways board to hire a permanent Executive Director before that time.
In terms of communication, Pathways does the following: produces and distributes a quarterly newsletter, maintains a web page, has a downtown office, sends out weekly email updates, performs faculty and class presentations, maintains personal merchant contacts, hosts community input/involvement sessions, creates focus groups, and holds monthly Board Meetings and Committee Meetings.
Committee programs and projects are generally organized as follows:
Organization- newsletter, web page, fundraising, communication, volunteer management, and fiscal management;
Promotion- special events, joint advertising, marketing, public art;
Design/Planning- downtown community planning and design, streetscape and building improvements, building design and restoration/rehabilitation training, design guidelines/review, historic preservation, public art, window displays, signage;
Economic Restructuring- economic analysis, retail mix, marketing/merchandising, business expansion/ development/ recruitment, “buy local” campaigns, business workshops.
A unique attribute of Pathways to Progress is the fact that a large number of undertakings are completed through individual EWU classes. From 1999 to 2008, seventy-one different classes have participated in Pathways projects. These classes represent a wide range of departmental participation from Planning, Marketing, Recreation & Leisure Studies, Business Administration, Management, Journalism, Computer Science, and most recently the English Department. With these seventy-on classes, there have been twenty-four different professors and over one thousand one hundred and fifty-four students involved in the workings of Pathways to Progress!
Pathways to Progress has also engaged a significant number of University students through the work-study program and with academic internships. Typically, three to five work-study students are engaged at any one time, and over the course of Pathway to Progress’s history, some forty students have been part of the staff. On average, five to seven academic internship students per year work on service learning projects through Pathways to Progress, some for a single academic quarter, some for as many as three quarters. Approximately sixty academic internship students have contributed to the Pathways to Progress mission. During several years of Pathways to Progress’s existence, HUD students have undertaken year-long internships with this organization. The federal funding for this program has been inconsistent, and only four HUD students have been involved with the program.
Altogether, Pathways to Progress has provided a service learning job site for one thousand two hundred and fifty-eight EWU students in just over eight years of existence. There continues to be considerable interest in this organization throughout the student body and among the faculty. There is every reason to believe this number will continue to grow year-by-year, greatly contributing to the achievement of the University’s Strategic Plan.