The Orton Family Foundation works with communities to stem the tide of Anywhere, USA, first, by asking citizens what they value most about their communities and, second, by placing these shared values at the center of the planning process. We believe that an engaged community drives innovation, takes action and creates enduring success.
The Orton Family Foundation was founded in 1995 by Lyman Orton and Noel Fritzinger, both residents of Weston, Vermont, a small town of 600 in the southern Green Mountains. Orton and Fritzinger had each been closely involved in local planning efforts. In the 1980s Vermont experienced a building boom fueled in part by a rapid rise in second-homeownership. Many communities around the state found themselves unprepared and lacking the information and tools needed to steer the course of change toward a vibrant and sustainable future. With an entrepreneurial spirit and funding derived from the profits of the Vermont Country Store, Orton and Fritzinger established the Orton Family Foundation as a resource for small cities and towns grappling with change and groping for solutions.
Our work in communities in the Northeast and Rocky Mountain West explores new ways of bringing citizen engagement, storytelling, visualization and stewardship into the land use planning process. Projects are currently underway in the following places:
Through this work, we've found that democracy works best. The most successful community projects are generated and directed from within, tapping local knowledge and creativity. To that end, the Foundation encourages broad citizen engagement and offers ways for townspeople to contribute their energy, talents, stories and legacies to the planning process. What is special about your town? What challenges does it face? What’s your vision for its future? The answers to these questions, gleaned from as many different voices as possible through storytelling, art making and a range of polling tools, will serve as the driving force behind our work together.
A guiding premise of our work is that communities need access to the best available planning tools. Our growing bank of tools and online resources is designed to help inform and improve the way communities engage in land use planning. We've also compiled a Web Resource Directory, which includes case studies, community indicators, databases, land use and planning internet resources, news digests and more.