Welcome to the New CommunityMatters!

Greetings, Friends of the Orton Family Foundation,

I’d like to welcome you to CommunityMatters, a new online commons for individuals and organizations working to engage citizens, steer change and build strong communities sustained by their unique character.

The Foundation has hosted the CommunityMatters Conference^® since 2006, and we are excited to be initiating an online hub to accompany it. Together, the CommunityMatters conference and online community will fuel a growing network of leaders, thinkers and doers in a variety of disciplines—planning, sustainability, health, democracy, education, economic development, design and the arts. CommunityMatters is a project of the Orton Family Foundation, in collaboration with other partners. Read more about Who We Are and please let us know if you would like to help us grow this exciting new venture.

In the coming months, we’ll be sending updates on the CommunityMatters‘10 conference, to be held October 5 – 8, 2010 in Denver, Colorado. CM10 will provide an opportunity for citizens, elected officials, community activists, practitioners and others to meet face-to-face to share ideas, success stories and tools for on-the-ground action. The online community, which is under development, will offer a way for conference goers to keep in touch as well as a much broader group of community leaders to collaborate on projects and ideas, to share and access tools and resources, and to connect with other innovators nationwide.

We hope you will be as excited as we are about this new initiative that—with your help—will reinvigorate the heart and soul of small cities and towns across America through inspiring, game-changing, citizen-driven change.

Share this with your friends and colleagues; join us on Facebook and Twitter to tell us what you think; and register for CommunityMatters’10 starting June 21st. I hope to see you there!

Bill Roper
President and CEO