Write it Down!

Back in the spring of 2008, I was at a retreat with the leaders of United Way for Southeastern Michigan and we came up a “big, hairy audacious goal” to make Detroit one of the Top 5 cities to work and live by 2030.?

After the retreat, we wrote that goal on a poster and hung it on the wall of our conference room.?A few months after that, a financial meltdown led to the bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM, and ultimately to the City of Detroit.?Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs.?Looking for a bailout from Congress, the leaders of the Big 3 auto companies got a humiliating smackdown instead, and then the culmination—a cover story on?Time Magazine?making a mockery of our vision.?

It was an awful year.?We didn’t talk much about our big, hairy, audacious goal given the economic devastation all around us, but we never took down the poster declaring it in our conference room either.

Everything changed, however, when Bill Ford ?walked into that conference room for the very first time.?The great-grandson of Henry Ford and chairman of 福特 , Bill sat down with our CEO,? michael brennan , to talk about our work.?Halfway through the meeting, Bill looked at that poster and said, “I’ve never really been a big supporter of United Way, but if you're serious about making Detroit one of the top five cities to work and live, I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

With his encouragement, we leaned into that vision, and Bill and his wife,?Lisa, made good on his word, energizing a new base of generous supporters, who have been augmented by countless other people, efforts, and prayers focused on the city’s turnaround.?In 2022,?Time Magazine?took note of the impact they have made.

Last year at this time, our board of trustees met for our annual retreat, and the first goal we wrote down was simple:?Fresh Water.?We had seen the transformative power of bringing fresh water to the Kore community in Ethiopia and set a goal to do it for another one of our partner communities, despite not having the money in our budget to get it done last year.? Inspired by the vision, more than 1,000 people ran in or supported others in the great?IntSam Global 5K, and we are now building a water system to bring fresh water to 2,000 people in 400 homes in the?Buen Samaritano?community of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

I’m sharing these stories with you to encourage you to write down your goals for 2023.?Hang them on your refrigerator or near your desk at work, ask your friends to pray for them, work hard, and watch what happens over the year—and don’t be surprised if something that feels like a miracle happens in your life.