URI’s organizational design emerged from the collective vision and values voiced by early participants.
Their passion was to build an organization that let loose the creative energy and resourcefulness of the human spirit. This “bottom-up” approach is based in: shared purpose, core principles, self-organizing interdependent parts, and freedom that allows for unlimited diversity of expression.
Guided by URI’s first Executive Director, the Reverend Charles Gibbs, and organizational development experts, Professor David Cooperrider and Dee Hock, many voices contributed to the process of crafting the organizational structure for URI, which resulted in the URI Charter.
The Charter includes URI’s Preamble, Purpose, Principles (PPPs) and the Organizational Design. Global Council Trustees, Staff, and Members commit to act in accord with the PPPs and help develop organizational structures that derive from these PPPs.
The organizational design is rooted in qualities that make a network thrive:
- Inclusion - all are welcome;
- Relational - relationships are key; and
- Engagement - people listen, learn and help each other.
To read about qualities that fuel this design go to: It’s in the Bones, Wisdom at the Heart of URI Organizing.