Crossing the Threshold: Where We Go From Here
- assistant
- 10 minutes ago
- 5 min read
As the land turns toward fall, Hope Springs is turning toward new leadership and a strategic focus for 2027. This update shares what we’ve learned, what’s changed, and how you can be a part of what’s next.
There is a moment every fall where the land tells you, without needing words, that something is turning. The light shifts. The garden asks to be put to rest. What was tended all summer begins to draw inward, toward root and reserve, toward whatever will carry it through the spring. We’re committed to letting Hope Springs breathe in the same rhythm as the land sits on. The summer season has been full – full of intentionally scheduled retreats, full of necessary questions about who we are, full of leadership transitions. This season, that rhythm has prepared us to cross a threshold of our own.
Since we last wrote to you, retreats have returned to the land, our first virtual offerings have found their footing, and, perhaps most significantly for this update, our leadership has evolved. This summer, I stepped into the role of Executive Director.
I want to begin simply: thank you for trusting this place enough to stay in relationship with it through a season of real uncertainty. I’m inheriting an organization that has done the hard, unglamorous work of asking who it actually is and I don’t take that inheritance lightly. My hope, as I step into this role is to honor what came before, the history, and carry the legacy of tending what’s sacred, and build the kind of structures that let the mission of Hope Springs outlast any one person’s sacrifice.
What’s Grown Since Spring
A few things worth naming, in the same spirit of transparency we committed to during the sabbatical:
Retreats and virtual programming are both finding their rhythm. The land has welcomed participants back for five on-site retreats, twelve events/programs, serving 142 people. The Tending the Threshold, virtual series, continues to reach people beyond Ohio.
We’re deeper into the “what is a program” question. An ad hoc group of current and previous board members, staff, and volunteers met this summer to shape the future of HSI programs. Their recommendations were presented to the Board of Trustees at the July board retreat.
The community’s voice from the community engagement process is still doing its work. Your input continues to shape the policy and strategy decisions we’re making now.
We’re committed to improving our fundraising process. I’m serving as the staff lead, and the Board and Sustaining Circle are collaborating closely with me. Together, we’ve set a shared fundraising goal that we’re excited to share more about soon.
We’re also taking access and affordability seriously as part of how we define a “Hope Springs program” going forward, which encompasses how we administer scholarships and ensure accessibility to HSI offerings.
Much of our internal work this summer has been based on a single, deceptively simple question: what actually makes something a Hope Springs program?
Every offering we host sits somewhere on a spectrum – retreats that generate revenue this organization depends on, relationships with the sustainers and donors who make the mission possible beyond any single transaction, and the policies we’re testing. Getting that balance right, between professionalism and relationality, between what pays the bills and what tends the soul of this place, is an ongoing practice and cultural commitment. We intend to keep doing it openly.
One concrete outcome: in 2027, we’ll begin implementing formal partnership agreements. These will help clarify the boundary between programs HSI leads directly, and programs where we’re supporting a partner in bringing their work to the land. That distinction has been blurry for a long time. Naming it clearly is, we believe, an act of care for our partners, participants, and for the organization’s sustainability.
So, beyond hosting retreats and support partners, what does Hope Springs itself want to offer the world?
Announcing Our Strategic Focus: Land & Leadership
When we asked our community what makes Hope Springs different from any other place doing this kind of work, one answer rose above the rest, this land is a teacher, a sacred, and healing presence in its own right.
At the same time, Hope Springs carries a legacy of leadership work, reaching back to the Women’s Leadership Collaborative. That thread never fully left us; it’s simply been waiting for the right season to come forth again.
We’re bringing these two threads together. Land and Leadership will be our strategic focus as we move into 2027 – a recognition that in times of worsening conflict, climate disruption, and destabilization, our relationship to the land and to each other is tested in ways that ask something more of us. They ask for capacity. Inner development – the slow, unglamorous work of tending our own ground – is what deepens our capacity for pro-social action, toward each other and toward the more-than-human world we’re part of.
Hope Springs is more than a retreat center. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Appalachian Ohio dedicated to the soulful stewardship of land and leadership. In practice, that means building a portfolio of offerings designed to help shift the dial toward a more leaderful society – one more prepared to co-create through times of crisis and collapse. Our hope is that anyone who moves through a Hope Springs program leaves a little more prepared to lead today.
In 2027, you’ll see this take shape across one-day events, multi-day retreats, and online offerings. A portfolio of programs built to meet people where they are.
Crossing Together
We named this year’s virtual series Tending the Threshold intentionally inspired by the season of leadership transition, of strategic clarity slowly emerging, of an organization choosing to grow up rather than simply revert back to what was.
We’re crossing this threshold because so many people care about this place and have given so much to see it continue. Thank you for staying with us. The land has taught us, if nothing else, about seasons of dormancy, bounty, and now harvest. And it’s shaped by everything that happened underground first.
What Comes Next
The months ahead will be shaped by several key moments. We’d love for you to be part of them.
On the land:
A Sacred Pause: Reclaiming Your Rhythm, Restoring Your Light – October 28th
Enter the Quiet: Autumn Silent Retreat – November 5th
Healing & Rise: The White Woman's Journey - November 11th
Online, as part of Tending the Threshold:
What the Season Leaves – starting Monday, Sept 14
Medicine for the Long Dark – Sun, Oct 11
Autumn Book Discussion - Thursday, Oct 29
We’re not asking you to cross this threshold alone, we’re not crossing it alone either. Whether you join us on the land this fall, long on for a Tending the Threshold gathering, or simply keep reading these updates as they come, you’re part of how this season turns into the next. Thank you for staying close to Hope Springs – we’ll see you on the other side.
With gratitude and in service,
Rosie, Executive Director, Hope Springs Institute
