ProLove4Life Foundation is a nonprofit whose mission is to bring intelligent and experienced people from various disciplines together as “partners of the willing” in civil discourse to formulate plans of action to solve problems facing our communities and increase philanthropic funding for getting our common goals accomplished.

The Foundation will work with like-minded community service organizations, to bring “good people” together – people who are passionate members of the community on all sides of an issue to pool their resources from ProLove4LIFE monies with our Foundation’s members consulting experience for solving problems and getting things done in a timely manner.

The Foundation members use their “lessons learned” from a lifetime of teaching or managing their businesses (many members have managed family businesses in their second or third generation, or community organizations; they are retired businesspeople, professors, teachers and medical professionals still in the trenches, all collaborating under the ProLove4LIFE Tent and employing their collective wisdom for the work of the Foundation with our community partners;  Community partners that can often times be serving the same people, but be at odds as to how to do it best  – e.g., ProLife Pregnancy Centers as well as the ProChoice Planned Parenthood Centers working together for “public health” and the common good of mothers, fathers and their children in their community.

By harnessing the power of their strongly held beliefs and using their desire to seek truth, justice and effective action for the common good.    (In 1776, we called them “Statesmen” or community leaders without their own agenda.)

(The “WHAT” comes from the wisdom I and many old guys like me, have accumulated building and running our family businesses and as a members of other community organizations; e.g., Vistage CEO Groups for over 20+ years.   These lessons learn are shown in Parentheses or “*” are the Vistage or Life Lessons.)

• Define the problem we wish to solve with full participation of “the other” by asking probing, loving and sometimes “loaded” questions – even when “the other” does not agree with us we seek to gain an understanding of and for “the other” – where are they coming from and walk a mile in their shoes before offering an opinion or formulating possible solutions.
• In the process of civil discourse we often will use a respected facilitator, or group of facilitators who are respected by both sides; the facilitators lead the group and keep the discourse civil using “Fierce Conversations*” tenants.    All parties in the group pledge to seek the “ground truths” on the issue in a frank and open examination of the facts as each person sees them (Red, White and Blue Ball* Point of View).
• During the course of the civil discourse the group builds a common bond of understanding of the other and starts down the path to becoming truly loving partners of the willing that can labor together to enable a solution to reach their common goal.    The civil discourse is facilitated by the leaders of each of “the others” with the principles of “Fierce Conversations” (see attached) and the “three-knock” rule.
• As the parties openly listen to each other most will quickly discover the ground truths held to be true by all parties and begin to carefully reexamine the problem or problems in the context presented by both sides; and that they really do agree on more than they disagree upon and the leaders can begin to “Harness the Power of Polarization” they can begin to work as a unified and loving team to find a balanced set of “ground truths” on the issues that can be agreed upon by all parties to be charged with working toward a solution.
• Once the partners of the willing have identified THEE problem to be solved they can begin to fully defined “the plan steps”: the guiding tactics and small action steps – “What by when’s” that enable the Goals to be attained for the organization.  Only when all the parties see that they are working toward a truly common goal can they begin the unified search for a just, kind and equitable solution with a course of action fully supported by the group – even when no one is watching.    (Lessons on Group Think – the Abilene Paradox; and Keeping a company in its “Prime” – “Rivers of Cash” from great margins and profits being appropriately reinvested in what’s next. Lean-Driven approach to innovations; use of computer modeling and all the sciences with Staged Gate for focus but also heading off project goal “sabotage” from the Dunning-Kruger Effect on focusing plan actions on what you think you know.
• Once Goals and a plan of action are formulated it is not set in concrete – all parties or at least a super-majority will always be listening and addressing any remaining dissention to the majority’s decisions and formerly agreed to by the group to keep the group moving in a common direction with the  least amount of friction.

Attorney Joseph A. Powell, at 336 Morgan Avenue, Akron OH 44311;   PO BOX 1787, Akron OH 44309-1787.     Office phone: 330.773.4850.    Website: www.ProLove4LIFE.org or ProLove4.Life and www.ProLove4Life.com