The limbs of a tree continue to stretch for the duration of its life. I use “limbs” in this column as an example for setting our personal priorities. We can let our arms/limbs stretch for a time but then a good cropping, just like a tree, allows our priorities to maintain a healthy growth cycle.

My young adult years were spent in a small town in Pennsylvania where a tree’s limbs were always cropped back. The town was developed within a deciduous rainforest, so trees grew like wildfire. The goal of residents in the area was to maintain a trim exterior so the trees were cropped periodically. A large maple tree would be reduced to a trunk and its five largest branches, which usually shot straight up into the air.

This was always difficult for me to watch because the tree was not pretty any longer during the winter when the leaves dropped.

Each fall you raked a ton of leaves once the offshoots from the trees’ trunk grew. We piled leaves on tarps and took them to the street in front of the house. The city came and collected them with a big leaf vacuum. It was quite the process. I’m a baby boomer from 1964 and stretching my “limbs” has gotten more challenging over the past year. An extended limb becomes weak the further away it gets from the trunk. A healthier limb is closer for stability.

Our priorities can become an overabundance of things and then a true cropping is necessary to get back to a solid foundation. In today’s day and age, it feels like our “human trees” have grown wild and the network of branches has overwhelmed simplicity. I wonder if people are still taking the time to crop branches. Seven years ago, I started something in Teller County that brought nonprofits together. That program is SOAR’s Nonprofit Cooperative of Teller County and it is currently being cropped. Meetings will happen every two months instead of each month.

This gives nonprofits more time to do something else. Our meetings for the rest of the year are on the second Tuesday in April, June, August, October and November from 9:30 – 10:45 a.m. at Reserve Our Gallery. We are also doing a fifth WEDNESDAY happy hour, which is a change from year’s past. It changed so more people can attend the activity. The Happy Hour is being held at John Wesley Ranch on April 30. It is catered by Divide Mountain Explorers. There’s a small cost to participate.

I hope you’ll see the forest for the trees and join as we move forward. Please, call with questions.

Contact Gayle Gross at iwantto@soarwithnetworkfundraising.org or 719-233-9902 if you want your nonprofit to be part of this column or to be part of the Nonprofit Cooperative of Teller County. Gayle Gross has worked with nonprofits since 1998. Now, she facilitates SOAR’s Nonprofit Cooperative of Teller County. Meetings are on the second Tuesday of each month, 9:30 a.m. – 10:45. The group meets at Reserve Our Gallery or at a nonprofit’s location. Join the group on March 12 at the gallery.