Mission
Lakeshore Literary Foundation promotes the professional growth of authors and poets within the Great Lakes region by supporting community-led programs that nurture the craft of writing, bolster industry acumen, and connect literary creatives with new audiences.
We are a 501(c)(3) public charity as recognized by the Internal Revenue Service.
Vision
We aim to be an indispensable non-profit resource for authors and poets in the Great Lakes region and a core convener of the disparate literary community in West Michigan.
Organizational Objectives
To advance our mission:
- We assemble a representative board of directors to represent the disparate literary constituencies within our core market.
- We include all literary creatives within the scope of our efforts, regardless of their social, economic, ideological, or biological background.
- We encompass the entire literary lifecycle, from story ideation through commercial publication.
- We promote programs that support creativity, technical acumen, and business acumen among writers and poets.
We achieve these Organizational Objectives through:
- Openness to challenging conversations,
- A culture of growth and learning,
- The fearless pursuit of creative storytelling, and
- The recognition that there are many legitimate paths on the road to literary success.
Relational Values
We support the FDSS model of working with one another:
- FAIRNESS — people should receive what’s due to them, in a manner consonant with the group’s standing procedures, considering how individual accomplishments and behaviors advance the goals of the group relative to the group’s mission and relational values.
- DIGNITY — each individual person within the group stands on equal moral footing by virtue of their personhood as humans; no person is more or less worthy of respect because of a population-level identity characteristic. The group should make all reasonable accommodation, discreetly and without fanfare, to ensure that each person is able to fully engage with equal dignity.
- SOLIDARITY — everyone in the team works together to advance the common good. This “common good” is rooted in, and defined by, the objectives of the organization, the relational values the organization celebrates, and the multiple perspectives each person brings to the table.
- SUBSIDIARITY — the people closest to a problem or opportunity are usually the best positioned to drive meaningful, authentic, and persistent change. Therefore, the organization prefers to support myriad small teams each working on a specific need or problem, than to centralize control at a higher but less engaged/informed level.