Since September 2024, Amanda Cassiday has served with grace, wisdom, and unflagging energy as one of the Co-Directors of Kingston Common Futures. Before that, she was deeply involved with its emergence out of the 9-month Community Fund Design cohort, created and facilitated by GWI. While she is now moving on to Engather, another project near and dear to us, she shared her thoughts upon this transition, and we want to share it with you here. In a season of transitions, as we head into winter, we wish Amanda every joy and success in the planting, growing, and harvesting ahead!
Dear Kingston Common Futures Community,
It is with waves of emotions that I share with you my decision to step down as Co-Director of Kingston Common Futures.
I often struggle with the beginning of endings: the decision, the initiation, the announcement. But as I look out my window and see my neighbor’s maple tree shedding its golden leaves, I am reminded that this is much less of an ending, and much more of a transition that brings both relief and nutrients to our root system in the cycle of life.
As many of you heard us say to the community (and often to ourselves!): this first year was a pilot, an opportunity to build a new community fund that our Good Work Institute- facilitated design team developed after 9 months of exploration and co-creation. The Co-Director positions that Clay and I held were shaped as part-time, which allowed me to continue other vital work I had been tending over the years. And, as the year unfolded, it became undoubtedly clear that this community fund had a force that was far larger than a pilot and extended far beyond Clay, Angélica, and I, our mighty team of three. In less than one year, we became a community of over 200 with the momentum to articulate our dreams for Kingston and democratically decide how to allocate money to fund those dreams–something we have never done before.
As Kingston Common Futures grew and gained momentum, so too did Engather, a near and dear gift economy movement I co-founded and have been stewarding since 2022, weaving networks of unconditional care and mutual support into our lives and communities. With interest growing to expand Engather locally and globally, and receiving our first grant to further evolve our local Hudson Valley Engather network, it became clear that it is no longer sustainable or responsible to hold leadership positions in both. So here I am.
A beauty of KCF that I have deeply appreciated is the way we explore and practice our orientation to power: the way we feel with it and without it, the way we share it, the way we offer it. In a world where positions of power are often held onto tightly and tenaciously, I sit here with tenderness and grace as I allow my role and my relationship to power transform inside this meaningful organization.
My time co-creating and co-directing Kingston Common Futures has been nothing short of transformational. It is with deep heartfelt gratitude that I give thanks to my beloved colleagues and co-conspirators, Clay and Angélica. Working and building kinship alongside you both has been an honor; and the radical care, leaning into trouble, and capacity for complexity that we stretched and flexed together has left me with new muscles that I am inspired to use more of. Thank you for nurturing such a wise, trusting, and vulnerable space to practice this work together.
And many, many thanks to Good Work Institute for the steady scaffolding you offered throughout this pilot journey, keeping us grounded, supported, and cheered on as we approached each new milestone.
Since joining the original community fund design team in April 2023, every person, every encounter, every story exchanged, every piece of feedback, every word of support, every challenge, every accomplishment served as a teacher in this experience that continues to offer great vitality into this fund, and to my life. Thank you for your presence, energy, and engagement while serving in this role.
There is much in store for Kingston Common Futures, and I look forward to staying connected and engaged with KCF in new ways for the future.
While my orientation to the fund is changing, my offer of relationship remains the same. Please do stay in touch. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. And if you’d like to stay connected to Engather, consider joining Engather’s Hudson Valley Network, as we take a commons-based approach to sharing resources and support.
With much love and solidarity,
Amanda
Kingston Common Futures is a fiscally sponsored project of the Good Work Institute and is also being incubated by GWI, with seed funding from NoVo in Kingston. To learn more about how Kingston Common Futures came to be, check out Building Community Wealth.
Photo: A selfie taken at Sojourner Truth Park, one recent afternoon after honoring Amanda with a ritual of the reflections, gifts, tastes and gestures of the four directions. From bottom left to bottom right, clockwise, the KCF + GWI team: Angélica, Aja, Amanda, Clay, Hélène, Micah
