Scotia Moore is a connector.
That’s not a small thing. Putting the right people together, bringing them into conversation with each other can ignite change, generate better ideas and lead to more efficient, equitable processes.
She and her husband Stephan moved to Oklahoma City in 2009 to continue their work in camp ministries – specifically, Shiloh Camp, a 40-acre faith-based camp in Oklahoma City. She’s a native of Maryland; he’s from Cushing, Oklahoma.
“We’ve been in camp ministry for all our adult lives,” Moore said. “My background is as a practitioner working in a non-profit space, and that allows me to see a different perspective from our funders or resource partners.”
What Moore knows as well as anyone in the field is that nonprofits need revenue, and often that revenue comes from individuals or organizations that don’t know what the day-to-day looks like or may have a passion for the cause but no practical experience in the space. COVID was the initiating cause to get funders and practitioners together. Not long after, the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery revealed that the distance between practitioner and resource partner was in some cases starker than anyone realized. Moore did the best thing she knew to do; she started conversations with concerned parties, some of which ended up in a digital journal called The Loom. The initial groups of funders in conversation began to ask important questions about racial reconciliation and the gaps we see in outcomes and access to funding.”
Moore puts people at a table together and encourages the conversation, much of it focused on those gaps, but also on processes and day-to-day and systemic problems. Ideally, they listen to each other, and in Moore’s words, they learn to be generous together and to move from funder and practitioner to partners in the work.
