When volunteer organizations lose their memory | Letter

Published 1:30 am Friday, August 7, 2026

Across the San Juan Islands, volunteer organizations are facing two crises at once: an aging membership and a growing loss of institutional memory.

For decades, older volunteers have built programs, raised funds, trained successors, and carried organizations through difficult years. Much of that knowledge was never written down. It lives in experience, in knowing whom to call, what has already been tried, which partnerships require care, and why certain decisions were made.

Yet some leadership transitions have become abrupt and brutal by younger volunteers who want instant gratification and demand access to power, bypassing mentors. Longtime volunteers are dismissed as outdated, excluded from conversations, or quietly “ghosted” once younger members gain influence. Experience is treated as an obstacle rather than an inheritance, and organizations lose the very people who understand how and why they were built.

Other cultures offer a different model. Many Indigenous nations regard elders as knowledge keepers who preserve history, language, values, and community memory. Japanese culture has long emphasized respect for seniority and intergenerational responsibility, recognizing that age can carry wisdom rather than irrelevance. These traditions are not perfect or uniform, but they remind us that progress does not require erasing those who came before.

This is not an argument against change. Older leaders must share authority, welcome new ideas, and prepare successors. Respecting elders does not mean protecting ineffective practices or avoiding accountability.

But healthy succession should not resemble conquest. Volunteer organizations survive when generations work together: one bringing energy and new perspectives, the other offering history, judgment, and hard-earned wisdom.

A community cannot preserve its institutions by discarding the people who built them. After all, nobody escapes aging except those who perish in untimely manner.

Respectfully submitted by Elizabeth Gadbois

San Juan Islands PREPARE, chair

San Juan Grange, 2026 director of programs

Soroptimists of Friday Harbor, member

American Red Cross, San Juan County Unit, Logistics/Facilities and Disaster Services Technology Team, Radio

San Juan County Amateur Radio Club (SJCARS), member