Organization background
Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness (NMW) is a locally-based national organization in Ely, Minnesota, with strong ties to the wild public lands of northern Minnesota and Canada. We advocate for the life-sustaining values of wilderness. We are inspired by the beauty, resilience, and priceless ecological, cultural, and social values that wilderness provides, and we take action to defend our most exceptional wild places, especially the world-class Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW or Boundary Waters) of Northeastern Minnesota.
NMW’s central effort is the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, a national coalition founded by NMW with the goal of protecting the Boundary Waters and downstream areas of Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park and Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park from proposed sulfide-ore copper mining on the Wilderness edge. We pursue this effort through extensive grassroots engagement, political advocacy in Washington, D.C. and in Minnesota, litigation, science and research, and more.
The NMW Board of Directors is responsible for the following:
- Ensuring NMW is accountable to its mission and purpose
- Supporting and evaluating the director with the goals of the organization in mind
- Assisting in the development of the organization’s annual budget and ensuring proper financial controls and oversight
- Supporting the organization in securing financial resources needed to achieve the mission
- Developing NMW as an equitable, inclusive, and accessible organization for all
- Ensuring NMW is adhering to legal and ethical standards and conduct
- Defining prerequisites for potential new board members, onboarding them
- Engaging in long term planning
- Being a public ambassador for NMW and a financial supporter of NMW
Time commitment
The NMW Board of Directors meets 6 times a year, once every other month. These meetings are held virtually with the exception of our annual board retreat in Ely, Minnesota in December. It is highly preferable to have this meeting done entirely in person, but have and will accommodate hybrid meetings as needed. We ask Board Members to be fully prepared for each Board Meeting to make decisions relevant to the progress of the organization.
In addition to the six meetings, many Board members will commit to committees that have been created. NMW has 8 such committees currently: the Executive, Nominating, Conservation Policy, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ), Legal, Finance, Fundraising, and Investment Committees, as well as the Economic and Community Development and Long-Term Planning Task Forces.
All Board Members are asked to be active, powerful advocates and ambassadors for the organization, ensuring they have a good sense of the overall happenings of the organization and its direction moving forward.
We invite anyone interested to let us know you'd like to be considered for the board
Please fill out this brief form to indicate your interest in being considered for the NMW board. This form is open at any time, and we further consider new board applicants as board roles become available on a limited basis. You may also reach out to Ingrid Lyons, Executive Director, at Ingrid@savetheboundarywaters.org
