SALT - for Builders > Clark on Community
Clark on Community
Reflecting on SALT's ongoing mission of supporting non-profits helping our community, Founder and CEO Clark Blasdell has a vision:
"There has never been a shortage of community needs, but often there are shortages of community resources such as individuals and newly-identifiable financial sources. SALT's mission is to connect people we already know and find new people who want to take on the continuing work of meeting our community's needs."
Clark is continuing a mission that has been underway for over 40 years. Serving as the Founding President and CEO of SALT since 1998, Clark has been intimately involved for in the development of policies, programs, and projects that both promote and provide more affordable homes in projects that have ranged in size a single-family home to as many at 220 in a single 20 acre site (Bay Vista).
Clark has been actively involved with both larger national homebuilders, as well as several local family owned firms in the design, development, and delivery of projects providing over 4,000 homes for nearly 10,000 people.
From the beginning, Clark has continued to use his personal mantra in his professional every day work:
The difficult done daily, the impossible by appointment only …
and has utilized that thought to guide SALT into both small and large projects that are complex and complicated yet in fewer than 40 years projects that have produced over 4,000 new homes in over a dozen cities in 5 Bay Area Counties.
The starting thought Clark brings to each new customer or client is: “Begin with this end in mind: the many newly finished homes with families and individuals then living there.
Each builder and each vacant parcel should be seen, in one’s mind, as a way to get people into ownership homes, closer to where the parents have already chosen to work (shorten commutes, so more time can be spent at home, rather than in commute time. “
There are 3 distinct economic sectors in society that working together or at odds with each other, produce all goods and services: The private sector, which is largest both in numbers employed and economic value and output; the government which is next smaller in size, and finally the philanthropic nonprofit sector – the smallest, but often the most critical in connecting the other two sectors and synergistically producing greater output (more less costly homes) than the sum of the parts ….
Clark offers the following 3 Rules About Successful Projects:
Rule #1: There’s almost no limit to what you as an individual can do, As long as you care more about the result or outcome, than who takes credit for it or who pays for it.
Rule #2: Reality is 99% perception, so manage well who is taking credit and who is paying.
Rule #3: If you can’t find a truth to move YOUR project along, write one up and Xerox it a lot and when someone brings it back to you, agree with it and go back to Rule #1.
Clark is looking forward to seeing which directions the newly-appointed board members will take the mission of SALT in continuing to serve the community.