Florence Lorraine Stewart was born on June 19, 1940 in Napa, California, the only child of Kenneth Stewart and Vivian Leonard. 

Flo’s mother remarried (to Herbert Childers), and the family moved to Ridgecrest, California in 1948. The large family eventually included brothers Herbert and Michael Childers, sisters Patricia, La Donna, and Pamela, stepsister Clara Walch, and cousin Bob Thornton. Growing up in that desert community centered on a U. S. Navy weapons research and development center, Flo had already become a leader in community, school, and church affairs before she reached high school.  She graduated from Burroughs High School in 1958 and from Cerro Coso Community College.

In 1957, Florence married Vernon Green of Ridgecrest. Even as she raised four children (Duane, Rick, Deborah, and Steven), she earned her bachelor’s degree from California State University, Bakersfield and became a driving force in a wide spectrum of community groups, ranging from politics to the arts, to civic improvement. In all these organizations, she led by coming up with creative ideas, then convincing others to help her achieve the solutions.

After serving as the first woman on the Ridgecrest Planning Commission, she became the first woman on the Ridgecrest City council (indeed, the first woman on any city council in Kern County). She was a founding member of the Women’s Center-High Desert and a fundraiser for and first director of the Ridgecrest Senior Citizens Program. She also led the committee that resulted in the creation of LeRoy Jackson Park.

Throughout her life Flo remained a firm believer in the importance of the arts to a community’s life. She was a founding member of the Community Light Opera and Theatre Association and the first woman to direct a CLOTA play. She went on to direct and appear in numerous local productions and to teach political science, theater and speech for 12 years at Cerro Coso. As faculty advisor, she helped recruit and manage more than 90 part-time faculty members.

For the Maturango Museum she served as a highly successful fund-raiser and wrote the grant application for the much-needed Irvine Foundation money used to construct the museum’s current building. She was also an active member of the Ridgecrest Community Methodist Church.

In 1980 she moved to Southern California where she became Director of Training for The Grantsmanship Center, an organization that trains nonprofit leaders across the country.  She and her colleagues travelled frequently conducting trainings, and in that fast-moving world she became known by most of the thousands of people she encountered and worked with as “Flo.” In 1984 she established a consulting firm, Green, Scribner & Co. with Susan Scribner, and later Florence Green & Associates, assisting hundreds of nonprofit and charitable organizations and state and local governments throughout the United States as well as in Canada and Australia.

In  1995 Flo became Executive Director of the California Association of Nonprofits (CAN).  Under her leadership, CAN tripled its budget and staff size, established a highly successful public policy office in Sacramento, and launched the Nonprofit Quality Reporting Initiative.   She was a founder of the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (now known as the National Council of Nonprofits) and the Nonprofit Management Association (now known as the Alliance for Nonprofit Management).  When she retired from CAN in 2008, she continued her service to the nonprofit sector as a consultant, trainer, speaker, and writer.  Her most recent endeavor was to cofound an online resource center for nonprofits, The IdeaEncore Network, providing the nonprofit community a forum for the exchange of tools, training content, and program materials.   In 2008 The NonProfit Times named her as one of the 50 most influential nonprofit leaders in the country for the third time.

Flo married Gary Massey, of Santa Monica in 1985. In the first year of that marriage her youngest son, Steven married Julie Lakin of Ridgecrest, and their first son, Nicholas, was born in 1986. Over the next few years her other four children married and more grandchildren came to the Green-Massey family: Cassie (1988) and Ethan (1991) were born to Steven and Julie. Megan (1989), Jonathan (1993), and Ryan (1995) were born to Duane and wife Virginia Flournoy of San Diego.  Travis (1984) came to the family when son Rick married Julie Paine in San Diego, and Payton (1989) followed. Anna (1996) and Jayna (1999) were born to Deborah Green and husband Adam Kuklin of Van Nuys.

While pursuing her active and wide-ranging professional life, Flo (with Gary) was always looking for opportunities to have her children and grandchildren around to share her love of community life, theatre, movies and travel. All of them, individually and sometimes in family groups of as many as 20, were taken to plays, concerts, and museums (and a lot of movies) both locally and in other parts of the country. Travelling with her grandchildren was one of Flo’s greatest pleasures. Over several years the grandchildren accompanied Grandma and Grandpa (two kids at a time) on trips to Hawaii--except for the two youngest granddaughters (having already been to Hawaii, they chose Orlando’s Disney World instead). Flo, Gary and the whole family had a wonderful vacation together in Hawaii in 2004. Holiday gatherings of all or most of the family either in Santa Monica or at one of the children’s homes (in San Diego and Ridgecrest) were one of Flo’s greatest joys.

On various occasions (high school and college graduations, special birthdays, Christmas, etc.) grandchildren—and sometimes their parents—joined Flo and Gary on visits to New York, Washington DC, Lake Tahoe, Palm Springs/Palm Desert, British Columbia, and, most recently, Japan. Grandsons Payton and Ethan joined Flo and Gary on a tour of Japan (Kyushu Island, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Hakone, and Tokyo) over the last two weeks of March 2012.

Only 3 days after returning home from Japan, Flo suffered a first stroke, from which she experienced a remarkable recovery over the next five weeks. The medical team at UCLA was able to remove the blockage within a short time after the onset of the stroke, and Flo began recovering immediately. Only about two weeks later, she was well enough (and eager) to attend the "Sneaker Ball," a fundraising event for a client—Shoes That Fit, of Claremont CA—whose work in providing shoes, clothing and school items to children in need was very close to her heart.

Flo had begun to resume both her work life and her family life. On Friday, May 4th, she and Gary joined son Rick and grandson Payton at a Cirque du Soleil performance at Del Mar Fairgrounds, near San Diego. The following day they (Flo and Gary) attended grandniece Emile Beck’s graduation from Vanguard University in Newport Beach and joined Emilie’s parents and grandparents (Flo’s brother Mike and wife Sue Childers) for a celebratory lunch and family visit.

Flo was always a huge fan of the movies, often going to see as many as 4 or 5 over a weekend. She loved all genres from foreign films and art house independents to musicals, big-star action movies, Asian martial arts movies, science fiction, and 1940s Film Noir detective films. She and Gary reveled in the highly varied fare at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January and ShortFest in June—sharing those occasions with friends from Gary’s college (University of California, Berkeley) years.

She was living life to the fullest, enjoying her passions for family, the arts, and community service right up to the last. On Monday, May 7th, while Gary was at work at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Flo went to a foreign film (Monsieur Lazhar) at a West Los Angeles art film house. She had planned to drive out to work with Shoes That Fit in Claremont on Tuesday, but that morning she suffered the second stroke, which caused irrecoverable damage. She drew her last breaths vey peacefully the next day, May 9th, surrounded by her husband, children, and grandchildren.

Flo’s final resting place is at Woodlawn Cemetary & Mausoleum in Santa Monica, only a few blocks from the home she shared with Gary for 27 years--only a few blocks from the ocean vistas she loved, and amidst the Southern California community where she conducted her life’s work of service to and love for family and humanity.

Above all Flo was a dedicated teacher—always learning and always trying to find the best way to transmit knowledge and understanding to others of complex social issues and of how individuals and organizations can best contribute to a civil society. She exhibited the best in leadership – serving with humor, passion, and a commitment to issues of fairness, justice, and equity.  She was committed to the nonprofit sector, believing that it offered an avenue for people of all means and perspectives to engage in activities that make their communities better places in which to live.