The second week of my fellowship has flown by, and with it have come new figures, opportunities, and challenges. For one, my supervisor, House Chef Blair Arms, is back in the office from vacation. Chef Blair is an incredible woman. A trained pastry chef and former employee of OSU dining services, she’s extremely talented, approachable, and passionate about providing the best experience possible for her families and volunteers. This passion was made evident on Tuesday, where she spoke as one of eight Nationwide Children’s Hospital employees in their DiscoveryX series, a TED Talk style event where NCH staff present projects they have been working on. Blair was speaking about the Team Cuisine program.

Now that I am working with her every day, the pace is starting to pick up. I continued to send out grant applications to grocers and food processors, learned about Chef Blair’s basic budgeting, purchasing, and accounting processes, and of course, continued to take pictures and brainstorm volunteer stewardship programs for meal teams. Learning more about Blair’s values and constraints, I have a better idea of what to look for when finding a donor to cultivate a relationship with.

Another task I have been working on is linking data from Volgistics, the software RMHC uses to manage volunteers, and Raiser’s Edge, the software RMHC uses to manage donors. The goal is to be able to create standard impact reports that can be sent to corporate donors, stating things like “in 2018, x staff members volunteered at the house, serving x amount of meals and making x amount of blankets, for a total of x hours. Additionally, your contribution of x$ provided x nights of rest for families”. It’s interesting to me that these two datasets weren’t linked before, given the size of RMHC’s volunteer program.

Finally, I’m beginning to ease into friendships with my colleagues. I’m learning more about each person’s personality, hobbies, life pursuits, strengths, and stressors. Having that familiarity and network will help me feel more comfortable pushing boundaries and thinking “outside the box”. I’m excited for what comes next!