My third week at Ronald McDonald House Charities has been a mixed bag. I’ve balanced my time between traveling, seeking out constituents, and data entry. On Wednesday, I sat in at a presentation from Mid Ohio Food Bank, communicating changes in their strategic plan to the food pantries and nonprofits they partner with. The meeting illuminated what a complex policy issue food insecurity is. For example, the president told the story of a woman who couldn’t afford to go to the food pantry. Despite the food being free, going to the food pantry meant taking a day off work. Additionally, the meeting highlighted how many different players, each with their own values and skills, are trying to combat food insecurity. For example, of the three speakers, one of them, MOFB’s Director of Platforms, was a young data analyst and former employee at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He shared lofty goals of using drones inside the foodbank, and collecting more opt-in data from food pantry customers to be shared with organizations in other sectors of social services to more efficiently and collaboratively create models to combat the social determinants that lead to poor health. Many food pantry employees in attendance faced his speech with skepticism, highlighted by an initial question of “what is a ‘platform’”. There are so many linguistic, professional, cultural, generational, political, and socioeconomic boundaries that must be crossed even just to understand other people’s perspective, let alone create a solution. I’m sure the same is true for strategic decisions made in a hospital.

Tomorrow, I am visiting constituents (people and organizations who have or potentially will donate cash, product, or services to RMHC) on my own for the first time. I’m a little nervous, but mostly excited, as this is one of the primary skills I hope to cultivate over the course of this fellowship. I’m learning that donors and their donations come in all shapes and sizes. As the Senior Director of Development put it on the first week, “sometimes you’re writing a 2 page brief for a $1,000,000 ask”. Some groups want to donate their specialized services to create an app or repair equipment. Some want to bring ice cream to the house.

Additionally, this week has been filled with lots and lots of data entry, one of the drier parts of the position. As the Director of Platforms stated at the MOFB talk, “data, not oil, is now the most valuable resource on the planet”. This of course is scary, but rings true most afternoons during my time at the House. While I still try to create a standard process to link volunteer and donor data, I’m slowly entering all the constituents from one database into another. I’ve found moving between the rabbit-hole mentality of seeking out donors balances nicely with this repetitive and predictable task