We’re approaching the halfway mark of our Summer Fellowship! That is hard to believe since I have only completed one large project so far. However, I think the second half of the Fellowship will go more smoothly and quickly since the learning curve is (mostly) out of the way. If you are searching for a position where you’ll do the same tasks every day, nonprofits may not be the place for you! I was so used to the structure, deadlines, and rigidness of school that it took me a while to adjust to the freedom I’ve been given at FLOW. Flexible hours, creative freedom, and being on my own all day is great almost every day. I say almost because I’ve found that it is very hard to stick to your own deadlines! On the bright side, I will definitely walk away from this Fellowship with stronger time management and organization skills.

One of my projects that I finished up this week was updating FLOW’s policies and procedures. After reviewing the policies they have in place, I made a report with possible changes they could make. Also, I made a few recommendations for policies they could add to enhance the transparency and trustworthiness of FLOW. For example, I drafted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy and a Whistleblower Policy that could be adopted. Now that my deliverable report has been shared with my supervisor, the document will be reviewed by the Board to see if they can make any changes based on my recommendations.

Earlier this week, I had the chance to visit four of FLOW’s high-priority pollinator garden sites. As a project for Science Committee, I will be visiting several of these sites throughout the remainder of the summer to cut invasives, apply herbicides, and check the overall state of the garden. I enjoyed seeing the beautiful native flowers in bloom during our visits! I’ve found that this hands-on work is much more enjoyable for me and makes the time go faster.

Lastly, I had a meeting with my supervisor this week to go over how to make a Storymap on ArcGIS online. This interactive webpage would be an awesome deliverable to create for FLOW. This seems to be the project they are most excited about, so I’m planning on focusing most of my energy on that in the coming weeks! Talk to you next week! -Shelly