This week was the first week that things felt like a routine for the first time. Though it was a bit weird to come back from a 5-day weekend, it also felt right to just jump back into my assigned tasks and have more and more folks from the office with whom I feel at ease. If there is one thing about City Year that has been great, it’s the community. They all really try to find common ground with you and talk to you outside of your role as a worker in the organization.

On to some shop talk for this week: I continued the promotion for our Regatta submission and encouraged even more folks in the office to participate and take pictures with the boat. Since the deadline for the final boat votes is on August 2nd, it seems that promoting it will take up most of my social media calendar. This is great, however, because I am getting to know more of our staff members, what their sense of humor is like, and how they feel about their work at City Year Columbus. Check out this Canva image I created featuring one of the City Year Impact Directors:

Speaking of social media and promotion, I have also had good feedback from folks who are following the organization’s social media platforms. Specifically, since these upcoming weeks are Registration days for the AmeriCorps members, my Instagram stories and questions/response have created great engagement from Alumni and incoming Corps members. This is something that our Recruitment team has really appreciated and I’ve gotten multiple positive comments from other staff members about this.

I want to end this week’s post by speaking about this week’s Learning Session, which was incredibly powerful in thinking about what Collaboration and Systems mean within the nonprofit world. Some parts that stuck with me this week from the conversation with Tasha Booker Fowler (who also works at City Year!) and Toshia Safford (Center for Healthy Families) was the acknowledgement that “Collaboration in the nonprofit sector can be challenging” and, most significantly for me, that sometimes you have to say no to stay true to your mission. This last part in particular seemed important, especially in connection to our previous conversations about leadership and marketing–the realization that sometimes you have to say no to donors or partners because of various reasons but, ultimately, for the better of your organization’s intended mission. This has been particularly relevant given national conversations regarding racism and other discriminatory issues and who is funding what systems of oppression and harm. So this is all something to still keep at the front of our minds as we proceed our work with communities and nonprofits.