At Ohio Humanities this week, we jumped head-first into the process of creating an entirely new audience for Lumen, a yearly publication published by Ohio Humanities, because the very first edition is coming out this autumn. Based on the the extensive audience of a previous publication from the organization and a new audience of potential new stakeholders from universities, cultural centers, and other organizations, we have been diligent in making sure that everyone who should receive a copy does, especially those who were quoted, featured, or whose story was included in the publication. The need to have an organized database with accurate data has never been more clear to me than in this process, and it is incredibly applicable to any project in which we are sharing our work with supporters, attempting to gather statistics on grants and grantees, or working on the upcoming strategic planning operation.

I’m excited to start seeing the results of the donor stewardship project that I completed last week of displaying gratitude in a multitude of communications specified for each individual donor in the form of phone calls, emails, and written and mailed notes. We have already received a handful of kind words from donors in response to these communications, and being able to recognize the outright support that many donors give to the organization and the work Ohio Humanities does has been gratifying. I am looking forward to seeing the fiscal results of these communications as well, and if they are as favorable as I expect them to be, then I will have learned an invaluable lesson about strategies for advancement and donor stewardship that I will be able to use in my career to come in the nonprofit sector.

I absolutely cannot grasp how quickly this fellowship going by, and that we are more than halfway done. I have grown so familiarized with most aspects of the functioning of a nonprofit, from grants to programs to advancement to the board. However, becoming networked with my coworkers at Ohio Humanities has been amazingly valuable experience for me both personally and professionally. Just this week, a couple of my coworkers spent more than an hour of their workday helping me perfect my resume and cover letters to apply for future positions, and I am extremely pleased with the result of both. I am not looking forward to saying goodbye to Ohio Humanities four weeks from now, to say the least.