Happy Friday, everyone! It’s hard to believe that this program is almost over. It feels like just yesterday was my first day as a fellow! 

 As usual, I had an active week full of activities and projects. I started the week off preparing for Taste to Remember, organizing and gathering in-kind donations and donation requests as they come in the mail for the big event. It’s really touching to see the tremendous progress we have made in putting together an event of this scale, and I have gained so much insight from this opportunity. In-kind donations are considered non-cash gifts made to a nonprofit organization. These contributions can be made in various forms, like time, goods, services, or even materials to help with fundraisers for your organization from an individual or company. I’ve learned that when it comes to donation requests and in-kind donations, it’s essential to be willing to ask, stay connected, and, most importantly, stay organized.

The highlight of my week was being able to attend a few webinars about nonprofits to get a better understanding of nonprofit corporate giving and fundraising strategies. Through these webinars, I gained valuable insights about the significant work behind the scenes for fundraising and annual events. In the first webinar, I learned that there are several ways of corporate giving, like volunteer grants, community grants, and matching gifts. Also, there are several ways and strategies to motivate corporations to give, but what mostly comes down to the relationship between the nonprofit and corporate and the corporate self-interest. On Thursday, I attended the second webinar, which was vastly different from the first one as we had the opportunity to listen to the fantastic panel and were put in break-out rooms to discuss the topic more in-depth and ask questions. In this webinar, there was a lot of great information and advice about fundraising strategies and how technology has affected and improved. I also met some individuals from other organizations eager to share their knowledge and experience with me about fundraising. I was surprised to hear about the diversity of career opportunities available in fundraising.

One more week, and I have so many mixed feelings. It’s a combination of excitement, sadness, joy, and unrealness all rolled into one. I would have never imagined that I would be lucky enough to get this position, let alone learn and do so much in this short amount of time.