Hi everyone!

My final week of my fellowship was pretty chill. I continued to work on our annual report and brainstorm ideas that would be used for our 20th anniversary social media campaign.

I also talked to my mentor about continuing my time at Bridgeway and I am happy to say that I will be working at Bridgeway part-time as a special project content creator! I spent some time looking at how other organizations created their anniversary videos and was inspired by Netflix’s 25th anniversary. I liked how it showed how Netflix changed the way that people watched movies and TV shows and I thought it this could be applied to Bridgeway’s first video of our series, to show the way our organization changed the way that autism and developmental disabilities are treated. I continued to brainstorm how this could be shown visually and created a storyboard. I also presented the storyboard to the CEO’s and got some feedback. I also started to work on a voiceover script for them to approve the following week.

Over the course of my fellowship, I learned a lot about non-profits and about myself. In the beginning of my fellowship, I was discouraged by the idea that it shouldn’t be nonprofit’s jobs to fix important issues. However, as I was able to spend more time at Bridgeway and hear about the impact of the other host sites, I came to realize how much non-profits can make a difference in their communities. Though Bridgeway is still growing and are limited in the amount of families that we can serve, the impact that our organisation has on our kids and families is incredible and important for me to see for myself. This leads me to my second takeaway, being that I love working at an organization that is very clear about its “why”. I was able to see how the staff at Bridgeway carried the organization’s purpose in every decision they make. I was able to have various conversations with staff and saw how each person passionately worked towards the “why” of the organization.

Overall, I’m incredibly grateful for my time as a fellow at the Columbus Foundation. I am also thankful that I was able to spend my summer at Bridgeway and continue my time with them as a team member!