My sixth week as a Summer Fellow with The Columbus Foundation was fantastic and consisted of great progress.

First, the logo selection process is now complete. Despite setting up a ranked-choice voting system, a clear preference for logo option #1 emerged early on—with 4 out of 6 respondents selecting it as their top choice and 5 out of 6 including it in their top two. Following the selection, I familiarized myself with Inkscape to create vector (SVG) files of the logo, which will make it easier to work with across different contexts. I’m glad The Westerville Fund now has a new logo that a majority of members preferred and all are happy with.

Outside of this, a large portion of my time this week was spent on all things Westerville Area Resource Ministry (WARM) related. WARM is a local food pantry responsible for feeding thousands of Westerville-area families each year. On Monday, we visited the WARM facility to tour and record spaces that were funded fully or partially by The Westerville Fund. Afterward, we interviewed both the Executive Director and the Director of Development and Fundraising—both of whom were incredibly kind and passionate about their work. Since then, I’ve been working hard on editing the footage into a social media video. I have a solid rough draft that likely needs a few more tweaks and some color correction, but I am extremely happy with where it stands. Throughout the editing process, I’ve also been pulling significant quotes to use as testimonials for a National Philanthropy Day nomination.

As I mentioned last week, I created a strategic outreach brief to help guide our nonprofit outreach going forward. Building on that, Dennis—Chair of the Board of Directors—connected me with several Westerville-area nonprofits, including Uptown Westerville Inc., the organization responsible for coordinating Fourth Fridays—a longstanding street festival that draws between 10,000 and 30,000 people monthly. We quickly got a meeting on the books, and it looks like a strong partnership moving forward.

Excited to see what’s next,
Owen